In which fuck it, I’ve opened an account at Chase after all.

I’ve been using an excellent online bank called Simple for years. They paid killer interest, the app worked flawlessly, and it’s just been really pleasant, especially considering how infuriating banking has been for me most of my adult life (primarily due to poverty, but how insanely frustrating and expensive banking is for poor people is an entirely different rant).

Like everything nice these days, the Simple product is being killed because its parent company was bought out. It was doing really well, so I assume the decision to close is just more typical corporate raider bullshit, I don’t know, and I don’t care enough about finance assholes to go find out; what I do know is that an excellent, high value service is closing because some dipshits think CEO bonuses are more important than providing an excellent product, and now I have to move my money.

Naturally, I decided to open an account at the little bank down the block from work. That’ll be nice, right? Regional bank, easy access to a branch, should be a no brainer!

It took, and I am not kidding, THREE in-person visits, three phone calls, and FIVE FUCKING DAYS to open a checking account.

The process wasn’t unpleasant, it was just ridiculously complex and took forever. I imagine they pride themselves on their homey, small town appeal, but it’s 2021. Just open the goddamned account. Do not call me and leave messages. Do not make me come over there more than once. Just take my fucking money. It’s a checking account, not an organ transplant.

And after all that, they misspelled both my name and address on the counter checks and the account itself. I had to message them through the website (which, surprise, uses security technology from the 00’s and failed to change the temporary username I was given) to get the typos fixed, and even THAT took three days.

It took something like six business days for my initial deposit to clear, which is nonsense in today’s banking world.

THEN it took just as long for my first direct deposit to show up, and it was from my employer’s account, which is AT THEIR OWN BANK. It was AN INTERNAL TRANSFER, yet it took so long I had to send a message inquiring about it before it actually showed up. (There is no fucking way an internal transfer like that should take more than three days. None. They must be doing all this shit by hand. Like, with punch cards or some shit.)

Today I decided to transfer the remaining balance out of my Simple account (it’s closing for good on the 8th, “transitioning” to another bank with ridiculous fees) so I looked up my balance, wrote myself a check, and used the new bank’s app to deposit it.

Deposit rejected. Limit exceeded. The check was for WELL under five grand, so my new-account deposit limit must be in the range of hundreds of dollars? What the fuck?

Jesus Christ. I give up.

Logged into my Amazon-branded credit card account, which is a Chase account, and opened a checking account there. It took fewer than five minutes. No fees, similar interest rate, and my Simple account was already linked (it’s what I used to pay my card each month) so I’ve already initiated a transfer.

I’ll switch direct deposit from the local bank to the Chase account this week, and then probably just ignore the local account for a few months until I’ve got the stamina for the five phone calls and three in-person visits it will UNDOUBTEDLY REQUIRE to close a checking account I will by then have only used twice: once to open it and once to close it.

I’d much rather use the friendly, small, local bank, of course, but there are reasonable expectations a customer can have, ESPECIALLY in the finance sector. IN-HOUSE direct deposits should take three days at the absolute outside limit, and making me come sit in your drive-through on my bike for twenty minutes, twice, so you can explain checking accounts to me and hand me a printed packet I could much more easily read online? Forget it. No.

So now I’m banking with the big assholes, but at least I didn’t have to WAIT FIVE DAYS to open a GODDAMNED CHECKING ACCOUNT. The only benefit of the small local bank is that IF there’s a problem you should, ideally, be able to go in and speak to a person and get it resolved, but we all know that’s not how it works any more. There’d be an apologetic “I’m sorry, but” and all you’d have accomplished is wasting more time, because rules are rules!