Washington Mutual Bank Sucks, WAMU SUCKS; an exercise in confusion, chaos and incompetence. SAITEK KEYBOARD, Efunctional.com

This web page details our opinions of and experiences with:

Washington Mutual Bank
8555 15th Ave NW
Seattle, Washington
98117

and with

Saitek Keyboards and Efunctional.com

It's Official:
Washington Mutual Sucks
(WAMU SUCKS)

The following letter to Washington Mutual Bank is self explanatory. This is the net result to the consumer when dishonesty, incompetence, unprofessionalism and downright stupidity rule the marketplace.

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Washington Mutual Bank
8555 15th Ave NW
Seattle, Washington
98117

Registered receipt:         2103855574xxxxxxxxxxxx

NOTICE OF INTENT TO FILE SUIT

Washington state law requires that we provide the opposing party a 30 day grace period in which to make restitution, before the court clerk will accept our filing of suit. The date you sign for this registered letter will begin that 30-day clock (also delivered by hand on 10-4-06).

There are TWO issues here that must be addressed:

ISSUE #1:
Enclosed, please note a print-out of your reversal of our chargeback, confirmation number 00096xxxxxx, in the amount of $57.58. Here’s the background on that chargeback:

We purchased a Saitek keyboard from an online vendor, Efunctional.com.

The keyboard arrived DOA (didn’t work out of the box).

We emailed the vendor (Efunctional.com) to obtain an RMA to return the keyboard.

We did not receive a reply.

We then contacted the manufacturer (Saitek), who issued an RMA to return the keyboard to THEM for replacement.

We returned said keyboard at our expense.

Two weeks later a new (probably the same faulty) keyboard arrived, and was also (still) DOA.

We then emailed the original retailer (Efunctional.com) AGAIN and demanded a return/refund.

Our emails to that vendor (Efunctional.com) bounced back as “undeliverable” (proof provided to you in our original claim packet).

We were NEVER able to extract a reply of any kind from the vendor (Efunctional.com)(copies of our attempts and of the bounced emails were provided to you).

We then had no choice but to file a chargeback; the manufacturer (Saitek) couldn’t or wouldn’t fix the keyboard, and the vendor (Efunctional.com) wouldn’t respond. What other recourse did we have?)

We indicated that we had the keyboard still in its box, and that the vendor (Efunctional.com) need only issue a pre-paid shipping label to retrieve the faulty item.

WAMU filed the chargeback and refunded our money provisionally.

We heard nothing more from WAMU.

On 9-28-06 we discovered that WAMU had again taken these funds out of our account (reversing the chargeback).

WAMU did not contact us AT ALL during this period.

WAMU did not contact us AT ALL after this debit.

At this point we are without recourse of any kind. The manufacturer (Saitek) cannot or will not supply a working unit, the vendor (Efunctional.com) cannot be reached or will not respond, and now WAMU has pulled this stunt. Our only remaining recourse is to file against WAMU in small claims court. Perhaps (but not likely) that will WAKE WAMU UP. Frankly, most interactions with WAMU are exercises in confusion, misunderstanding, chaos and erroneous conclusions. Your people are, largely, AIRHEADS. They won’t take the time to grasp or understand really ANYTHING that is presented to them, even if they are capable of it, which we often doubt, and we’ve had enough.

ISSUE #2:
Enclosed you will find a form letter from WAMU to us, marked “URGENT – FINAL REQUEST”. Final request for WHAT?! Apparently it has to do with a chargeback we filed on 8-4-06. Unfortunately, the letter offers nothing to identify this chargeback except a Claim number (06080xxxx). We spent a full hour scouring our online account records trying to find a reference to this number so we could supply the appropriate and requested info. We were unable to find any reference to it. We then asked this question formally, through the WAMU message interface online. That was many days ago. As usual, we’ve received NO REPLY WHATSOEVER. Time is apparently running out on this claim. We want an answer NOW. What chargeback does this refer to? Please provide an amount and/or vendor name, and from that we’ll be able to figure it out and supply the appropriate data. In the meantime, we request that you put a HOLD on this claim, so as to give us time to get an ANSWER from you (assuming that’s even possible), and supply the requested data. ALL of this could have been avoided if WAMU would simply INCLUDE that info in the letter! Why, oh why, is this beyond you?

We’re disgusted with WAMU. We dealt with you beginning back in the early 1970’s. You were our son’s first bank account. For decades we told folks that WAMU was the best bank in the region. We no longer believe that, and we no longer represent you as such – quite the opposite. You screw up nearly every single exchange that comes your way. We’ve had enough. Fix this or explain yourselves in small claims court. That’s what it comes down to, and we’re sorry it has.

[signature]
325070760--xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

10-4-06

Encl: copy of “Urgent” claim #06080xxxx; Print-out of “reverse debit” (57.58)

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UPDATE:

The above letter to Washington Mutual Bank included print-outs from our bank account (the same printouts you'll see below). Those pages show a list of deposits, and a list of debits, each prominently labelled, just like any other bank account. In the list of credits for June of 2006, there are many entries, none of which are from MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM. In the list of DEBITS, also prominently labelled CARD PURCHASES (debits), there are two entries, both from MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM, both in the amount of $57.58. Look carefully at those two listings in the debit column; neither have "pluses" (or minuses) preceeding them, or anywhere else in the listing, or, indeed, in ANY of the listings on ANY of the pages of ANY of our statements.

Let's go over this again quickly, because it's pivotal:

There are NO entries from MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM in our deposit/credit column. Not for June of 2006, not ever.

There are TWO entries under our purchases/debits column, both from MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM.

Got that? NO deposits. Two debits.

No deposits.

Two debits.

So.....why would any reasonably intelligent human being come to the conclusion that MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM had debited our account twice for the same item? Well, let's see: Since there are NO CREDITS and TWO DEBITS shown on Washington Mutual's own statement, that could be what led us to believe there were NO DEPOSITS, yet TWO DEBITS.

Pretty simple, right?

No deposits, two debits. If you can understand this, you're smarter than ANYONE at Washington Mutual Bank.

Here are the documents referred to above:

Below: Page showing what the DEPOSIT column looks like -- a straight print from WAMU's website.

Below: Page showing what the DEBIT page looks like -- a straight print from WAMU's website.
Note the big, black words: CARD PURCHASE / ATM WITHDRAWALS. --Pretty hard to misinterpret that, right?

Below: Page showing first debit from our account by MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM-- a straight print from WAMU's website, still under the heading of CARD PURCHASE / ATM WITHDRAWALS. No "plus" signs in sight, correct? Let's see now -- we don't want to get too far ahead of those braniacs at Washington Mutual Bank, so let's recap thus far: Here's a page (below) which appears on our Washington Mutual statement under the CARD PURCHASE / ATM WITHDRAWALS heading. On that page is a charge by MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM in the amount of $57.58. WAMU fully acknowledges that this was a debit. Still with us, WAMU? Appearing as an entry under CARD PURCHASES, with not a plus or minus sign on the horizon, it rather looks like a DEBIT. Correct? Any dissenting votes? Of course not. It's a debit.

Below: Page showing second debit from our account by MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM-- a straight print from WAMU's website, still under the heading of CARD PURCHASE / ATM WITHDRAWALS. No "plus" signs in sight, correct? So here's the SECOND debit for the same amount, under the same heading. Looks JUST. LIKE. A. DEBIT. Or are we just.....crazy? This second transaction is formatted EXACTLY like the first transaction, which WAMU admits is a debit. This second transaction appears under the same heading as the first (CARD PURCHASE / ATM WITHDRAWALS), which WAMU admits is a debit. So why is this second transaction, which is formatted like the first and which appears in the same column as the first, a CREDIT according to WAMU? Beats us.

We had included these sheets in our original letter to WAMU, and in one or two follow-up letters when all we received from them was nonsense. But they don't mention or address these printouts; they utterly ignore them, continuing to insist that the second transaction was a credit. We once walked into a store and asked the customer service rep where the trackballs were. The reply was, "What do you mean you're from Texas?" That pretty-well stopped our cerebral machinery for a few seconds. We couldn't come up with a single thing in reply. So we tried the same question again, albeit a little cautiously, "Do you have trackballs for computers?" Reply from the clerk: "I'm sorry but you can't use my car." Stupidly, we tried three or four more VERY simple questions. The clerk remained poker-faced, calm, alert.....but answered with utter nonsense to each and every query. We started to get mad, but then figured that if the clerk was insane, it was just too bad, and if they were messing with us, it was just too bad. We left the store. A year later they were bankrupt. Seems they weren't Good Guys at all. This is what it's like trying to perform the simplest of interactions with Washington Mutual Bank. Unfortunately, while Washington Mutual is probably the dumbest gaggle of dimwits we've ever come across in a bank, all other banks we've ever dealt with weren't a great deal better.

So. What kind of masterpiece did we receive from WAMU in response to all this?

Well, it's a doozy. It really is. If you've been unsure as to the quality of character pulling the levers at Washington Mutual Bank, we feel this response from them will tell the story once and for all. Ready? Here you go:

We feel that Susan Valdez has demonstrated to us (and to you) once and for all what kind of folks are at the helm of this leaky vessel called Washington Mutual Bank. We could go on for a few more paragraphs, calling to your attention the embarassingly obvious, but we trust the readers to be more intelligent than Susan Valdez and figure it out on their own.

So is this second debit in reality a credit from MC-OFFICESUPPLIESLANE.COM? It appears under the heading of "purchases", it has NO plus sign anywhere in its entire neighborhood, but more than that, why WOULD this merchant have credited back the price of this keyboard when, as of 6-26-06, we HADN'T EVEN RECEIVED IT YET!

We've turned this mess over to our bookeeper. She does an audit of this account from stem to stern every year in January or February. If it turns out this really WAS a credit, we suggest that WAMU get its damned act together and start supplying statements to its customers that reflect the actual transaction, not an inaccurate rendition of it. Miz Valdez states vehemently above that there is a "plus sign" next to this second debit. Yet in no document that we have access to from the website or our statements does such a plus sign appear. Nowhere. If it indeed exists in WAMU's files, it exists ONLY in documents that Valdez has access to. So who do we believe? Our statements and the website docs, or Susan Valdez? Given this woman's obnoxious, unprofessional demeanor, her credibility with us is nil. We'll believe the statement until it's proven faulty.

If this DOES turn out to be a debit, as the statement suggests, the proverbial shit will hit the proverbial fan.

Will we dump WAMU as our bank, as Valdez would dearly love us to do?

On the one hand we need a bank that WORKS and which employs intelligent, decent, competent professionals. We're not seeing that at WAMU.

On the other hand, we feel curiously compelled to stick it out with this arrogant outfit. That's the only way we can continue to help them improve.

And lastly, if you've already left Washington Mutual....

Google Search

....we thought we'd provide you a moment of sweet nostalgia with the old, familiar screen below:

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Thanks for visiting wamu.com!

Our online services are temporarily unavailable. Our technical staff is working diligently to restore service.
Bill payments and transfers scheduled during this period will be initiated as scheduled.
For immediate assistance, please contact Customer Service at (800) 788-7000. Representatives are available 24 hours a day to assist you.
We regret any inconvenience and thank you for your understanding.

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Washington Mutual's customers struggle with this virtually every single day -- even days at a time, continuously. To produce a reliable website these days is child's play. Why can't Washington Mutual bank do it? Because bankers.....tend often to be.....not the brightest bulbs in the string. That's all there is to it.
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UPDATE 12-21-06:

We've received the following from eFunctional:

I am going to let the chargeback go through and send you RMA information shortly for the return. Thanks for your patience. Efunctional.com Service Team | Fulfillment Office | National Operation Services Efunctional.com | Phone: 801-546-3622 | Fax: 801-546-3621 | services@efunctional.com

A few minutes later we received the following from eFunctional:

Too much time has lapsed, I am not able to get an RMA number. We will take the hit on this one, you may do what you want with the keyboard and the chargeback will go through. Merry Christmas, Heidi. Efunctional.com Service Team | Fulfillment Office | National Operation Services Efunctional.com | Phone: 801-546-3622 | Fax: 801-546-3621 | services@efunctional.com

Who knows if we'll actually receive a refund. We'll update here if we do. In any case it will be six months after the fact, and our costs for registered-mail receipts will exceed the refund. We should sue Washington Mutual in small claims for this entire fiasco, but the time it would require to do that would negate any award, and we guarantee that Washington Mutual would learn less than nothing. They are incapable of learning.

Bottom line: Stay away from Washington Mutual Bank, stay away from Saitek, and even though we may get our money back six months late, we still advise staying away from eFunctional. Had they replied to any of our original emails in mid-2006 none of this would have occurred. Had Saitek produced a product that worked, none of this would have occurred. Had Saitek been capable of repairing or replacing their faulty product, none of this would have occurred. Had Washington Mutual listened, actually LISTENED to one damned word we said six months ago, none of this would have occurred.

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12-21-06

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5:30 p.m., 1-31-07, just trying to do a little online banking (but even THAT is too much to ask of WAMU)

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UPDATE 7-16-07:

TO:

Attorney General
900 4th Ave. Suite 2000
Seattle, Wa.,
98164-1012

Re:

Washington Mutual Bank
8555 15th Ave NW
Seattle, WA 98117

Checking: 325070760--095xxxxxxx

We’ve experienced more trouble with this bank than we care to recall, but this particular problem requires immediate attention and since WAMU can’t muster the simple professional courtesy to reply to us or solve the problem, we must now appeal to your office.

The problem is simple: When we try to use our debit card, it is often rejected. It is rejected with the error stating that the billing address we used does not match the billing address that WAMU has on file for this account. This is nonsense, and we will prove it, and we ask YOUR office to ask THEIR office to FIX IT! This is a matter so simple that it should never, ever require that we go to such lengths to find a resolution, but we must all remember that this is Washington Mutual we’re talking about, and virtually ANY task, no matter how small, is utterly and completely beyond them. We’ve been appealing to WAMU to fix this for as long as two years, without success.

The address that is registered with this account is

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This has been the case for years.

We began asking for relief from WAMU about two years ago. We sent emails to WAMU describing the problem in minute detail; those were “lost” by WAMU. We tried calling them; no one could grasp the problem. We finally resorted to registered mail (yes, we have the signature receipt), but we received an utterly illogical written reply from WAMU stating that no transactions had been refused, therefore there was no problem. Why is this reply illogical? Because in our registered letter to WAMU we had included screen-prints of several transactions that WAMU declined because, according to WAMU, our billing address did not match the address they had in their records. Even with those copies in front of them, WAMU declared, in writing, that no transactions had been declined.

We tried attacking the problem from a different angle; we began submitting changes of address to WAMU – changes TO our proper billing address of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, even though that’s the address shown in our bank records. We submitted these changes to WAMU by registered mail, in person, by secure email on their website, and by phone. That proper billing address has always shown up in our customer file on WAMU’s site, and WAMU always manages to send our statements to this proper address.

Why, then, does WAMU continue to decline our debit card transactions stating that the billing address we submit for purchases does not match the address they have in their files ?

Why?

Seriously, WHY?

This is NOT a rhetorical question!

We’ve been asking WAMU for an answer for two years now, and all we get is gibberish in reply.

Why would WAMU set out on what appears to be a premeditated schema of what could almost be termed a back-handed kind of harassment? We all know the folks at WAMU ain’t the brightest bulbs in the string, but we refuse to believe they are truly THIS stupid. Were they THIS stupid in real life, they wouldn’t be able to even find their ways home at night. Well, maybe they can’t after all.

In mid June of 2007 we tried one more time to get WAMU to straighten this mess out. We had finally uncovered the root of the problem and it is this: The ONLY way we can get an online transaction to go through reliably is to use a billing address of xxxxxxxxxxxx. If we enter that as our billing address, our purchases go through just fine. –Trouble is, that address has been obsolete for probably more than two years. Nothing that we have access to in our banking account information shows that address. But WAMU seems bent on keeping it in their files. All of this information was once again passed to WAMU in mid June of 2007 via their “secure” email system through their website. We made a screen-print of the message (it was barely polite), and waited for the problem to be finally, FINALLY solved.

Two weeks later we attempted a purchase using the current, proper and correct billing address, and it was rejected due to an address mismatch. We then went into our account information on WAMU’s website to check to see if they had replied to our scathing email. Lo and behold, as had happened on numerous previous occasions, not only had they not replied, they had apparently actually deleted our message to them.

We’ve endured many other problems when trying to interact with these people in writing: for instance, several months ago our WAMU debit card was stolen. It was reported to WAMU in writing within a few hours. No fraudulent transactions had yet been made. Some hours later we noticed that the card was still not cancelled, so we advised them again in writing to CANCEL THE CARD. The following day the card was still good so we wrote to them AGAIN through their secure email system, telling them AGAIN to CANCEL THE STOLEN CARD. WAMU replied with boilerplate nonsense but took no action to cancel the card. 12 hours later the card was still not cancelled so we hand-carried a written letter to the branch’s manager; it implored her to CANCEL THE CARD. The following day the card was still valid, and the fraudulent charges began showing up. Again, this is typical of how WAMU routinely operates, and of how it handles straightforward, clear-cut communications, even critical ones.

So, once and for all, we see what we’re dealing with here at Washington Mutual Bank: The Idiot Demon Spawn of the Earth.

Why would a giant financial institution take it upon themselves to intentionally try to cause a customer grief and hardship? In this case it’s not so difficult to imagine, as we have long maintained a website detailing only a very few of our outrageous experiences with this band of dimwits, and that page is located here:

/badder_business_bureau/washington_mutual_bank/washington_mutual_bank.html

Note that on that webpage we’ve posted a letter from one sociological prize named Susan Valdez (WAMU’s “Executive Response Team”) who has asked us point blank to find another bank. THAT is the mentality that makes up WAMU, and we were happy to be able to finally document it.

In this envelope please find, in this order, the following documents:

A screenprint showing our billing address as recorded in WAMU’s own database

A screenprint showing that we entered said address correctly into a shopping cart

A screenprint showing the WAMU card we used

A screenprint showing the transaction being declined due to address mismatch

An email informing us that the transaction was declined due to the mismatch

Bear in mind that our last registered letter to WAMU included numerous such cases, yet WAMU replied in writing stating that no transactions had been declined. This is apparently the game that WAMU’s customer service often plays with customers. We hope they think it’s funny. We don’t, nor do any other of their customers.

What we want:

We want WAMU to purge the address of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx from ALL of its records, as the address has been obsolete for years, and they have been advised of this by registered mail. We want WAMU to SEE TO IT that we will endure NO MORE DECLINED TRANSACTIONS due to AVS errors that are WAMU’s fault. And lastly, though this will never come about, we want WAMU to make the smallest, most insignificant attempt at efficiency and professionalism and honesty, because as it stands the world regards them as a baboon’s ass, and that’s no exaggeration. They are fools, and should have never been allowed to be in control of their own childrens’ piggy banks, let alone the finances of a good percentage of the western US.

Thanks,

[signature]                           7-16-07

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UPDATE 8-23-07

TO:

Office of Thrift Supervision
Atten: Customer Affairs
PO Box 7165
San Fransisco, Ca., 94120
650-746-7000, Ext. 7098
FAX 650-746-7001
Consumer.complaint@ots.tres.gov

                Please consider this a formal complaint against Washington Mutual Bank.
                In the first week of August, 2007, we discovered that our WAMU debit card was mysteriously associated with a Paypal account that we had not opened. We had learned long ago not to bother with WAMU’s voice lines, so we immediately advised WAMU, in writing, using their “secure messaging system” of the problem, and asked them to shut down the card without delay.
                The attached documents are screen-shots of one of many such written requests, showing WAMU’s own reference number that proves they received this communication. As of 8-24-07, the card is still active.
                This is the norm for WAMU. It is an institution that is utterly and documentably out of control. It cannot accomplish one single task correctly. It is a rogue business which provides barely any service at all – in fact many would argue that it is actually a liability to its customers.
                Since WAMU will not acknowledge or respond to this request to cancel this card and issue a new one, we ask that your office make the demand on our behalf.
                The card number is clearly shown on the attached docs.

                Thank you,                                                   8-23-07

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