Washington Mutual

Editorial Review

by Contributor at Citysearch

Offers home loans, credit card services and commercial banking as well as retail banking and financial services.

02/09/07

Not what we expected

by elainekatherine at Citysearch

Terrible customer service! Terrible phone service! Bad, bad, bad. Although there are many locations, the ATMS are often broken and you will stand on a long line. Not the type of experience we were expecting.

11/01/06

Don't be fooled.

by sjen1999 at Citysearch

WAMU advertises itself as the anti-old, stodgy bankers who doesn't nickel and dime its depositors. But mostly it's just a marketing ploy. They advertised all these neat benefits like a once a year overdraft fee waiver, free checks for life, so on and so forth. But when you try to collect on that, you'll run into all sort of corporate doublespeak.

For example, Free Checking account holders who opened up their account prior to March were rebranded as "Original Free Checking" while those who opened up their accounts after March are called "WAMU Free Checking."

When pressed for the difference between the two, the answer was none except that the newly named "Original Free Checking" accounts are excluded from the litany of benefits. How totally convenient. What a clever way to limit the number of beneficiaries while appearing to be a friend of the people.

Overall while there are many locations which makes it convenient and most of the time their branch employees and "telephone bankers" are courteous, their underhanded business practices make me wary of WAMU.

• Pros: many locations
• Cons: sneaky, marketing gimmicks