Today was an unfortunate day for me in that my purse was stolen out of my cart while I was shopping. My husband and I "tag teamed" to call and cancel all of the bank and credit card accounts as quickly as we could. For the most part, the customer service associates were very understanding and responde very quickly. This was not the case with Washington Mutual.
My husband was the one who ended up calling Washington Mutual. We have a checking and savings account there and also have check cards that are linked to our accounts. When my husband contacted them, the associate was very unfriendly and informed him that they could not cancel the accounts without talking to both of us and that it would probably be best if we did this in person. They also told him that there was another account (a credit card) that was in my name only and that they couldn't do anything about that either. (This was a card that was originally in a different bank name and was apparently purchased by Washington Mutual at some point. I didn't even know I still had the card. Incidentally....when he called Chase to cancel our joint card, we learned I also had a card in my name through them and they were more than willing to accommodate and cancel that one also).
This is not our first bad experience with Washington Mutual. My husband received a large check a few years ago and deposited it into our account. They failed to inform us that they had put a "hold" on the check due to the amount and the fact that it originated from another bank which was out of state (the bank was still a "national" bank - Bank of America - so it shouldn't have been a huge deal). We wrote checks off of the account thinking that the money was "there" and they ended up bouncing. They were not willing to help us or work with us at all.
We also had a situation where we changed car insurance providers. We had made arrangements so that our payments were automatically drafted each month by our previous provider. Even though we cancelled our insurance before the renewal date, the charge still went through. It was an error on the insurance company's part, but because of it, we also had a check bounce. The bank was not willing to assist us in anyway.
We are less than impressed by the lack of assistance and poor customer service that we have repeated received from Washington Mutual. Our last visit will be when we go in person on Monday to close ALL of our accounts with them!
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