I’ve been saying Washington Mutual (WAMU) is going to fail for a while now. All my banking is with them: savings, checking, credit card, mortgage, and a (zero balance) home equity line of credit. I figured I’d leave my money with them even though I was expecting a failure because:
- A vague sense of good citizenship said I should do my part to avoid a bank rush
- Morbid curiosity to see what it would be like to be part of a bank failure
- I thought they would fail early enough in the current crisis that the FDIC would still be solvent, so I was risking inconvenience but not actual money.
Last night WAMU failed. Or was seized by the FDIC, same thing I guess. But they managed to sell off WAMU’s deposits, loans, and branches to JPMorgan Chase, so supposedly there’s no interruption of business and no further need for the FDIC or their money. We’re just all Chase customers now.
Chase’s “Welcome” message to WAMU customers is predictably cheery and calm:
Continue to bank just as you usually do:
- same account numbers,
- same Washington Mutual name on your account,
- same checks, debit cards, credit cards, deposit slips,
- same online banking website and passwords,
- same branches & ATMs,
- same familiar bankers, and
- same great service!
We’ll see. I paid some bills online this morning. Obviously it’s still the same old software running on the servers, so the experience was the same as always. The visible changes, rebranding etc, are expected to roll out over a course of months.
WAMU has a lot of branches in Portland — one in almost every Fred Meyer — and they have always done a pretty decent job at customer service. They’ve never nickeled and dimed me to death, and it’s a shame to see them go.