Last week, I did what I’ve wanted to do for years: I closed my Wells Fargo account. It felt good.
Wells Fargo is an extremely convenient place to bank at, because they have branches and ATMs all over the place, but to them, I was just a number. Probably a number in the tens of millions, if I had to guess. So I was #10,000,001 to them. (Give or take a few.)
They didn’t care that I had banked there for ten years. They didn’t care that I had three checking accounts, a savings account and two credit cards with them. They didn’t know my name. Whenever I called for help, I talked to someone in another state, or maybe even another country. I consistently got bad service, and they made me do silly things like sign my name exactly like it’s shown on my driver’s license (even though my license is nine years old, and apparently, I’m the only customer they’ve ever had whose signature has changed since the day he started driving). They wouldn’t let me withdraw more than a certain amount of cash in a day, even if I came into the bank.
Overall, I’d say I was a very unhappy customer. So I was happy to say goodbye. And you know what? They didn’t even miss me. Heck, they probably don’t even know I’m gone. Hasta la vista. The more the big banks treat their customers this way, they more their users will leave and flock to the credit unions and community banks.