I actually had the opposite problem. I signed up for their account online, got the checks right away but no debit card or pin for a whole 3 weeks. I had to send them online message to tell them to send me the card & pin.

negotiant said:WAMU FREE CHECKING.........It's not really free....

Take a look....Having Checks Free, No minimum and other couple of free things doesn't make account free. Try to do some thing, which is not part of their FREE ads.....That will have charge. Which they disclose in their statement of fees....

If account has statement of fees, that means this is not free checking. Some banks disclose condition upfront and someone like WAMU gives you Statment of fees, and I think normal Scenario, it's part of 30-40 page document which you receive when you open your checking account. There are very few people reads their whole package they receives at the time of opening.

Think before you open or move your checking account from Somewhere to WAMU. I think I'm not willing to let go my convinience over this all wrong promises. You are better off with Chase or bigger retail bank, which has more locations with most of them have drive thru service.

I need everyone's opinion on this...Please make public aware that nothing is free. They will get you one day, that's more than enough for them.

Thx

Any account you open at any bank, they should give you their account disclosures & regulations, as well as statement of fees, privacy policy, and any other bank related documents.

And yes the ACCOUNT is free, but other services are not, such as money orders, or incoming wire fees, that's why the bank gives you the statement of fees.

Aldeya said:Susannah said:ChrisV said:

You can sign up online, but after that, it's hard to do anything else online. Wire transfers, like mentioned before, require you to go to the branch. Also, you can push money by ACH OUT for free online, with a linked account, but not IN to the account (seems totally backward to me).


Can someone confirm this? I'm thinking about opening WAMU Free checking but if I can NOT ACH money IN I don't want to bother.

and I did try to call the bank but CSR had no clue what I was talking about. (Big surprise! Not!)

TIA.

You can make your initial deposit by ACH, but none after that. You'll then need to add money other ways (PayPal, ATM, etc.). Of course it's better if they did allow deposits this way, since pushing it by logging onto another account you may (example Citibank), costs from that end. Banks never seem to charge if they're getting funds.
By the way, I still haven't received any initial supply of free checks. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get them.

burgerwars said:Aldeya said:Susannah said:

Can someone confirm this? I'm thinking about opening WAMU Free checking but if I can NOT ACH money IN I don't want to bother.

and I did try to call the bank but CSR had no clue what I was talking about. (Big surprise! Not!)

TIA.

You can make your initial deposit by ACH, but none after that. You'll then need to add money other ways (PayPal, ATM, etc.). Of course it's better if they did allow deposits this way, since pushing it by logging onto another account you may (example Citibank), costs from that end. Banks never seem to charge if they're getting funds.
By the way, I still haven't received any initial supply of free checks. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get them.

Actually I had the same issue...no way to transfer funds around from Wamu's side until I sent a message to them online through their site. Asked if there was anyway to add external accounts and then BAM magically that link to add "External Accounts" under the "Account Services" menu option now works. I haven't tried it out yet, but it appears I can add additional checking/savings accounts to link and push/pull from Wamu's side under the "Transfer Funds" menu option. It will be interesting to see how long it takes compared to other banks.

neophyte said:I sent wire transfer - both foreign and domestic and my findings are:

Domestic

Straight and free

It is free when funds are in foreign currency.
When funds are in USD they use Correspondent Bank BONY and BONY subtracts $10 fee on the way - nasty surprise for the receiving party! My mistake though...
Exchange rate of USD to EURO they charged 05/01 was 1.298, the average market rate was around 1.26 , so looks like they add 2% exchange fee - I have no idea how that compares to competition.
Still, must be a good value when you wire < $1000

jol20 said:I saw the posting about WAMU now having an external account transfer section and made a transfer to push a deposit into ING. I requested the transfer on the 9th and it showed up in my ING account today, the 11th. I have tried transferring only once, but it looks like WAMU is fairly quick in completing transfers.

Thanks. I just tried right now, using my initial online funding source (Wells Fargo Bank). I entered a $10 transfer in deposit. It took, telling me it will complete on the 16th.