decidedlyodd

This afternoon, I took a break from a bug I’ve been working on for nearly a whole day now to run some afternoon errands.

Recently, I decided that I was going to close my Washington Mutual account. First, it took like 2 weeks for them to open the damn thing. Then they screwed up my online banking access, which resulted in the creation of a new online account. Somehow, I still continued to get annoying “you have a message waiting, please log in” messages for the original, “disabled” account. When I opened the account, I remember ordering checks at some sort of reasonable cost. A month later and I still hadn’t received any, so I called them up. They wanted $20 for one box of checks! Highway robbery if you ask me. To top things off, recently they started offering a new, much improved free checking, but only for new customers. Us old customers continued with the old plan, which as far as I could tell was in all ways inferior to the new one.

When I moved to North Carolina, I opened an account with Bank of America thinking that it would make it easier to find ATM machines in CA and NC. Things got off to a bad start when the check (which they printed and mailed with my bank details) for the opening balance bounced, leaving me with a negative balance and the requisite fees (although they did waive them once I complained). I’ve just had terrible luck with commercial banks. They seem to just rip you off as often as possible even though they get to hold on to your money and invest it.

Before I closed the WAMU account though, I went over to First Tech, which is the credit union we have through work. I’d looked into their accounts before, but decided their rates sucked about as badly as commercial banks. Why is it that NC State Employees’ Credit Union can give me 0.75% on my checking, 1.5% on savings ($25 minimum balance) and 4% on money market ($250 minimum) while First Tech gives no interest checking (unless you sign up for the account with a $500 minimum and still receive a wimpy 0.5%), 0.5% for savings and for money market you basically need at least $2,000 to get a paltry 1-2%? Anyhow, they did have a free checking account, so I opened one of those. The ATMs are all over the place at work and they do participate in the Co-Op network (free ATM usage at most other credit unions) which is something NCSECU doesn’t do.

After I opened the account, I went over to WAMU and closed the account. It was probably the easiest and fastest transaction I’ve ever had with them, which really just shows how pathetic my banking experience with them was. For most things, I’m just keeping the NCSECU account, but it’s nice to have a local bank for free ATM usage and bank services like getting rolls of quarters.