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400 East Main Street, Stockton, CA 95290

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Twelve years ago I opened up my first “grown up” checking account at a Washington Mutual branch near the university I was about to begin attending. At the time, Washington Mutual was mostly a local bank. It had yet to become the object of nationwide detest that it is now. My experience with Washington Mutual has been so pleasant that in those twelve years I have had several types of accounts with WAMU: checking, savings, business checking, certificate of deposit, auto loan and home equity lines of credit, all with satisfying results.

Why did I go with WAMU?

As a teenager, I got to a point where I could not figure out where the numbers were coming from on my bank account statement. No matter how many times I reconciled my statements, there was still a small amount missing. I decided to close the account and look for a new bank. Since I would be going to school locally, I wanted a bank that I could easily find locations for.

I was limited to four banks: Wells Fargo (the one I couldn’t balance my account with previously), SeaFirst (now Bank of America), Key Bank and Washington Mutual. My mother had mixed feelings about Key Bank based on her experience with them, and I knew a lot of people who had WAMU accounts, so I chose to go there. Hey, I was 18, not the most sophisticated financial shopper at the time.

Opening the account

On my first visit, I waited in the lobby for about ten minutes, then met with the New Accounts person, filled out some simple paperwork and presented my driver’s license, and voila, I had my beginner’s checks about twenty minutes after arriving.

Every personal checking or savings account I have opened since then has been a similarly short and easy experience. The car loan took a little longer, since they had to check the blue book values and change things with the insurance company, but it still was a smooth process.

Opening the business checking account took more time than the personal accounts, mainly because there was more paperwork involved. They needed the state incorporation papers and the IRS papers with the tax ID number, as well as various information about the business. The whole process still only took about 30 minutes.

Checking Accounts

In their advertising, WAMU boasts its “Free Checking” accounts. By “free” they mean there is no minimum balance requirement. They also do not charge to withdraw money from an ATM. Your checks will also be free, as long as you go for their boring blue-checkered checks. Since we have various accounts there, I like to be able to easily identify my accounts, and have always gone with my Snoopy “designer” checks, which WAMU allows you to order from Deluxe, at $20 for 150 checks.

Checking accounts also come with overdraft protection. The amount of the overdraft will vary depending on how long you have had your account. Our joint account carries a $1000 limit, while my personal checking, which I have had for several years longer, has a $1250 overdraft limit. Since I am not Becky Bloomwood, the overdraft limit is not an issue for me. I will say that there have been a couple of times when I have forgotten about an automatic debit and been slapped with an overdraw free, which I have been able to successfully eliminate from a customer service phone call. In every overdraft situation we managed to receive a notice in the mail two days after the overdraft occurred, mailed the day of the incriminating incident. The overdraw fees have increased from $20 twelve years ago, to $34 now. One thing Washington Mutual has done recently is give a freebie. Each account gets one overdraft fee refunded to them once a year. Unfortunately, they don’t give you $34 when you have no overdraws in a year. Another good service they offer for overdraw protection is an automatic transfer. My husband has his personal checking account set up so that if he accidentally overdraws, the bank will transfer over the missing amount from his savings account at no extra charge, which also neatly avoids the overdraft fee.

Checking accounts also come with a MasterCard debit, which can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. Something interesting I noticed when my renewal cards came in the mail is that the debit cards for business accounts and personal accounts have different perks attached to them. My WaMu Business Debit MasterCard will earn me rebates of up to 20% at certain merchants, such as DHL, Budget Car Rentals and Wyndham Hotels. My WaMu Gold Debit MasterCard (the one you get with the Free Checking account) has PayPass, which allows you to pay without having to sign or use a pin at such places as Jack in the Box and Dairy Queen, as long as your purchase is for $25 or less.

Savings Accounts

I no longer have my own savings account with WAMU, but I can say that I had no problems with them when I had the account, as long as I kept my balance above the required $300.00 minimum. My husband has not had any problems with his either. Their rates are not that great; I think you can do a lot better at a credit union. WAMU currently offers three main types of savings account:

The Online Savings account, which must be opened online with at least $1.00. All statements must be received electronically as well, and for this you earn an interest rate of 3.25%. If you do not maintain the $300 minimum balance, you will be charged a $4.00 fee with this account.

The Statement Savings account, which will send you paper statements in the mail, requires an opening balance of $4.00, in order to earn an interest rate of .25%. This account has the same $300 minimum or $4.00 fee.

The Savings for Success account, which will earn you 4.89% for the first year, after which point the account will be switched over to one of the prior two options. The catch is that you must have an automatic transfer of $25-$500 from a Washington Mutual checking account. This account has the same minimum requirements as the other two, and only needs an opening balance of $1.00. I think WAMU opened this account to compete with other banks that offer higher rates on the first XXX amount of dollars, but this kind of strikes me as a cruel joke to only give the higher rate for one year.

Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOCs)

For those who are unfamiliar with HELOCs, they are similar to a second mortgage, in that they are secured by your home. However, they are more like a credit card in nature, because once you open it, the money is available to you, but you don’t have to make payments on it if you haven’t taken the money out. Washington Mutual gives you a booklet of “checks” and a “credit card” when you open a HELOC with them.

Over the past few years, we have opened several HELOCs with Washington Mutual, mainly because the rate was so low. They offer variable rate HELOCs for the Prime rate plus .25% (currently 5%), and fixed rate HELOCs for Prime plus some change (currently 7.89%). Our HELOCs are fixed at 7.25%, based on when we acquired them.

Getting the HELOC was very simple for us. Since WAMU already had our personal information in their system, they just needed to get their appraisal done to let us know if we qualified or not. Once we got our approval, we just had to go down to the bank, sign some papers, and it was done. The signing only took about 25 minutes each time.

I think it’s important for consumers to know that banks tend to be conservative in their appraisal values for HELOCs, and on top of that, they only tend to let you have one up to a certain amount of the home’s value. The HELOC we had on our primary residence allowed us up to 90% of the home’s value. This means that if we already owed 70% of our home’s value on our first mortgage, our HELOC was for an amount equivalent to 20% of the value WAMU’s appraisal came up with. Based on their website, it looks like they have reduced the percentage amount they will let people loan up to.

The only problem we have had with our WAMU HELOCs is that they recently lowered the amount available to us on one of them. We had heard that this was happening with other banks in response to falling real estate values, so we were not surprised when this happened. We still didn’t like it, though, since we have our HELOCs so that we can dip into them as an emergency fund if needed. The victim HELOC amount was lowered from $155,000 to $88,000. My husband asked them to do an appraisal to extend the amount and we were less than pleased when we saw the results. Not only was the value less than what the real estate experts say, but the comparisons were ridiculous. It turns out they use appraisers from Pennsylvania. Our house is in Washington state! I’m not quite sure how an appraiser from Pennsylvania could understand the difference in value from homes on opposite sides of a highway, especially when some of the homes were several hundred square feet less than ours.

Online Banking

The Washington Mutual website is easy to log onto. Once logged in, I can look at a summary of all my accounts. By clicking on the name and last four digits of my account, I can see the transaction detail for the past 30 days. There are buttons on the side to go back further if I want to. I no longer get my cancelled checks mailed back to me, but I can click on a small camera icon next to a check number to see a photo image of the checks I have written. I can also easily transfer funds between accounts and print off a confirmation of the transaction. When I forget my password, I can have a temporary one emailed to me. If I am too stubborn to have it emailed to me and fail login four times, my account will be locked (in case I am a hacker), and the hoops I have to go through to unlock it are relatively small.

Customer Service

In twelve years, I have never had a bad experience with customer service at Washington Mutual. The tellers are always friendly, a few have even made jokes about the kiosk-type stands they now have in several branches. Instead of the traditional long counter, many tellers are stationed at individual kiosks for “face to face” service. Most branches have play areas with toys and video games for kids, something that I think is becoming more common in banks.

As I said previously, I had been successful in reversing overdraft fees before they started giving out a freebie every year. Also, when I opened my business checking account, the account manager told me that he would make sure my deposits on the new account were not put on the automatic hold that most new accounts have for the first six months. I did not ask for this, he offered it based on the amount of accounts we have there.

Finally, the Bottom Line…

Overall, I have been very happy with Washington Mutual for over a decade. The savings rates are not as good as they are with a credit union (which is why I have my savings with a credit union), but it is everywhere. I don’t have to drive all over town looking for a branch, and I don’t have to constantly check them for math errors in my account, which I could easily do with their user-friendly online banking. Yes, I have had some pet peeves over the years, but it is a bank. I learned a long time ago not to expect too much from a bank.

Congratulations! You made it through. Thanks for reading.

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