by MJ Beatty

Created on: August 01, 2008

Consider this a public service announcement: Washington Mutual is evil and they will rob you blind.

1. There is a six-transaction monthly limit on my Washington Mutual savings account. Fine. They charge $35 if you do more than six 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 my house when I was getting it ready to sell it last month. When I got my statement this month, it showed 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. I have been taking advantage of online-banking to make payments from my Washington Mutual checking account to my WaMu credit card. Evidently the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, because twice now I've made payments which cleared from my checking account but somehow were never received by the credit card. Hmmm...

3. My fiance Matt got me a new pair of running shoes at the Adidas store my birthday. 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. The system finally came back online, and it 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, and 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. When 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 Washington Mutual with him. So he went back to the Adidas store. He an Adidas clerk called the bank several times and spoke to several different customer service representatives. Each one had something different and apparently useless that Matt and the poor Adidas clerk needed to do, "then call us right back." This got them nowhere. Eventually, the were able to get a manager on the phone. 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 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.

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