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Blogs by Robert A. Mills
BANKS CLOSED 10/8/2011 6:39:37 AM
I’m not so sure Wachovia Bank did itself or its depositors any favors when they sold out to Wells Fargo. As a long time Wachovia customer, I enjoyed a continuous and hazard-free relationship with the old institution for several decades. But since its acquisition by Wells Fargo, I have begun experiencing certain adjustments that frankly aren’t, well, adjusting well.
When I first came to Atlanta I didn’t know one local bank from another. So I asked a trusted co-worker, a Georgia native, which bank she thought deserved my business.
“How much money you got?” she asked.
“Lots,” I told her.
“Great! Wanna get married?”
“I already am.”
“Rats. That’ what all the good ones say.” She wrote something on a Post-It-Note and handed me the slip. I stuck it in my pocket and looked at it later: it said, “Pick out any nearby bank.”
I had seen a Wachovia branch just down the street, so I stopped in the next day and the teller glanced up and asked, “Who’s your Personal Banker?”
“I don’t know,” I told her, the cleverest response I could muster.
“No matter. We’ll assign you a nifty one.”
The lady she picked out was Greer Garson, and being a bachelor for many weeks I was hooked. Her real name was Lorie Puck, and I found out she lived in Chimney Springs, the same community where I was staying while my own house was being finished. That weekend I hung around the pool, hoping Greer Garson would be there also. She was.
“Hey, look what the cat dragged in!” she cried, apparently delighted to see me, although I was no bargain in a bathing suit. “Come meet my husband and the rest of the brood!” It turned out she was married to Don Knotts and had nine kids — all boys and one girl. So much for Mrs. Minever.
Once my house was finished and we had moved in, I transferred my accounts to a closer branch and never had any reason to see Lorie Puck again. The Personal Banker the new branch assigned me was Frank Fulinger. I met him only once and could not today pick him out in a crowd.
Over the years I developed a great relationship with Wachovia. Not only was I given a complimentary safe deposit box, they set me up with a Crown Account, an Access Fifty Account, a Money Market Savings Account, a Tillie Access Card with my own PIN number, and a Platinum Credit Card. All at no charge! Wow! Banks up in Western New York had never treated me so well! I was glad we moved.
At that time in my life I had never even heard of Wells Fargo Bank. Then one day in 1997 I got a letter from them offering to refinance my mortgage at a ridiculously low interest rate — at no closing costs whatsoever! By merely having my signature notarized, I was able to reduce my thirty-year mortgage to fifteen years and go from paying fifteen hundred dollars a month to less than eight hundred!
What a deal!
And then, just last month, they offered to reduce the interest rate on my mortgage even further. As of now, the monthly cost is a hair over three hundred dollars!
I know I should never look a gift horse in the molars, but it’s the first time (if not the last) Wells Fargo ever did anything for me. Since their purchase of Wachovia, the transition period has become a boondoggle of upscrews that have often made me wish I could turn back the clock and renew my search for a run-of-the-mill bank nobody had ever heard of.
One thing that bothers me: their online banking. Wachovia had always made it possible for me to easily administer my accounts with direct deposits and the flick of a mouse’s tail — even to the point of total and secure payment of my monthly bills, either as a result of automatic deductions or actually writing and mailing out bank checks, all at no charge to me!
The convenience is too good to be true, and you know what they say about that! I’m waiting for the axe to fall.
Recently, an ominous script began to play out. My brother-in-law, a financial guru of sorts, has come up with a scheme to feather the nest of our ancient mother-in-law by diminishing her net worth through omissions and flaws in the Social Security program — not to mention the legerdemain and frosted mirrors they seem to employ. The old lady is too rich, and the ‘bro-by-marriage’ has devised a plan to put her on easy street by glooming onto her assets in such a way that she will be better off with less. (Say wot?)
One step is to close out some of her accounts and have my wife (and his wife) open separate ones with funds ‘gifted’ to them. One such account was duly closed, but when my wife attempted to place the funds in her own account, Wells Fargo/Wachovia in its wisdom, declared the properly endorsed check as a “non-negotiable item.” Try as I might, I could not persuade them otherwise.
The matter was eventually resolved, but for a long time the matter floated somewhere in the rarified stratosphere of high finance. No one at Wells Fargo can explain the scenario to my scattered comprehension. I doubt if it will ever be satisfactorily explained, and by the time it is, it’s possible neither my mother-in-law nor I will be around to care.
But rest assured, Wells Fargo is a force to be reckoned with — even if Wachovia, by then, is relegated to little more than a casual stroll down memory lane.
Hav-a-Happy Columbus Day. Or Yom Kippur. Or Thanksgiving Day (if you’re a Canuck.)
Copyright 2011 by Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved
