Tuesday, August 1: I completed ED's online forms to add another funding (checking) account. With my bank's routing and account numbers in hand, the forms took just a few minutes to fill out. Emigrant requires users to mail a voided check from the account they wish to link; I mailed my voided check the same day.
Wednesday, August 9: The two test deposits (and their respective withdrawals) showed up in our checking account:
Saturday, August 12: Back from vacation, I went online, logged into my ED account, and found the following message waiting for me:
Following that link brings us to the Funding section, which now shows my original linked checking account as well as the new one, which I need to verify.
Click the "Verify Now" hyperlink, and the next screen allows you to input the amounts of the ED deposits found in your checking account.
I plug in my deposit amounts, and that's it. The checking account verifies!
Back to the "Funding" section again. My new checking account is linked, verified, and ready to go:
Summary
In my case, effort-wise, linking a new checking account to my Emigrant savings account took just minutes. The drawn-out part, of course, comes from having to snail-mail ED a voided check, and then waiting for the trial deposits to show up in your checking account. As the timeline above shows, I had to wait nine days to see the deposits. (My check had to travel from my home in Oklahoma to Emigrant's offices in Ossining, New York.)
As long as you're not in a hurry to get a working link from an additional checking account (meaning any account other than the one you opened the ED account with) to your Emigrant Direct savings, then ED's verification process should work nicely for most everyone.
