I have been a WAMU customer for the last 4 years or so. Nothing really bad to say about them other than their drive thru banking at my branch is slower than shit. But over the last few months I have grown more and more irritated at the uber big banks in general. My irritation has to do with the bailouts etc.
So wifey and I have decided to start robbing them since they are robbing the american taxpayer.
Anybody have any advice as to the best way to go about this. We don’t want to hurt anybody, just take all the banks money.
Yes, I jest. But we have decided to take our own little stand. She is a member of credit union from the old pre-Locke days. So tomorrow we are driving over to their main branch and adding dear old Locke to the account, order checks, a debit card and open up a savings account. Then it will be time to close the old WAMU accounts.
In preparation of this change, I went in to my WAMU branch yesterday to make a cash withdrawal from our savings account. Asked for $4500 and told them I wanted cash. I then proceeded to get grilled on why I needed that much cash, albeit in a polite and friendly way. Told them I was buying a used car and the guy wanted cash. Well the teller ended up having to go to the branch manager in order to get his approval. I then got the 3rd degree again from him. They tried to push a cashier’s check on me 3 or 4 times until finally they gave me the cash.
All in all it was a freaky experience and it makes me glad that I am leaving their bank.
“Anybody have any advice as to the best way to go about this. We don’t want to hurt anybody, just take all the banks money.”
Yes…get together with a bunch of your friends and colleagues and short the sh*t out of the banks’ stock relentlessly. That worked really well in 2008 thanks to Chris Cox at the SEC.
You are not alone in your train of thought. I catch bank robbers for a living, working on the bank side, and we are SUPER busy these days. The numbers are up across the board. At least its a little bit of job security! But, with the government possibly now owning 36% of my company who knows what comes next. I used to gloat about how safe my job was and what a great company I worked for. Now I just sit in the back and don’t mention who I work for. I will be a VERY interesting few years if my job survives it all.
I had a similar situation about a year ago. I had always used CIBC as my bank just because there were branches and ATM’s everywhere, so it was convenient for me. Bank treated me like crap, though, even though I kept a huge balance every month and had two Visa cards with them that I used to pay almost everything and paid off every month. They even bounced a check on me when the money was in the account!! I had written a check for my RRSP contribution for a large amount. I covered the personal check with a check from my company account - something I had been doing every month for over 10 years. Well, the company check had only been in the account 4 out of 5 days and so hadn’t officially cleared, so they bounced my RSP contribution after the deadline date for making contributations. I was furious!
Closed all of my accounts and moved them to where I did my corporate banking which is Scotiabank. The service I’m getting from Scotiabank is unbelievable. They go above and beyond for me all the time.
I’m with ya. I’ve been with BOA for 8 years and every year they get worse and worse. They recently screwed me without even a kiss. And it cost me $800 at least. As someone with a full range of accounts at their bank, including a mortgage, never missed a payment and just went about my business, if they treat me this way I can’t imagine how they are treating others.
This happened several years ago and is probably every bank customer’s fantasy: A customer closed a million dollar account after a teller refused to validate his parking ticket. He demanded and got a cashiers check on the spot for the entire amount and walked down the street to open an account at another bank.
I remember the story and just check on snopes.com to verify I wasn’t dreaming.
I had a similar experience with WAMU. I decided that I didn’t trust their great brain trust with my money. So I went to the bank and told them I wanted to close out my account AND I wanted cash. The person behind the desk asked me why I wanted to close out the account and I told her that her upper mngt. was incompetent. Next she told me that they would have to look and see if they had enough cash. It wasn’t like I was asking for a million bucks, just MY money. I waited something like 15 minutes before I got my cash. Left and haven’t looked back.
That is one reason why I decided to take this in increments. The withdrew the majority of the cash yesterday. But haven’t closed the accounts yet. Will do that next week.