I'm impressed with the website

I applied on 11/5/07 as a joint account with my wife. At the end of the application, I got a "review number"and instructions that I would be contacted in 3-5 days. Two weeks later, I called and was told our application was denied and would be getting a letter in the mail soon. On the 27th, I called again and was told that we were denied and that there is no way of knowing why until the letter comes (still have not received any letter). He suggested I try reapplying as an individual. When I applied as an individual, I got both checking and savings account numbers at the end of the process. I then verified the link to my current checking account and requested that both checking and savings accounts be funded with $1. After a couple days, I signed into my account online and could see the checking account, but could not see the savings account. I called again, and this time was told that I actually did have a joint account with both checking and savings which were only waiting to be funded, and that the individual account did not show a savings account. When I gave them the individual savings account number I had received after the second application online, they said there was no record of that account ever. I was told to go into the branch to fund the joint accounts and cancel the individual checking. When I went into the branch, the person there told me (after about 30 minutes of being on the phone) that there was a "hold" on the joint accounts (unknown reason) and that I should reapply a third time to try to get a new savings account linked to the individual checking account. I went home and set up an ING checking account in less than two minutes (including funding it). I went back to the branch to close the individual checking account and found out that they could not close it since there was a hold on my $1 deposit. They also cannot close the joint accounts since they technically do not exist. They are hoping that after 30 days, the joint accounts will close on their own.

If this is the type of experience you want, by all means, apply with WaMu. By far the worst customer service I've ever received from a bank. No one knew much of anything nor were they able to find out anything.

Oh, and did I mention that their online service was "not available" for several hours when I tried to check on my accounts?

Good luck!

While their online banking looks nice, it helps if it's functional as well. WaMu recently did a security upgrade to their online banking system with more sophisticated encryption. This is all well and good, to protect my account (more like protecting themselves from fraud), but since this upgrade occurred, I can no loner make use of the online service.

After logging in, I can usually see what my account balances are, but I can't ever get any further than that. The connection times out and I get that all-too-familiar "page cannot be displayed" error. I use Firefox by default, but even IE cannot access this.

The reason they give is that their new system has issues with some Linksys routers, apparently, their new encryption is too sophisticated, so they suggest upgrading the firmware on the router - great, but there hasn't been a firmware upgrade to my specific model for two years. If I were having issues with more sites, I would consider this a Linksys problem and upgrade my router to something newer, but *all* other SSL sites work perfectly!

Quite honestly, it would be much less hassle to switch banks than it would be to buy a new router. I want to make sure they know that when I eventually close my accounts with them.