Goodbye, Free Checking?
by ilene - July 16th, 2010 6:31 pm
Goodbye, Free Checking?
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
As some of you already know, I'm a pretty content Chase customer. I don't care what Jamie Dimon does in his downtime or which government is suing them over shady investment practices this week, all I know is my money's safe and they never screw with me. EVER. I know what you're thinking: "But JDA! They're evil!" Sure they're evil but they're also the guys who own the Fed so who do you think will have money when everything goes terribly awry? The guys who own the Fed, duh. Am I promoting Chase's bad behavior by entrusting them with my deposits? Please, we're talking pennies to their bazillions. They aren't looking to the starving writer to fund their misadventures, they've got the Dirty Fed and free money for that.
I managed to avoid banking completely for nearly 5 years. It's not easy and you end up losing quite a bit in time and effort to trot across town cashing your paychecks at whichever bank they are drawn on (that's usually free, something most Western Union check-cashers don't realize) and my paycard (direct deposit to a MasterCard) ended up costing me $1.50 every time I withdrew money and $.50 for each POS transaction. Not good. I gave up quite a few pumpkin spice lattes in fees just so I could say I was bank-free.
Of course I realized that this was just stubbornness on my part and gave in to Chase's promise of $150 to open an account. It's been several months now and I still have no major issues to report except for initially opening the account online and never getting my account number via mail. Online banking is convenient, Chase has completely taken over so ATMs are everywhere and they generally process transactions quickly. All good. Sure they have their Overdraft Nazi standing outside of the branch trying to catch me at the ATM and ask if I've made a decision on overdraft protection ("No thanks I've already declined it. Twice.") but other than that, I'm happy.
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