ING Direct Electric Orange Saves the Day – Sending Paper Checks

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ING Direct Electric Orange ^SM online checking came through for us recently and I want to tell you about it.

See, we’re having some work done our house.  After a few estimates we settled on one contractor to do the work.  He had a great plan and the price was good.  All he needs is a check for a deposit so he can started ordering supplies and such.  No problem, right?

Ends up we ran out of checks.  Major oops!  We knew we were on the last book and had to re-order but I guess the bills overtook the checks and we ran down our checkbook quicker than we realized.  So we have no checks.

I re-ordered checks of course, but it will take a little while for them to get here.  The contractor is great and told us we can mail him a check as soon as we get a chance.  But the sooner he gets a check the better.  What to do?

Enter ING Direct Electric Orange checking!

I remembered that the Electric Orange account had a feature where they will send a check out for you.  I never used it before.  I always liked to send the checks out myself (and maybe I was a little stubborn in sending out checks over the internet).  This seemed to be a perfect opportunity to try out ING’s check writing feature for myself.

ING Electric Orange has a number of different ways that you can make a payment.  To get to the options, I went into my Electric Orange account and click Make a Payment.  I saw options for the following payment types:

• Bill Payment (to pay bills like utilities and such);
• Person2Person Payment (this lets you send money to another person’s checking account;
• Mail a Check (where Electric Orange will send out a check for you – the option we’re doing here); and
• Overnight a Check (same as Mail a Check but it will be overnight-ed for an additional fee of $20).

From here I picked Mail a Check (I didn’t want to pay extra for the overnight service).

I then saw a blank check on the screen.  Just like a physical check, I fill in the information for the check like Pay to the Order of, Date, Amount, and a Memo (my name and address already appear in the upper left).  If you notice in the screen shot below, above the Amount you have the Available Balance in your account.

I hit continue.

Now I enter in the recipient information.  This is where you will be sending the check out to.  The name is already filled out from the previous check screen.  If you know the account number of the person you are sending the check out to, you can enter that in this screen.  Doing this will have the funds hit the other person’s account much faster.

Hitting continue brings me to the next screen which shows a picture of an envelope with the recipient’s name and address as well as my info (just like an envelope I might use to mail out a check).

Under the envelope is a summary of the information on the check such as the amount and who it’s made out to.  This is a double-check to make sure everything is correct.

I hit submit and DONE!  There’s now a check in the system that is scheduled to be sent out.

The recipient and the address are stored in your ING Electric Orange address book if I should ever need it again.

Going into my account again, I see that the check is set up to go and I still have the option to edit things if needed.

The system tells me when the check should arrive at the recipient, which seems to take about a week, including weekends.  You can also see how long a check would take on the initial Payment Options screen.

Overall, the process is pretty easy. I mean, it’s really the same as writing out a check and an envelope, I’m just doing it on a computer screen.  What’s great is I don’t need an envelope or stamps since ING Direct takes care of that.  They mail out the check free for you!

I definitely see myself using this function more in the future.  One thing I like is I have my account information right there before I write the check.  I know how much is in my checking and my savings which makes it easy to manage checking and make sure I don’t overdraw the account.  For example – the money I needed to send out on the check I transferred to my checking from my savings account.  I don’t have to worry about keeping extra money in my checking.  I can use what I need and let the rest sit in savings to earn higher interest.

Thanks to ING Direct’s Electric Orange online checking account we are able to get our contractor a check before we would be able to send one out ourselves!

Have you used the Electric Orange paper check option?

Special Note: ING Direct is running a promotion!  If you open an Electric Orange online checking account through one of the links/banners on this site you can get a $50 bonus (you need to make 3 signature-based purchases within 45 days of opening your account).  This is a great incentive to open an ING Direct Electric Orange online checking account now!

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