What was the reason they actually removed it? The official answer seemed to be a vague hand-wavy "not many of you were using it and it's better if you use our other budgeting tool and write out a physical check anyway."

The writing out a physical check being better is a clear absurdity as opposed to having checks go out automatically for things like rent.

The real reason is that they charge for the paper checks, whereas the automated service was free, and so was a cost center for them.

If they had admitted that instead of trying to gaslight their customers I’d have respected them more.

Ah, that makes sense. While I suppose I'd have appreciated the honesty if they'd just said that, I'd still have moved back to Bank of America anyway. (I never shut down my BoA account even when Simple was my main checking account, in large part because Simple never added the ability to receive electronic bills and so I was having BoA pay a couple bills automatically out of the Simple account!)