How not to keep your customers happy
I am now a proud account holder at First Technology Credit Union, complete with online banking direct deposit, and a shiny green Visa check card to boot. My banklust is sated, for the moment. Would you like to hear how I arrived at this point?
Ten years ago, I was just graduating high school. Up until then, I had stored all of my worldly savings (a couple hundred dollars at most) in a generic interest-bearing savings account at a local bank. I was about to go off to college, so of course I needed a checking account. More than that, I needed a non-local bank with branches both in my hometown (for parental deposits) and my college town. Enter Washington Mutual.
WaMu at the time was running a promotional "Free Checking" gimmick in which they would give a checking account sans monthly fee, a shiny blue Visa check-card, no ATM fees, and even free checks for the first two years (I think I went through forty of those). For an eighteen-year-old in 1996, it was a sweet deal. So I signed up.
Banking in college was mostly uneventful. The occasional overdraft charge. A new shiny blue Visa check-card every couple of years, and a new box of checks whenever my address would change. The intro period on my account ended, and some of the shine wore off, but the bank still did me right. Five years later, graduation.
Not long after graduation, I had my job. This was the moment WaMu had really been waiting for - direct deposit, money pouring into the account, and oh so many checks being written. I even dabbled in some 18-month CDs and a money-market account for the income I couldn't spend. Life was my burrito.
But there were storm clouds on the horizon. The warning signs were there. Every other statement, I found another notice that WaMu was revising the terms of the account. Some were as innoculous as no longer being able to perform a wire-transfer to Venezuela. Others, such as the instatement of ATM fees (coming and going) left me in tears. But still the changes came. Increased fees, new marketing privacy policies, and a plethora of new clauses and hidden gotchas that usually but not always failed to get me. My relationship from my bank went downhill from there. The slide ended with three unfortunate events.
Last year I made the decision to purchase a house. The downpayment was $18k that WaMu was helpfully keeping for me in an interest-bearing money-market account. After the purchase, the account still had a few thousand, but after a couple statements I noticed that the interest was going the wrong way. Each month, I earned about $6 in interest on the account, and paid $10 in "bank fees" that I hadn't been paying before. The tellers at my local branch were no help in identifying the cause of the new fees - I assume some sort of withdrawal penalty. What I didn't need them to tell me was that my money was better off under my mattress than in a WaMu money market account. Account closed.
Last month, during my usual check-writing frenzy at the beginning of the month, my account was a little bit low. I wrote four checks for (approximately) $40, $50, $75, and $380. The account, at the time, only had about $400, so the next morning I walked into a branch and deposited $500 to cover everything. When I got my statement, there was a nasty surprise waiting: Three overdraft charges (at $39 each). After a couple phone calls, I managed to piece together what happened. WaMu honored the $380 first, then applied the other three. Meanwhile, they had held my deposit for "processing" while the account was overdrafting. Not only that, but, according to creditor statements, the $380 was received the day after the $40 and $75. I would not be surprised if the bank also held the checks out of order, to maximize the overdraft charge, not that I have any proof of the allegation.
Last Friday, I was standing in line at Costco. Well, let me back up some. In the spring of this year, Washington Mutual acquired a credit bank so they could issue their own WaMu brand credit cards. In June, they started rolling out new Mastercard Gold check cards to all account holders. When my card arrived, I steadfastly ignored it and continued using my shiny blue Visa card. Now, I know it's petty, and sure, it's a stupid thing to take a stand on, but see, I don't particularly like Mastercard. And I really dislike any of the sales/marketing pomp and circumstance that is always associated with having a metallic card. Gold, silver, platinum, bronze, or lead, I don't care. I don't want a metallic card. Besides, my shiny blue Visa wasn't set to expire until 10/07, according to the front of the card.
When I finally did try to activate the new card, I got an error in the WaMu activation system. After some time on the phone with a service rep, it turns out the card was misprinted, and they'll send a new card in the mail immediately. Nice swing, WaMu, but strike one. Try to keep your eye on the ball. Okay, mistakes happen, I'll just keep using the shiny blue one. Except that some internal WaMu deadline had passed. They REALLY wanted me to use their gold cards. Shiny gold is the carrot. What's the stick? The stick... is that they shut off my online banking access. Online. Banking. Don't ask me what this has to do with check cards. All I know is I log into the website, and instead of my account, I see "Please activate your new card." Um, yeah. It's not here yet. It's in the mail. Can I please see my money? Strike two. Thirty minutes on the phone, and I had access to my accounts again.
So last Friday, I was standing in line at Costco. It's my turn to fork over some money, but when I swipe my shiny blue Visa check card, it doesn't work. Annoying, but by now I was expecting this. I whip out the ugly gold Mastercard from my wallet (it had arrived by now), pull out my cell phone, and dial the activation number. "We're sorry, but we are unable to activate your card. Please press 8 to speak to a customer service representative." WTF? When I finally got a bank rep on the phone, I learned why. In order to re-enable my online banking without having activated a gold card, the rep reported my gold card as missing and had a new one issued. They wouldn't activate the new one because it was reported missing, and they wouldn't reactivate the old one, because it didn't fit into their new gold-card paradigm. Slowly it became clear that neither the bank rep nor her supervisor were willing, over the phone, to make either of the cards in my hand work. I was assured that I could go into a financial center at 9am the next morning and have everything straightened out. Meanwhile, so sorry, but you'll have to put everything back and walk out of Costco without any groceries.
Three strikes you're out, WaMu.
The next morning, I did indeed walk into a WaMu financial center and straighten everything out, though perhaps not the way they intended. I no longer have an account with Washington Mutual, and I am now a proud account holder at First Technology Credit Union.