Switch banks

My HR direct deposit changes went through, so in two more pay periods, Chase won’t get any more of my cash! Huzzah!

Open new bank accounts and apply for new VISA card – CHECK
Transfer direct deposits – CHECK
Transfer automatic payments – CHECK
Stop using old bank account – CHECK
Cut old VISA card – CHECK
Cancel old bank accounts -

Well, I didn’t have any luck with the most recent letter having the 1st of the month charge stop going through, so I called Chase up today to see if they had contact information for the charges. They gave me the phone numbers. The first one I tried was already closed for the day, and the second one could find no record of my account number, business name, or, you know, existence.

I guess my next step is to call back the first one another time I have free time during the day, and as for the second one… I guess I’ll ask the first guys about it too, since it seems that they’re the one head on the Hydra I opened the original account with, before they spawned 4 more heads for me to track down.

I’ll give it until the end of January to try and get this all tracked down. I’ve heard horror stories of other people’s bank accounts still being charged automatically even after the account was closed – their bank accepted the charges, and then assessed fees on top of that! – so I’m determined to exhaust all the possibilities I can to get the charges stopped before I close the account. What a nightmare!

Changed over one of the very few remaining automatic transactions on my old Chase account to my account at my new bank today… this just leaves three. They all trace back to the same source, but they’re from three different companies. I tried to track down the source for all three of them, but I didn’t have any luck. So I mailed off a “cancel all of my accounts, and stop debiting my checking account for them, because it’s getting closed at the end of the year” letter to the one of them I could find contact information for, and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed they can stop all three debits. If they still come through, and I’ll know in the next couple of weeks (one will come in around the 30th, another around the 2nd, and the last one around the 10th), I’ll call Chase to withdraw authorization for the debits on the 15th. Then I’ll be all set to close the Chase account whenever I like.

T-minus 35 days, and counting!

My direct deposit change took effect! So long, Chase, you fumble-fingered, malevolent baboons.

Aie. What with paying my bills, and then writing a check on my Chase checking account to deposit into my new checking account (so I can write next month’s rent check on that account—so I have to move money over from both this paycheck and my next, so I can cover it there, before my direct deposit changes over), I just realized, courtesy of Quicken, that I have about $8 in my Chase checking, to get me through until my next payday! That’s a little scary. I knew I was cutting it close, but I hadn’t realized it was THAT close (I forgot to account for two autotmatic transactions, when doing my accounting).

Dear Next Payday: You cannot get here fast enough. Seriously, dude, get the lead out!

I’ve been trying to get away from Chase all year, and I’m finally making some progress.

It’s a very long story but, the only reason I’m still with Chase at all is because I hated Bank One but they kept buying the banks I went to instead, and in the end, I just gave up trying to get away. Then Chase bought Bank One, and although I initially celebrated Bank One suffering a dose of their own medicine, it turns out that Chase are a bunch of incompetent bastards, too.

So I gave up giving up earlier this year and started actively trying to get away, after Chase sent me through a months long mess, all because my replacement for my expired debit card got lost in the mail. Customer service actually is a completely foreign concept to them, and they ended up demanding that I open a whole new checking account because the old one was irrevocably broken (i.e., it was a grandfathered acquired account – and since it actually, you know, was an interest earning checking account, which is not something they offer unless you keep like ten grand lying around your couch cushions, like we all do – and they didn’t want to do anything with it), and then screwed me with fees on top of fees, and so forth. I wound up opening the account and then they somehow managed to replace my stupid debit card after all, so I never used the second account.

Meanwhile, before I lost steam, I went to a local community bank (with two branches! Hopefully much too small to be a target for acquisition) and opened a checking account with them. They are awesome—they know me by name when I come in! One time I accidentally bounced a bill payment, by not paying enough attention when doing an online bill payment for Discover Card, and putting it through to that bank instead of my Chase account, and they actually called me up on the phone instead of just zinging me fees and waiting for me to figure out the problem. They are AWESOME.

Anyways, two weeks ago Chase started zinging me with inactivity fees, on the account they forced me to open for no reason! (Dudes, seriously, my money is sitting there not earning any interest, you don’t get to charge me money for the privilege of you getting to earn interest on it.) So that was the impetus I needed to finally – after taking months to cool down after the debit card situation, since I’d gotten to the point where I was so furious that I couldn’t talk to customer service people about the debit card disaster without getting shrieky – go to a branch and close that account. I’ve also gotten my Visa card that I have with them to have a zero balance, and have had for nearly the entire year, using the card only to pay medical bills (and then paying it immediately), so I’d have one clear list of all my medical bills at the end of the year. Then it took me ages to go through and clear out all the things I was automatically debiting from the checking account, like my mortgage, and TiVo, and what have you.

Finally I’ve gotten all but about three of the automatic charges figured out, and so last week I gave HR paperwork to switch my direct deposit to my new bank, with just a little going into the Chase account to handle the few auto bills I haven’t taken care of yet.

I’m so excited! I hope to be done with Chase by the end of the year. They really are just a bunch of unrepentant, malicious baboons, and I can’t wait to wash my hands of them.

It was everything I imagined it would be. :)

And was it ever worth it to be free from Wells Fargo, a bank that refused to issue me an ATM card with my name spelled correctly and that was in the habit of debiting my account by random amounts and reversing the charges with no explanation when I called to complain!

things left to do:

transfer some money to new bank
wait for checks to show up from new bank
switch direct deposit to new bank
make sure all checks from old account have cleared
close old account