I do all my banking by ATM and online so I can avoid bank employees as much as possible. It all goes back to college when as a student at UPenn, a friend told me the tale of her roommate (a Wharton undergrad — yes, that Wharton) who asked to show her how to write out a check to pay a bill. The scary part. . .the Wharton girl interned at the student credit union processing deposits several days a week! Ever since, I’ve tried to avoid bank employees, and sometimes sticking with ATMS just isn’t far enough removed from banking employees.
I swung by an unfamiliar Washington Mutual on Wednesday to make a deposit since I had been in the neighborhood for dinner. I deposited $40 rebate check and a $50 check from my mom (in my family there is a Turkey Day fairy, much like Santa and the Easter Bunny). Basic math would show that $50 +$40 = $90. And my online banking profile shows a $90 deposit was made.
My online banking profile shows that bank removed $50 of that deposit as a “key in error,” implying that there was no $50 check.
How do I prove that there was a $50 check in the envelope with the $40 check?
I suspect I’m going to have to wait until my mother gets back the $50 check cleared and get a copy of that to prove that I did indeed deposit the check. Or do you think the bank is going to take my word for it? I so don’t look forward to field tripping to that bank on Monday.
Why are bank employees so stupid?
Update on 2/08: Within a week of that phone call, I received a letter telling me they were removing funds from my account over that miskeyed entry.
Two weeks later, i have a copy of the canceled check in hand. Before I can get to WaMu to deal with the brilliant staff, the $ is added back into my account. Seems they caught the error on their end. No one bothered to inform me in writing that they made a mistake.
The person at that branch I spoke to all but called me a liar on the phone when I contacted them about the problem initially, but they just put the money back and go about their business. I would like to think their mistakes would also merit a follow up letter, apologizing for the inconvenience of losing my money. Good customer service is hard to come by.
A few years ago, I ordered a block of checks that never came. The company couldn’t figure what happened to them, and 250 blank checks for my account should not be hanging out unaccounted for. So I went to my local Wamu explaining that I’d like to close that account and open another one because of the missing checks. The account manager told me that there’s no evidence of fraud on my acccount as of yet, so why bother? Maybe because I’d like to stay fraud free!
The stories I could tell about banking at WAMU. . .but sadly, the competitors seem to be just as bad.
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