Grand Yield Direct Promotion Code

I opened the new online savings account at the Apple Bank for Savings, called Grand Yield Direct, with the promotion code “789″, as advertised on bankrate.com. The Grand Yield Direct account, as of January 21, 2007, carries a 5.27% APY, putting it among the highest-yielding of the no-minimum deposit accounts. The 789 promotion is for a $25 bonus, to be credited to the account, as is typical for these types of deals.

I opened the account on January 1, 2007, and by January 18 I still hadn’t received the bonus. The web site at Apple Bank is very rudimentary, and there is no confirmation message during sign-up that the promotion code is valid, so I began to wonder if it had been discontinued at the end of last year. I did some searching around, and I found a post over at the trusty bankdeals.blogspot.com from a guy who’d successfully used the promo code on January 6th.

So I used the web based email system at the Apple site to inquire about the status of the bonus:

Good afternoon. I opened a Grand Yield Savings Direct
account on January 1, 2007, using promotion code 789. During the account
opening process, no confirmation was made concerning the validity of the
promotion code and I saw no mention of when the bonus funds would be
credited to the account.

From various blog posts on the subject, it seems that there is a good deal
of inconsistency in when the 789 promotion funds are credited to new
accounts.

I was wondering if you could tell me when my account would be credited
with the $25 promotion bonus.

The email was quickly returned with this response from the Vice-President:

The credit will be made to your account by close of business Wednesday. I
am sorry for the delay. Normally the credit is made within one week of
funding but the holidays and illnesses have left us short-staffed.

This leads to more questions. While it’s nice to receive a prompt response, and from the Vice President, no less, it’s troublesome that the holidays and illnesses could affect what should be a pretty automated process. It leaves me with the impression that the online banking thing is very new to Apple bank, and that their system isn’t ready for prime time. At this point, I’m still more comfortable with HSBC, even though the interest rate is slightly lower there.

The $25 was credited to my account the day after the email exchange, as a “BANK RATE PROMO CREDIT”. But it doesn’t yet show up as 2007 interest. I’ll be watching that pretty closely, too.