Chase Bank Hates Poor People

(Sorry to Go All Kanye There, but It’s True)
By Anna Minard

Earlier this year, Chase converted my grandfathered WaMu free checking account into one with monthly charges. I didn’t know this, and I used my last 10 bucks to buy food. The next day, my account was overdrawn. The easy thing about not having much money is that I can do the math in my head, and I knew I hadn’t spent more than $10. But there on the screen was a $10 fee, followed by two tiny purchases, each with their own $34 overdraft fee.

On my lunch break, I went and met with a young-looking Chase banker, explaining to him that they’d taken my $10 without alerting me in any way, it had caused me to overdraw my account, and I would like the charges refunded. He asked me if I had direct deposit. I did. He asked me if I had at least one direct deposit of $500 or more every month. No, I told him. I worked part time, and my paychecks varied depending on how many hours I got. He said I now needed a $500-or-higher direct deposit each month to avoid fees, even if my monthly deposits exceeded that. I told him that wasn’t possible for me. He looked concerned, then said: “Have you thought about trying to get more hours at work, or more work?”

I took a full speechless second to process that. I was working as many hours as I could get each week. I blushed with shame and rage. “Um, thank you, but don’t tell me to make more money so you won’t steal from me.” He gave me a customer-service frown and said something boring I don’t remember. “Look,” I said. “It already sucks to be poor, okay? I’m not making this little money on purpose. You’re charging me for not having enough money.” No reaction. “I might as well keep my money under a mattress! A mattress wouldn’t take $10 out of itself every month.” That’s true, he said. Did I have any accounts at other banks? They’d hate to lose me as a customer, but maybe I could use other bank accounts for now. I said I’d be closing my account when I got paid again, and left.

On the advice of a friend, I went to the branch where I’d originally set up my account to see if they’d be more understanding. The banker there said new laws were costing Chase, and unfortunately they just had to pass that along. “I can read a newspaper,” I told him. “Y’all are doing just fine.” He smiled tightly. I said I knew he was just doing his job and I walked out.

Now I bank with a credit union.

Oh, BECU, I Love
You Already

The Credit Union Set
a Record for New
Accounts Last Month
by Christopher Frizzelle

BECU, short for Boeing Employees Credit Union, started during the other Great Depression, in 1935. Back then, Boeing required its factory workers to buy their own tools, but banks were not lending money to the kind of people who were working at Boeing’s factories. So 18 of those workers banded together, each pitched in 50 cents for a total of $9 in assets, and started a credit union. “Seventy-five years later, we’re almost $9.6 billion in assets,” says spokesman Todd Pietzsch.

You don’t have to be a Boeing employee to be a member of BECU, just a Washington State resident. “Credit unions are not-for-profit member-owned co-ops, meaning that every member has one equal share. Revenue that comes in goes back to the consumer. There is no stockholder in the equation. The stockholders are the members,” Pietzsch explains. “Because we don’t have Wall Street to answer to, all our decisions are made by what’s in the best interest of the membership.” Pietzsch says that since Bank of America announced a new surcharge for using debit cards, the rate of new memberships has more than doubled. “In the month of September, we hit a record of 9,400 new members—just in that month.” Again, that’s just Washington State. “We’re staying open late if we need to because we don’t want to push anyone away.”

Walking to Chase last week to close my checking and savings accounts was the best trip to Chase I’ve had in years. This is a bank that’s probably made $2,000 in overdraft fees from me over the last 12 years, and all I have to show for it is remarkably shitty customer service. Once, when trying to explain to a manager that I had a bunch of overdraft fees because a car rental company was taking nearly a month to refund a deposit, he exclaimed that I was breaking the law by spending more money than I had, that I had committed “a felony,” and that he should be mad at me. Another time, a Chase employee talked me into a Chase credit card, hilariously called the Freedom card, to cover any overdrafts I might accidentally have, and I said I would sign up if he could get me an interest rate in the low teens, and he said he could do that, but at the end of the transaction he said he “forgot” to look what the interest rate would be and that he couldn’t “go back to the previous screen” so I had to wait and see what the rate was when I got the card in the mail. It was 24 percent.

The Chase employee who closed my accounts was the nicest man I’ve ever encountered at Chase. He’d just transferred from another branch, and when I muttered that maybe he could help the branch revamp its customer service, he muttered that that was part of the reason for his transfer. He very valiantly tried to get me to change my mind, but wasted no time in getting me a cashier’s check and calling the credit card division to cancel my Freedom. Then, lighter than air, I walked down the street to BECU, where the employee who opened my account admitted, “It’s been pretty crazy the last few days. We’ve been just slammed with new accounts.”

Pointing at my Chase debit card and Chase Freedom card, I said, “I can’t wait to cut these up,” and the employee responded, “We’re getting a lot of people saying that.”

I’m Out of Here,
Bank of America

Because You’re Rapacious, Uncaring, and Sloppy
By Bethany Jean Clement

When Bank of America ate my original bank, Seafirst, I went to Washington Mutual in protest. When Washington Mutual started circling the drain in 2008, I joined Bank of America. While I was closing my WaMu account, the assistant manager of the Broadway branch told me that the media was acting irresponsibly and reporting things that were “just untrue,” and that word of mouth was causing people to make “emotional decisions,” and that I was being “rash.”

Not long ago, the assistant manager at the Bank of America on Madison told me I might be liable for several thousand dollars’ worth of fraudulent charges on my debit card. Some of them were more than 30 days old, he said, so it might be too late. “Might?!” I said. My eye started to twitch. He kept calling me “ma’am.” “You don’t have to call me ‘ma’am,'” I’d already told him. He explained that he’d gone to military school, which seemed somewhat irrelevant.

The assistant manager made me sit for more than an hour with a knot in my stomach about the several thousand dollars, then put me on the phone with the fraud department, who immediately said they had a zero-liability policy for fraudulent charges, no matter how old they were. When I suggested to the assistant manager that he familiarize himself with his own bank’s policies in order to not cause people like me undue stress, he gazed at me in a bovine way and was as smoothly evasive as someone wrong can be.

This was the second time my Bank of America debit card got fraudulated in the space of a few months. Now B of A plans to introduce a $5 monthly debit-card fee. I don’t even use my debit card; will I get to pay the fee when someone else does?

B of A played what’s been called a starring role in the foreclosure crisis; B of A got tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer-financed bailout money. Last year, B of A almost took a little old lady’s house away because of a mistake, which led the New York Times to call it part of “a system that is… rapacious, uncaring—and sloppy.” B of A, I am coming to get my money—once you get it all back to me. I am taking it to a credit union. If your assistant manager calls me “ma’am” one more time, fine. If he calls me “rash,” I am not quite sure what I might do.

I Should Have Quit
You Sooner, Chase…

Considering What You
Did to My Country
By Goldy

Unlike a lot of my whiny coworkers, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing business with Chase, our nation’s second-largest bank. I’ve found the service more than adequate, the fees and rates perfectly reasonable, and the convenience—well, that’s where big banks like Chase really kick ass: neighborhood branches throughout the city, no-fee ATMs around nearly every corner (more than 16,000 nationwide!), and online transfers and bill-pay that have completely transformed the way I bank. Hell, I can even deposit a check by snapping a photo of it with my iPhone. How cool is that?

In fact, I’d say that I have absolutely no complaints at all about banking with Chase, other than, you know, the way it has fucked my country.

Few banks were more complicit in, or profited more from, the financial collapse than JPMorgan Chase, a leading player in the real-estate-bubble-inflating subprime mortgage market and the main banker to imprisoned Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff. Earlier this year, Chase agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges, just days before the trustee representing Madoff’s victims filed claims seeking $19 billion in damages. “JPMorgan Chase chose to enable Madoff’s fraud,” the trustee charged in a 155-page complaint, “not just through the various ways it participated in its activity, but by helping to cover Madoff’s naked theft with the imprimatur of a globally recognized financial institution.”

More recently, Chase was fined $88 million by the US Treasury in September for illegal wire transfers to Cuba and another $47 million by UK regulators in June. But of course those numbers are chump change compared to the $25 billion taxpayer-funded bailout Chase received in 2008—the largest bailout amount awarded—money that CEO Jamie Dimon admitted at the time he intended to use to be “a little bit more active on the acquisition side or opportunistic side,” rather than for making the kinds of new loans necessary to help jump-start our economy. And that was after Chase had already scooped up troubled financial giants Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual at bargain-basement postcrash prices.

It was “WaMu,” of course, that brought my accounts to Chase when the once high-flying, Seattle-based banking juggernaut collapsed in the largest bank failure in US history, allowing Chase to snatch its retail banking business for pennies on the dollar. According to a 2010 US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, WaMu executives knowingly created a “mortgage time bomb” by making subprime loans they knew would likely go bad and then fraudulently packaging them into risky securities. “Washington Mutual built a conveyor belt that dumped toxic mortgage assets into the financial system like a polluter dumping poison into a river,” said Senator Carl Levin, the subcommittee chair.

And it wasn’t just investors who WaMu brought low. WaMu exploited the Federal Reserve’s post-9/11 cheap-money policy to transform itself into a predatory lending pioneer, aggressively marketing teaser rates and fanciful “option ARM” loans to low- and middle-income borrowers who could barely afford the less-than-interest-
only minimum payments, let alone the balloon payments that inevitably followed. As a result, tens of thousands of families ultimately lost their homes to short sales and foreclosure, even as WaMu executives raked in record bonuses.

Thus, in a very real sense, the banking convenience I’ve long enjoyed has been subsidized by the suffering and exploitation of others, which I suppose makes me just as complicit in WaMu/Chase’s abuses as those who casually do business with Mexican drug cartels are in that particular reign of terror. And yet every time I intended to close my accounts and put my money where my liberal mouth is, inertia (i.e., laziness) somehow always got in the way.

Until last weekend, when inspired and shamed by the Occupy movements on Wall Street and in Seattle, I spent a mere five fucking minutes filling out an online application form and finally opened an account at member-owned, not-for-profit, guilt-free BECU. It even transferred my opening balance directly out of my old Chase account. It was like magic. And, it turns out, nearly as convenient as the faceless giant I’m leaving, offering the same online banking services to which I’ve grown accustomed, plus a network of 28,000 surcharge-free ATMs nationwide, including deposit-taking ATMs at the many 7-Elevens scattered throughout Seattle.

I pass two 7-Elevens twice a day commuting to and from work. Oh thank heaven. What could be more convenient than that?

So fuck you, Chase, and good riddance. I’m keeping what little money I have here in my community, where it can be put to work on behalf of my neighbors, instead of ripping them off. recommended

Christopher Frizzelle was The Stranger's print editor, and first joined the staff in 2003. He was the editor-in-chief from 2007 to 2016, and edited the story by Eli Sanders that won a 2012 Pulitzer...

102 replies on “Fuck You, Big Banks”

  1. So you each got a lesson in the beauty of free market captitalism; that is, that if you don’t like the product or service you are receiving, you simply vote with your checkbook and go elsewhere. And lo and behold, you found the answer: credit unions. Can any of you imagine what customer service would be like in a socialist state, if under capitalism it sucks so bad? What would the incentive to perform be, if not monetary reward? Can you imagine what a TerryGilliamBrazil-like hell it would be if the government ran the banking sector, and it was one bank, called OmniBank, or UniBank? And they gave the customer service jobs to the least qualified people, like they do in real life government work? Just think about that for a few minutes…..

  2. It’s all part of a bigger system in which the powerful dominate the powerless.

    Take the job culture: A job is nothing more than finding a powerful person who thinks you could be useful to them. And what do you, the commoner get? The right to live on the planet. Otherwise, you have no place to go.

    If you don’t play the money game, you will always be breaking the law. Needless to say, there is no freedom here.

    Play by the rules and suffer greatly if you don’t: that is American freedom.

  3. I left Chase after they told me I could avoid a $12 monthly fee by keeping at least $1500 in my account at all times. Great, that’s money that I use to go to school. I NEED to be able to spend it. I told them they were essentially taking MY federal money to pay back THEIR federal loans. They didn’t see the irony, and even offered to waive the fees on my account if I would stay with them. Yeah, so that you could take it back after a couple of months, thinking that someone had made a mistake? I told them I didn’t trust them as far as I could throw them and that they’re nothing but thieves.

  4. To Number 1:

    You’re making a few assumptions that are worth examining.

    Primarily: you assume that you have to pay to live on the planet. They were a harsh totalitarian regime for which I have little sympathy… but, the so-called communist government in the USSR at least guaranteed you a roof and utilities.

    May not be great (as far as material stuff goes) but not feeling like you’re one wrong-thing-said to the boss from being kicked out of your home sure saves a lot of stress… and that’ll keep you healthy.

    Broaden that view, #1.

  5. Amen on BECU. Also as a word of warning for anyone leaving Bank of America, don’t leave the building until they’ve closed any credit cards you have through them and gotten evidence in writing that the cards are closed. Had a manager tell me it couldn’t be done that day but that it would be closed the next business day. Six months later I got a new credit card in the mail and realized that my account had been open the entire time. I’ve talked to others who had the exact same thing happen.

  6. To Goldy:

    I love the sentiments, I stumbled upon how for-profit banking works a few years ago and went from Chase to BECU… and BECU is a nice step in the right direction (albeit only a step).

    But I do have a quibble:

    Moving your money to a locally organized credit union does not keep money in the community… not necessarily.

    BECU still has a board of directors that invest money around the planet, in the multinational corporations that systematically destroy people, animals, planet… you know, the planet.

    So, I love the move, but ending global trade and industrial capitalism is not as easy as moving your money to a bank that isn’t run by plutocrats.

    Good luck, bring down the system, don’t vote for democrats or republicans, cut your wants, and work towards a world where the poor don’t have to sell their time and energy to the rich.

    Enjoy

  7. My bank of america atm machine in front of the branch where I often go in person refused to give me $200 although I had thousands in the account. I go inside and they explain “this was out of your pattern, so our fraud algorythmns blocked you. You’re welcome to call this number and tell our system to let you have your money.”

    I explained this is outrageous, what if I was on the way to the airport and was counting on that ATM machine? also, just $200, also at my own branch!!!!!

    They repeatedly didn’t hear me and kept telling me to call a number. I wanted recognition of my concerns and a pledge to pass it up the line. The dorky manager person then got huffy and stormed out of the cubicle on my making a dismissive wave. I had to go to the teller to get my $200. The manager stood behind the teller so I told him on camera “you handled that very poorly. this is the worst I have ever been treated in this branch.” He kept mouthing corporate platitudes saying “I’m sorry.” I said “no, you’re not sorry, you’re just mouthing platitudes if you were sorry you’d promise to tell your manager my concerns.” I knew I was pushing it as this waws all on camera.

    I will be taking my business account and personal account out of b of a. They will be hurt by not having my substantial cash assets. In a small way. I realized I can’t go to zucotti park, but I have a choice to support b of a. I am deciding I don’t want to give business to a corporate jerk. They’re also being sued by the government for massive mortgage fraud. If we all just don’t do business with the big ones, we won’t have banks that are too big to fail.

  8. “and the convenience—well, that’s where big banks like Chase really kick ass: neighborhood branches throughout the city, no-fee ATMs around nearly every corner (more than 16,000 nationwide!)”

    With the credit unions’ co-op network, I was able to deposit a paycheck at a credit union in Honolulu into my Washington State Employees’ Credit Union account. The co-op network is nationwide, and there are some things you can do internationally as well.

    http://www.creditunion.net/

    Also, look for a credit union ATM with the Co-op Network symbol on it. You will not be charged a fee for using that ATM as long as your credit union is part of the Co-op network. As for me, my mortgage is from a big asshole bank, and I’m paying it off as quickly as possible. Fuck their interest money.

  9. “I don’t even use my debit card; will I get to pay the fee when someone else does?”

    Just as a matter of accuracy (what a concept): If you don’t use your debit card you won’t be charged. If you use it only at ATM’s you won’t be charged, either.

  10. I arrived at Heathrow airport, ready to take the taxi after a short stop at an ATM. The Citibank card wouldn’t work. I gave them a call on my cellphone, and was told that ATM transactions would automatically be blocked when occurring abroad. I said that the international aspect of Citi was why I set up my account. They told me that they had shut down all foreign transactions for my safety. That is when I got really angry… I told them that not being able to access my money would mean I would have to sleep in the park somewhere in London, and that most certainly would not be for my safety. They gave me a special number to call in order to verify my identity, and they would free my account for only a few minutes while I withdraw MY money, and that I would then have to call them up again to tell them that I had safely withdrawn the money so that they could once again shut up my account. I told them that I wouldn’t be able to do that if I had to pay all those long distance phone bills, and they ASSURED ME that the telephone number was toll free. Well, with each transaction, there was the verification call with the attendant experiences being put on hold, or waiting endlessly for my turn (as an inexplicably ‘valued customer’) And then again, I would invariably get halfway through the verification process, and be cut off. I never spent less than 45 minutes on the phone at any one time. (The music they use when putting you on hold is especially grating.) When I got back home, there was a phone bill for over $1,100! I took it to Citibank, and asked them what they were going to do about it, and received the usual evasive answer. I got so mad, I decided to close my account. As I was about to do it, I got a wicked idea. I didn’t want to go through all the reasons why I wanted to close my account in order to satisfy a stupid employee, (although shouting out my grievances at the top of my lungs for the listening pleasure of all the other patrons present was tempting,) I realized that it would be easier to just withdraw as much as I could from the local ATM, and leave that last remaining 7 cents as a way to continue my account, and require them to send a monthly statement (at their expense!) for as long as I like. I recommend this tactic for all dissatisfied bank customers. Don’t close your accounts. Leave in a penny or two, and make sure you get them to send you a monthly statement at their expense. As a ‘valued customer’, I find I enjoy an especially hearty chuckle every time I toss out those monthly statements.

  11. @1 – “And they gave the customer service jobs to the least qualified people, like they do in real life government work?”

    You mean like they do in the private sector?

    This old, tired argument seems to have a rosy view of the private sector’s competence, which has proven itself to be, time and again, every bit as inept as the government.

  12. Banks suck? GEEEEEEEETTTTTTT OUTTTTTTAAAAAA HEEEEERRRREEE!

    We give them our hard earned. They use it to make $ for themselves. We get?
    If some moron wants to list off the things they do for us, just stop. Fuck you too.

    Fuck banks. Fuck em reeeee gooooooo!

  13. Sometimes the inertia in changing banks is understandable. It’s like having to start over establishing a new financial relationship vis-à-vis loan and credit card approval, etc. True, most of us don’t head down to the bank weekly or bi-weekly anymore with a paycheck like we used to. And it’s even harder these days to establish a relationship with a bank where at least someone knows your name, knows who you are. Still, sometimes you get better customer service when the bank employee sees how long you’ve been a customer. And that is hard to give up. It’s like starting over.

    But…you have to start at some point if you really want to change, and the sooner you do, the more time you’ll already have with your new financial institution. Good for you, Goldy. I know it was probably hard for you, but I applaud your stand.

  15. Here’s what I told Bank of America when I closed my mortgage account back in 2009:

    BoA: “What would Bank of America need to offer in order for you to choose them for your next home loan or refinance?”

    My response: “Not be a driving force in the evil corporate swindles that are crushing the essence of American democracy while holding up the ridiculous facade of “Hooray for God, Mom, Apple Pie – you call all get rich too if you just work hard (like us bankers).” It’s a rigged system, and the house always wins. Until the pitchfork-wielding mob reaches a critical mass, that is. Just like the rest of the big banks, YOU SUCK!”

  17. If this got you all excited, I can’t wait for those of you who have BECU accounts to post about how you get actual interest in your accounts now. Real dollars worth of interest even. It’s pretty amazing.

  18. Fuck you, Bank of Corporate America and Chase Manhattan Greed!
    I’ve been ripping up your stupid credit card offers in my mailbox 25 years after you laughed your capitalist stooge asses off at the idea of my establishing credit!
    I hope you both go down in flames!

    @16: Thanks, Paul, for good information!

  19. I have an excellent idea for all of the banks that are complaining that they have to charge fees because new government regulations are cutting into their profits: Lend money, charge interest.

    Stop sitting on your piles of cash and refusing to lend it even to responsible borrowers (and HEY! help an ailing economy at the same time!)

    That’s how you make your money.

    It’s called banking.

  21. I just sent an email to Christopher, Paul, and Charles, but just to let Wells Fargo customers know ASAP, new $3 fees start this Friday, October 14. They were approved back in August but are set to begin at the end of this work week. This might be a great time to show your lack of support for another thieving big bank by draining what you have left out of WF and heading to those local friendly credit unions. A one-time huge slam on WF for this right now would be totally fucking awesome.

  22. And to clarify: It’s $3 per month from now on. I don’t know exactly what Wells Fargo accounts are being hit — what the stipulations are — but the guy who answered the phone when I called wasn’t making any distinctions.

  23. @9 bigyaz You missed her point — she’s been a victim of fraud, so she’s concerned that even if she doesn’t use her debit card, she’ll still be charged the monthly fee if someone else fraudulently uses it. Of course, that was a whole two sentences before the sentence you quoted, can’t expect you to read that bit too.

    Former BofA employee here — I didn’t even bank with them when I worked there. They treat their employees poorly, not just their customers. Equal opportunity, and all.

  25. @13 I received much better customer service as a new member of a credit union than I ever got as a long time customer of a big bank. I’ve been with my credit union for over 10 years now, and have moved to three different states but still find my little (not-so-local-anymore) credit union so much more pleasant and easy to deal with that I still bank with them. Credit unions FTW!

  26. WAMU created the “mortgage time bomb” with the willing participation of millions of delusional americans and their real estate salespeople, mortgage brokers, appraisers, investment fund managers and politicians. It was a team effort.

  27. I’ve always been a credit union member. The problem is business accounts. Credit unions usually can’t except business accounts. And man if you wann feel fucked over be a small business.

    I’d kill my BofA account but it’s tied to our credit line. And honestly of all the banks we’ve dealt with through the business BofA has treated the least like shit. Which I suppose is faint praise.

    However Wa fucking MU was just god damned awful. I did a dance when those fuckers went under.

  28. Will The Stranger editors be suggesting Ellen Hodgson Brown, author of Web of Debt, for October 26 Events when she appears at a Public State Bank forum at Kane Hall?

    Considering SLOG is giving Occupy Seattle a lot of attention, and Occupy Seattle has given her upcoming visit attention…

  30. Yuppers, I switched most of my money to BECU when I realized how chase was using my money to destroy the country, then getting more of my money (tax money through TARP, fees through nickel-and-diming) to reward themselves for doing so.

    Unfortunately I’m too much of a selfish bastard to actually close my accounts since I want to have multiple credit cards running since I’m young and want to build up a credit history (another bullshit thing that I shouldn’t have to do)

  31. The long and frequently renewed relationship that BECU maintains with me speaks to the larger challenges that medium and small institutions have in leveraging customer data across the enterprise.

    Never had an account with BECU, yet they frequently call about account matters. The concept of a do-not-call list somehow eludes them. If they cannot keep track of who their customers are, how can they keep track of your money?

  32. My wife convinced me to leave BofA when I told her about the ordeal of getting some invalid fees refunded. (It took me a half hour to explain to someone–in person, with their own documentation–that they had been double-charging fees to me.)

    When I went back to close it, they also closed out the savings account I had forgotten about. My parents had set it up went I went away to college at least 5 years previous, and BofA hadn’t added a single cent to its balance since. It only made me laugh; I had such a low opinion of them already that I couldn’t be outraged.

  33. I’m never going back from a credit union. BECU is the safest I’ve ever felt financially. As another poster noted: interest earned! The member benefits go on and on. My husband and I, who have good credit but will be broke forever (partially in order to pay off a 24% interest B of A card), got a BECU auto loan at less than 4%, and just for being members, they gave us $94. It’s not a dream, folks. Come on over. The grass IS greener.

  34. @10, I am sorry to hear your Shittybank card fucked up while you were in the UK. Before I travel I let my credit unions know about the timing and and approximate itinerary of my vacations and they make sure my debit and cards are fully functional while I’m away. During the past couple of years, these cards worked seamlessly in Mexico, Spain and the UK to get cash out of ATMs and to rent cars. The best part is that the associated fees for currency conversions were miniscule compared to the way Bank of Fucking American used to nickle and dime me when I used their cards in foreign countries.

  35. Shout out to my peeps at the 3 credit unions I bank with: First United Federal and Option 1 of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and WSECU!

    I love youse guyses!

    And to all the banks I never banked at: Fuck you!

  37. Stranger Kids, you left one little thing out. What’s a person to do if their credit rating is SO BAD they can’t leave the crap corporate bank they’ve been with?

    This is my dilemma. I’ve been with WellsFuckup since 1998 when they swallowed the small, local bank I was at in northern California.

    I took out student loans while in college in the 90s plus had some un-insured medical emergencies = my credit is utter shit.

    I’ve tried BECU, Sound Bank and about 5 others. Thanks to the bankruptcy law changes that went into effect in 2006 when you apply for an account with any commercial banking entity, they run a credit check on you based on your social security (the magic number that ties all debt to you until the day you die). All BECU sees when they run my credit is an unpaid amount of $90,000. No explanation (SallieMae has tripled my student loan debt).

    Short of blowing up my bank, I can’t get out of my old commercial bank and into something a little more user friendly.

    Now THAT would be a story worth writing about.

  38. When BofA or Chase or Wells Fargo sends me credit card applications, I cut them into the smallest bits I can and mail them back to them in the envelop that is intended to mail back the completed application.

    I have a BECU account and I will NEVER go back to using a bank. And talk of “credit histories”…WTF is that? Here’s what it is: the banking industry encouraging you to take on debt so, in the future, when you take on more debt you feel like a real winner when they charge you not as much as you feared.

  39. I find it interesting that The Stranger dislikes big banks, but wants to preserve the monopoly-controlled Soviet liquor stores in Washington States, and serve the interests of the big, out-of-state liquor distributors in doing so.

    Hypocrisy, anyone?

  40. Fuck you? No, fuck us! Sen. Bernie Sanders is the sole person to report on the GAO study of the bailout on his website: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/…

    Some shocking statistics:

    “As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else.”

    “For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.”

    “In another disturbing finding, the GAO said that on Sept. 19, 2008, William Dudley, who is now the New York Fed president, was granted a waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time AIG and GE were given bailout funds. One reason the Fed did not make Dudley sell his holdings, according to the audit, was that it might have created the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

    So an actual conflict of interest is preferable to just the appearance of one.

    “The investigation also revealed that the Fed outsourced most of its emergency lending programs to private contractors, many of which also were recipients of extremely low-interest and then-secret loans.”

    “The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.”

    Among the investigation’s key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. “No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president,” Sanders said.

    Is there any doubt about who runs the world now?

  41. i really sympathize with all you dudes and your bank troubles but really, you are just figuring out now that the coporate banks are no different loan sharks? wow. i changed over to BECU when WAMU crashed. its going to get a whole lot worse too. run, run, run away from coporate america.

  42. I have had similar bank encounters as the authors of this article. I eventually switched to a credit union and could not be happier. I encourage anyone who doesn’t like patronizing big banks to switch.

  43. @41: You take the time to cut them up? I just throw everything they send me into their postage-paid envelope and make them throw it away for me.

  44. I have been with BECU for over two years and they are far from perfect. In fact, my two encounters with their online customer service have been entirely unsatisfactory. As long as you limit yourself to their online banking system they are OK. BECU is much better than Watermark, who took over the old King County Medical Credit Union and quickly messed it up. However, both are miles ahead of BofA and Chase.

  45. State run banks NOW! There is only one in the entire county. Our state gives all of our tax $$$ to fucking BOA to make millions on. WHY!!!
    STATE RUN BANKS NOW!

  46. No. 41 said “And talk of “credit histories”…WTF is that?”

    Yup, it’s true. Just remember the hard lesson I learned too late: EVERYTHING is connected to your social security #. My original student loans are named: 123-45-6789-1, 123-45-6789-2, etc. I have a friend who has a mortgage on her home and right at the top, the monthly billing statements list her social and then a dash and the mortgage number.

    Once your social is attached to a loan of any kind, you are fucked if you are unable to pay that bill off. It will follow you forever.

    I’ve literally been turned down for cell phone accts and JOBS because they ran checks on my social and saw my outstanding student loans.

    The whole system is designed to punish you for being poor and keep you poor.

  47. Woe unto the indie iOS developer working under the auspices of Apple… if you choose to sell internationally you MUST use a bank, as credit unions simply can’t accept international wire transfers. They don’t have the appropriate routing numbers.

    I’ve been using a credit union for my entire working career, but Chase now has it’s hooks into me for this reason alone.

    So what do I do? Give up income that can only be deposited into a checking account at a bank, or be a good little enabler for my cut?

  48. No explanation (SallieMae has tripled my student loan debt).

    Hmm. They just up and tripled your debt, huh? Something tells me there just might be a little more to that story.

  49. When you open your account at BECU, remember to tell the friendly and helpful teller that you were referred by a friend who also banks there (we all know at least one.)
    Give the teller your friend’s name, and you will both get $25 automatically deposited in your savings accounts, just for using their referral program.
    BECU Rocks!

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