6.02.2009

"goodbye wamu"


friday night mm was going to bike downtown and meet me after work so we could bike to see "goodbye solo" (me for the 2nd time). before, she had to race home and walk dog real quick. before that could happen she had to cash her paycheck at washington mutual (now Chase!) like she does twice a month. well, since she did that last, wamu in oregon has now completely become chase, ie not just signage, ie some sort of hellish fusion of their asset fiscal bowel pipeline to the oregon-viaduct (or whatever), meaning now completely officially chase. well, mm and i used to live in los angeles, in fact that's where we opened our wamu accts. but calif has not unified their fiscal-bowel yet, that's to come later. point being, and yes, i'm oversimplifying: there is no longer wamu in oregon only chase and since our acct originated in CA and in CA there is wamu, chase will not honor us as customers. This, despite the fact our debit card and checks now say "Chase Customer" on them. Livid, and fretting about the domino chain of checks about to bounce - b/c they would not cash check, there would be a 5 business day hold on it - and the corresponding overage fees, mm raced to BofA where the check came from and since our mortgage is w/ them they were happy to give her the cash. She raced into car, back to wamu (now Chase!) and handed them cash and they would not accept it.

Let me add a space for graphic affect and then say it again:

They would not take her cash. 1100$ in her hand. What they would offer to do was to take the $, write a check from Chase to WAMU and overnight it (at our expense) to LA and hope that the LA WAMU branch was able to get it in time and post it.

We didn't make the movie.

Instead, Saturday evening we rode bikes downtown and realized the starlight parade was happening. By the time we exited movie it was in full swing. I'm not really one for parades (unless they're honoring me mm might say) but it was kind of cool in a portland way. we hopped on bikes and went to dots.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

what the hell? that is some messed up shit.

Marge said...

We joined Wamu when we came out to Portland and so far, have not had a single problem with the change to Chase. I prefer the wamu site and their bill pay and all but the change for us went smoothly.

My guess - anything out of the ordinary (such as your situation) just didn't get programmed for. The computer programmers were probably under a strict deadline for changeover so they made sure all the straightforward stuff worked - and haven't gotten to the unusual stuff. Not that this should excuse Chase - but I can't help but identify with those programmers working nights and weekends and doing their best - but not being able to complete everything in time. Now, of course, had I been in charge ...

mogomom said...

Mom, don't defend them! ;-)

mogomom said...

oh and now ever time i see one of those lousy Chase commercials on the TV here I think of you and stand with you in solidarity. just wanted to let you know.

Unknown said...

See, I agree that the programmers are blameless in this scenario. It's the big corporate fatcats I blame. They should have hired someone to think of these off-the-wall scenarios!

Anonymous said...

Banks just suck.

Is this an absurd over simplification because we are essentially forced to use them, or have we allowed "the system" to get out of hand in the name of convenience?

-Chilly