One Thursday night or early Friday morning, I decided to hop online to check my pending balance. A problem had happened with another "bank" whereby they had taken funds for a loan payment that I was told wouldn't be deducted until after my payday of the 31st. Mistakes had been made and I had to suffer the $35 NSF from Wamu. Feeling no fault of Wamu I felt it ok to leave the funds as they were because payday was coming in less than 5 hours (12:00am Friday morning) and there was about 6 times the overdraft amount coming in funds for my pay check.
Now, 11:45pm and I log into Wamu's website waiting for the funds to come in within 15 minutes. 12:00am finally comes, I check my ledger balance which reflects $0.00 and, obviously, the available balance reflects the same thing. So I kept waiting for about 20 minutes or so and then suddenly strike up the idea, "Hey, why don't I take a look at what's in my account". I click on the account and sure enough my pay check is sitting there. So, I'm home free! Wait, not so fast, the bank is holding the funds to reflect a "negative" balance showing my pay check is not available. Remember that there is 6 times the amount of cash on hand to cover the fees.
It's at this time I just decided to move the funds over from savings into checking which again, there was more than enough in savings to cover the overdrafts and negative balance. The very instant that I brought the negative balance to $0.00, my pay check was released!!! Just like that, once the bank realized they weren't in-line to stick me with more fees because of my positive balance, they relinquished the withheld funds instantaneously.
Right then it dawned on me that it was time to withdraw every cent I had in Wamu. After doing this, I marched right into a local credit union 1 block from my apartment, opened up a $1,000 money market account, packed a savings account, and happily took possession of 2 checking accounts. For once, I'm happy to be back into banking and have a lot of prospects for investments.
In closing I have to say that Wamu was the first bank account I opened up and I've been a customer of theirs for 8 years or so. I've had one other instance of an NSF that I asked to have waived as a "courtesy". The response I was responded with was being treated like I had asked a police officer for their gun! I firmly believe that Wamu would rather lose a customer than waive a small fee of even $5.00.in my opinion, this is truly a pathetic business practice and, it's a testament to just how stingy banks can be. I'm overly satisfied with knowing I'm now at an institution that appreciates my business and isn't out to satisfy private investors.
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