After over six months of being "accidentally" charged service fees ($20 per statement, every statement, and on multiple accounts!!!), I have moved my accounts (checking and savings) away from Washington Mutual Bank (WaMu) to Wells Fargo Bank.
WaMu seems to have recently adopted a very convoluted system for preventing being charged service fees. Furthermore, there are no warnings on their web site (for online banking) when you're about to make a change that will result in an additional fees.
It is absolutely exhausting having to police my accounts to make sure service fees were not being assessed. After the latest set of fees were charged (without any warnings) for transferring money between my checking and savings too often (more than 6 times per statement period; $10 per transfer!!!), I decided it was time to move on.
Here's where it got really interesting... When I went to WaMu, and inquired about closing my accounts, the teller was trying to give me a hard time about it, stating he had to get his manager's approval. Are you kidding? Do I need permission to withdraw my own money too?
After this surprising experience closing my accounts, I did some research on the Internet, and found a couple of interesting articles... Please take a look at the following links, and draw your own conclusions.
Washington Mutual - One of the Nations Largest Banks Having Trouble
Navigating a Path Through a Turbulent Housing Market
Disclaimer
The statements above are based on my personal experiences with WaMu and are completely my opinion. I am not making any professional judgements about the soundness of WaMu as a financial institution, and I encourage you to do your own research to determine whether a relationship with WaMu (either current or future) is in line with your financial goals.
1 comment:
Well, here is another "personal experience".
I had free checking at Wamu back before they changed tit to "really" free checking. We also have overdraft protection where they pay a check and charge you thirty dollars each.
My paycheck hit the bank and is posted at midnight Friday mornings every other Friday for years. We then pay our bills On Friday electronically.
We noticed once that they caught on to the Overdraft thing and would charge the largest first then all the smaller ones no matter what order they came in that day so they could charge more fees. So that's cool. Don't use over draft. Bad habbit anyway.
The topping is when they applied the same system to thier deposits. In stead of applying the depoist at midnight, they waited until they had all transactions and applied the drafts first, then applied the deposit. That on top of a new fee that I have know idea where it came from... NFS and an Overdraft fee. So for each they took out $75 then applied the deposit. Needless to say that after catching a couple of customers this way, they should have a strong retail line to help pull then through their morgage crisis and keep those millions of dollars in bonus' flowing to the top Execs.
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