Some of you may have seen my Facebook status, hinting that I had to open up a Wells Fargo account. Now, David will maintain that I am the most brand-loyal person he's ever met (I maintain this is a bit of an exaggeration...), so the fact that I had to leave Bank of America was difficult.
Back story: When I was a kid, my dad used to give me his loose change. I actually bought myself a purple cash box from Container Store when I was 7 years old to keep all the change in. Whenever my bank would fill up, I would hand roll all of the coins and put the coins in a shopping bag. One day, my dad was snooping in my closet and noticed that I had, essentially, a shopping bag full of rolled coins. He said, "Blair, do you want to open a bank account?"
Miser Blair was super excited. We gathered up the coins, and drove across the street to the local bank. We met with a personal banker at (not-to-be-named bank). My dad and I sat in this jerky guy's office as he told me that my $82.74 were not enough to open up an account at their bank. They required a $100 deposit. My dad, looking astounded, asked them, couldn't they make an exception. He was trying really hard to teach me how to save/bank. This bank was not helping.
We drove to the local Bank of America, and they gladly opened an account for me. My nearly $90 was PLENTY for them. From then on, I knew they would be my bank.
Fast-forward to present. We moved to Colorado. We got our security deposit from our place in Albuquerque. I drove to four different ATM locations around Denver. Suddenly, I see that these ATMs aren't actually fully-functioning ATMs. They were in-gas-station ATMs. So, you could pretty much just withdraw money, but couldn't deposit checks. So, I decide to check and see where my nearest banking center was. Funny story. No banking centers. In Colorado. Like, the STATE of Colorado. Not. Okay.
It made me wonder...do I live in America? Obviously not. It's called Bank of America. Guess it should be called "Bank in areas that we deem important enough to put our money" or "Bank in certain places in the United States, but not all, so don't get excited." I mean, Colorado is a rather large state. I mean, I live in the 22nd biggest state in the US of A. I just moved from the 36th biggest state in America (New Mexico) and THEY had Bank of America branches. Multiple branches in fact.
So, after a slight nervous breakdown (realizing that I was going to have to cheat on my longtime bank because they decided the 300 days of sunshine in CO weren't for them...), David and I drove to Wells Fargo and opened a checking and savings account. Could be worse.
So, we are now Wells Fargo bank members. Hopefully, we don't move out of state again.
3 comments:
We had the same problem in Utah. I had BofA in high school, but lo and behold, there was one ATM near Emerson (in the movie theatre) and nothing in Utah at all. We switched to Wells Fargo too. Then we joined the military and switched AGAIN to USAA. But we love USAA. There are no branches or ATMs, but we can use any ATM and they refund us the fee, and we deposit checks by taking a picture of it with our iPhone. It's pretty awesome.
This happened to me in Montana. I thought it was just because it's behind the rest of the country by ten years, but I guess it's a western thing. That sucks, sorry girl!
If it makes you feel any better, I've had Wells Fargo forever and I really like them. Their customer support is fantastic and they'll often cancel fees if you just ask them.
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