Mon 26 Feb 2007
WAMU New Fees, I’m Disappointed
Posted by RichSlick under Watch Out
[2] Comments
After raving about Washington Mutual, I received a notice today that included some fairly significant changes in their fee structure and I’m disappointed.
First the good news, WAMU will be dropping fees for the following:
- American Express Gift and Traveler’s Cheque Fees $0
- ATM Mini-statement Fee $0
- Bank Check, Money Order, and Foreign Draft Purchase $0
- Counter Check Print Fee $0 (Limit 4)
- Coupon Redemption Fee $0
- Notary Fee $0
- WAMU IRA Annual Trustee Fee $0
Now for the bad news, WAMU seems to have restored some fees for some previously free services and created some questionable fees altogether…
- Account Abuse Fee $10 – I wonder what constitutes abuse?
- Excess Activity Fee $10 (per occurrence) – What the hell is excess activity?
- Wire Transfers $10/$20 – These were previously free.
There are a bunch of other fees that I won’t list here but overall I’m disappointed with WAMU. They still over 5% high yield online savings and Free Checking but I wonder if they are doing this because few people actually use wire transfer and more customers likely use travelers checks and money orders.
February 27th, 2007 at 12:05 am
For the wire transfer I have a few questions myself. For the wire transfer does that mean when you transfer say from your checking account at BoA to their account online, they charge a fee? Further if i had a automatic monthly deposit from say my paycheck or another account would I get charge?
If I brought in a check and deposited in the account would that be a way around the fee or no?
I might be able to explain a few of the pitfalls.
* Account Abuse Fee $10 – Not sure if this applies to all accounts, but my friend had a checking account and he had withdrawn more than his balance a couple of times, and they of course fined him dearly. So if you dont have enough money and wrote a check for more than you have, not only do you get fined for the bounced check, you get fined for allowing it to happen. You also get a call from BoA with very unpleasant news, so the fee might be use to pay that person who calls you LOL.
* Excess Activity Fee $10 (per occurrence) – I know for BoA under certain plans, if you walk into a bank branch more than 3 times in one month they charge you a fee. This was a few years back not sure if BoA still has it. With me BoA was kind enough to credit me and actually remove the limit from my plan. So for this one you can have it remove, it depends on how they value your business.
February 27th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Wire transfers are transfers between banks and are different that ACH or EFT transfers. They were free but now there is a charge. This really was a benefit if you use many brokers and they charge wire transfer fees but it’s a dead deal.