Online Personal Finance: Mvelopes Mix-up Untangled

Also, a monitor maker goes missing; getting an overheating laptop battery replaced.

I purchased Mvelopes' Web-based personal finance service as a result of a review in your magazine. Shortly after my 30-day free trial ended, my bank told me that my accounts had been accessed by someone from India and that I would have to close them all and open new ones. During the transition, I had no way to see which of my automated electronic bills were paid and which weren't, resulting in numerous overdraft charges. No one at Mvelopes helped, so I cancelled that account. But when I asked for a refund of the $189 I'd prepaid for two years' service, I was told that the company has an ironclad no-refund policy. I can't imagine why they think they deserve to be paid for two years when I left only several days beyond the trial and my experience was so bad.

OYS Responds: Mvelopes determined that St. James's problems began last summer, when the company switched the servers (and IP addresses) it uses to gather information from user bank accounts. St. James's bank noticed that her account was being accessed from an unfamiliar IP address, flagged the Mvelopes activity as unauthorized, and had her change her accounts. The bank's own subsequent investigation eventually led to Mvelopes, but by then St. James had already cancelled her Mvelopes service, and neither Mvelopes nor her bank ever told her the account had not, in fact, been hacked.

As a result of our query, St. James got a full refund and a call from Steve Smith, the CEO of Finicity, the company behind Mvelopes. "We know that we missed the chance to deliver an optimal customer experience," Smith said in a statement. "We've since implemented a number of changes to improve our level of service."

The incident illustrates a type of problem that can (but rarely does) arise with online services that communicate with banks and other financial institutions. If you run into such an issue, make sure your financial institutions are fully aware of all services that you've authorized to access your account information online.

Monica Osborne of Falls Church, Virginia, wrote in after her X2Gen MW19R monitor failed and she received no responses to her e-mail messages, phone calls, or faxes. Sure enough, the X2gen.com Web site has a notice saying the parent company, Computer World Solution, is in bankruptcy and is no longer providing support for its products. The site has a link to a PDF of a form that creditors can fill out and submit to the bankruptcy court.

Chiao Huang of Marlton, New Jersey, wrote to seek our help obtaining a replacement battery for his overheating Hewlett-Packard laptop. HP refused to take back his battery because its bar-code sticker, which would have identified it as a qualifying model, was missing; Huang said this was because overheating had caused the sticker to peel off.

HP says that it asks for the stickers because not all batteries for a specific model were defective. As a result of our inquiry, the company sent Huang a replacement. But we recommend keeping records of all tech product serial numbers and stickers--even if you must store a peeled-off sticker in an envelope.