SmartyPig

SmartyPig is getting terrific buzz. Awesome blog reviews and national coverage have led to an extraordinary amount of interest, which has led to a surprising number of customers and a high level of deposits. Exactly what we want. Just one problem: the transaction engine that moves your money into SmartyPig has a cap on the amount of money it will move in any one 24-hour period. Good news is you are making enough transactions to hit the cap. Bad news is, well, you\’re making enough transactions to hit the cap.

And, as Murphy\’s law prevails, we hit it over the weekend (when the 24-hour period is actually bundled into Saturday and Sunday); and customer support from the company that controls the transaction engine wasn\’t as supportive as we needed – kind of like getting the answering service when you really need to talk to the doctor. So as some tried to open accounts, add money to their goals or had automatic deposits scheduled, the error messages started popping up and the emails to our customer support center started coming in. We have spent the better part of the day trying to contact each individual who was inconvenienced to apologize and to let them know all is back to normal.

No customer\’s account will be affected negatively in any way whatsoever. But for about 30 hours things were not exactly perfect. Things, of course, are not always going to be. But I can guarantee you this: When something goes wrong, we will tell you (not spin you) the minute it does. We will work feverishly to fix it. We will explain in detail what happened after it is fixed. And then we will do our level best to ensure it never happens again.

Now, that all said, we are extremely excited at the level of interest we have received in such a short period of time, and we have expanded to meet customer demand. We really appreciate your business and your patience, and we want SmartyPig to evolve into what is most important to our customers, which, of course, does include actually working.

If any of you has a question or concern, I would really like you to contact me personally so we can discuss. My email address is jgaskell(at)smartypig(dot)com and the direct line to either myself or Mike Ferrari is 515.256.2086.

Thanks!
-Jon Gaskell, Co-Founder