consider this a public service announcement: washington mutual is evil and they will rob you blind.
1. there is a 6-transaction monthly limit on my washington mutual savings account. fine. they charge $35 if you do more than 6 things with your savings account in a month. also fine. last month i took out a lump sum of $200 so i could pay the guy who came to fix stuff on the house when we were getting it ready to sell. i got my statement this month, and it shows that SEVEN smaller sums--totalling $200--were taken out on seven separate occasions, and that washington mutual charged me $35. this is the second time this has happened.
2. matt got me a new pair of running shoes at the adidas store for part of my birthday present. when he went to pay, the store's system was down. it evidently took the guy at the cash register a while to figure this out, because he kept swiping matt's debit card. finally the system came back online and generated a receipt for the amount of the shoes. two weeks later matt found out that he was several HUNDRED dollars overdrawn. he called washington mutual. he found out that he was charged for the shoes as many times as that guy in the adidas store swiped his card. once he was charged enough to deplete his account, each additional swipe cost him a $35 overdraft charge. he tried to explain to the customer service guy what happened. he was told that the only way to fix it was to go into the adidas store again and get someone there to call wm with him. he went back to the adidas store. he an adidas clerk called wm several times and spoke to several different customer service representatives. each one had something different and apparently useless that matt and the adidas clerk needed to do, "then call us right back." finally, they got a manager at wm. it turns out all they had to do was get an authorization code from the manager at adidas. when they asked why they weren't just told this in the beginning, the wm manager basically told them that people aren't trained on how to handle that type of situation until they are managers. WHAT??!? literally three hours later, the charges were removed. the however-many $35-a-piece overdraft fees were not.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
That SUCKS. I've heard several other people complain about wamu as well. I can understand why you wouldn't even want to try, but you should really see if you can get them to take off the $35 fees, because they a)can and b)should. Especially in your case with the savings account thing, it sounds like something bordering on outright fraud on their part. And then, after you get your money back, you should immediately get a new bank, and each write letters explaining how incredibly unacceptably bad their customer service is, etc.
As for my banking experiences, I am really happy with a credit union. There aren't many fees, and even if the particular credit union you belong to has only a few branches, you can typically use the ATM of almost any other credit union for free (it's called the "Co-Op" network of ATMs, and that's how I did my banking down here in SF until very recently, even though my credit union only exists in Oregon). I've also been pretty happy with Well's Fargo so far, although I've only been banking with them a couple of months.
jenn-
we tried, both of us, to get the fees reversed--and matt is much better at being calm, assertive, and intimidating than i am--but it still didn't work. it pretty much was fraud. i'll definitely write a letter when i close, though.
Post a Comment