I have held one sort of account or another with Wachovia stretching back to when it was known as First Union.
Last May, my husband and I set up a joint checking/savings account at Wachovia. We had previously almost exclusively used a local credit union that provided excellent service, but on account of our moving away we decided we needed a national bank account.
We still have about $6000 in savings at our credit union, but the bulk of our money is secured by Wachovia. We are not rich by any means, far from it in fact, (I am currently in medical school so our overall net worth is currently in the hole. HA) But we do manage to maintain anywhere from $8,000-$19,000 in our combined checking/savings account at Wachovia.
Being on a very tight budget given that I cannot work, we monitor our spending extremely carefully. We use Quicken to maintain our different accounts and to track our spending/savings/investments.
Our two different bank accounts (Wachovia and Credit Union), credit cards, car loans and student loans are all registered through the online services provided by each company.in other words, when I open my personally purchased version of Quicken and choose a specific account (ex. Discover card), I can choose to update the account by typing in my log-in information and the transactions are downloaded into that account information in Quicken.
This is a great time saver, because those of you familiar with quicken know that you used to have to manually enter all such information. I am in medical school as I mentioned and my husband works two jobs. We need things that are easy and help us secure our financial future.
The problem is thus: Yesterday I recieved an email through Quicken from Wachovia stating that they are now going to be charging a montly fee for me to download my transactions from MY ACCOUNT to MY own computer and MY PERSONAL VERSION OF QUICKEN! My credit union and credit cards do not charge me a fee to have access to my own purchases from my own account onto my own computer.
I can in no way see why I should be charged this fee. Does it cost Wachovia anything for me to download my information? I think not.
It's not so much the acutal money the fee costs, but the principle behind it. What really irks me is that "special" accounts such as those who keep more than $20,000 in their checking get this service for free.
Okay, how is that fair? Sure, if we pooled all our money together from our investments and other savings account we could manage to have a $20,000 checking account for most of the year, but then we wouldn't be earning any interest on it, so what would be the point of that?
I am planning to switch banks because I am so upset that they would charge us for something so ridiculous as trying to maintain our accounts and track our spending.
Does anyone have any reccomendations on banks that are trying to suck you dry with all kinds of ridiculous fees?
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