WaMu Online Banking Treats You Like A Criminal

With all the focus on the girl rocketing across the desert in a supersonic purple dildo, Washington Mutual forgot to mention one thing. When you sign up for a new account with them online instead of in person, be prepared to be treated like a criminal at every turn. Here’s Brett’s story of why he and his partner don’t bank with WaMu, and never will again…

Brett writes:

Mark (my boyfriend) and I decided to move our accounts to the same bank to facilitate account transfers easier. Figured why not try a new bank while I was at it. We chose WAMU based on some research that showed them to have the lowest fee’s and the no charge ATM fee’s for foreign banks.

We opened our accounts online, after answering all the security questions we were in business. I switched my direct deposit, and began using the account. When it came time to pay the rent, mark attempted to get me his portion of the rent. He did a $1000 transfer using his debit card from commerce (considering it a cash advance). We waited a few days, and when we tried to buy new iPhones , he swiped his wamu MasterCard (debit) and it came back declined. After calling he found out that his deposit was put on hold and flagged as suspicious.

Unfortunately I had already deposited his check. My deposit was also put on hold. Needless to say neither of us had this money available. They apologized for the inconvenience, but was assured we wouldn’t get caught with any bounce fee’s. Finally a week after he made his deposit we received a letter outlining this hold, I’ve attached an example.

A week later it happened to me, a check I deposited was put on hold resulting in a bounced check to my roommate. I also made a deposit of my payroll check later that week, also put on hold. After several calls to customer service and talking to supervisors, I had most of the holds removed. In order to get the $1000 from the bf to pay my roommate, we went into a branch, we asked for the $1000 as cash, and then we would then deposit the cash into my account. The teller at the station told us she would do a transfer from his WAMU account into my WAMU account, assuring us it would be treated as cash, and would be available as such.

As my boyfriend was closing his account, the branch manager told us in the future if he wanted to reopen an account, to do so in person. She said these problems are common for those who open accounts online. After waiting a few days, and feeling confident there wouldn’t be any other holds set on my account, I gave the go ahead to the roommate to cash the check. He did, a week later I get the attached letter; it happened again!

So I called Loss Detection,and she said that the branch had processed it as a check and not cash. I was admittedly upset by this time, and told her as such. Her response to me was she would hang up on me if I insulted her. I of course was level headed through out the conversation, but was taken aback her immediate response was to threaten me. In the end, she was able to clear the hold, but not before the other check bounced.

Apparently WAMU has a policy putting new customers on “probation” for 90 days, this is a ridiculous amount of time and terrible customer service. I understand most banks have probation periods but not as long, or as strict.

We have both since switched to chase and closed these accounts.

It’s disingenuous to advertise signing up for banking online like it’s super easy and awesome, and then use a different set of rules that punish the customers that just did what you told them to do.

GALLERY

END

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.