Well Fargo Reverse Mortgage
Wells Fargo has by far the most ATMs in my area, so I started with
them.
In general, they are not the nicest bank. Six months ago, I caught
them at an incompetent error, but this newest story really does it for
me:
BB: What's this $5 charge on my statement for "account maintenance"?
Answer: You were charged $5 because the post office, for whatever
reason, returned the statement we mailed you.
I swear to god, I am *not* making this up. Yes, that's right, the
post office screwed up (or maybe they misaddressed it), I didn't ask
them to send me another statement, I didn't complain, and they charged
*ME* $5.
I politely told them I'd strongly consider looking for another bank if
they didn't figure out a way to reverse this charge. They have not
yet answered by email, and it's been several days.
For the record, the incompetent error was that they charged me some
account fee for depositing $1300 in a savings account, when I
explicitly called in advance to make sure no fees would result from
"activating" that part of my account. Ok, they reversed it, but it
seems like if I don't spend my whole life looking after them to make
sure they haven't invented a new fee...
Washington Mutual is the bank that tries to be nice in CA. However, I
can't tell if their privacy policy is completely heinous, or if its
just the same as all other banks. If anyone knows of a good CA bay
area bank, maybe you could let us all know?
I'm with Wells Fargo for 20 yrs or so and am quite happy. All banks
will make occasional errors and we will have to spend our time calling
in to correct them. Try not to judge Wells Fargo by an occasional idiot
who works for them (unless it becomes a pattern, and I certainly hope it
doesn't). Just yesterday I had to call to ask them to reverse an
incorrect late fee, the cust svc rep couldn't have been more pleasant.
With that said, there's been an idiot or two along the way.
I wouldn't touch WaMu if they handle their account holders like they
handle their mortgage business. I sold a house to someone that use
WaMu for their mortgage, what a bunch of incompentent knobs. My
father in law is a mortgage broker and say WaMu has a terrible
reputation in this line of business... but perhaps they are better at
handling simple checking accounts.