Washington Mutual

This entry refers to a departed business that has closed or left town. All information here is for historical reference only.

 

Washington Mutual (also known as WaMu) was a savings and loan association that provided banking services. After the bank went insolvent in 2008, its assets were purchased by JPMorgan Chase, and in March 2009 all California WaMu branches and ATMs became Chase branches and ATMs, including the ones in Davis.

It had an ATM and a talking ATM at this location along with the one in the MU Games Area. They remodeled in 2007 to update their look, moving the front door from south-facing to west-facing and added a safe, indoor ATM area accessible all hours via debit card authentication. Once upon a time, WaMu had a policy of not charging for access to accounts at other banks through their ATMs.

The people there were generally very friendly, if this isn't the case at all commercial banks. WaMu set itself apart from other banks by being very customer-centric and non-traditional. They prided themselves on their casual laid back branches that featured stand up teller stations rather than a traditional bank counter. Their employees were able to dress in khaki pants, polo shirts, or denim shirts instead of suits and ties. They designed their branches to be stylish and welcoming. In their ads, they used WaMu as their name and coined the term Whoo hoo! Even their ATMs featured colorful and humorous ads setting themselves apart from other boring and reserved banks. One ad featured a lava lamp and another featured a guinea pig. Even their website was decked out in bright unconventional colors and had humorous photos.

Washington Mutual did not have any branches in California, until they purchased American Savings in 1996. American Savings had a lot of bad loans and American Savings itself went insolvent in the early 1980s and had to be bailed out by the government in the amount of $1.7 billion. Washington Mutual later expanded in 1998 by buying Home Savings of America. Unfortunately, WaMu got involved with subprime loans. They approved too many risky loans and didn't know how to say no. Their bad lending practices led to their demise.

As of March 8, 2009 all WaMu credit cards have been converted to Chase cards and now online credit card access is provided through http://www.chase.com instead of http://www.wamucards.com.

2008-02-05 10:30:25   Perhaps we should add a link on all the bank pages to a discussion/explanation of local banking versus global commercial banking and the benefits of each? —ChrisThielen

2008-03-02 08:57:35   The free ATM withdrawals are for customers only. They also don't charge if you need to use another banks ATM. Thats what those advertisement are about. Generally this bank is great. As with all banks the Overdraft fees are huge but if you keep track of your account you wont need to worry about it. Definitely the best bank choice for students. —redbear

2009-02-05 16:23:50   They don't charge you for using other bank's atm machine. The other bank is the one that charged you $2. —fsttrp

2009-07-24 15:55:47   After Chase bought Wamu, a smile sort of became more expensive in this Wamu/Chase branch as well. Many of them were celebrity look-alike when they smiled (if you notice carefully, there is one Jason-Mraz look-alike....seriously..lol.). I wished they would give away more smiles now. Anyhow, the services are still high-class, except for one thing-they didn't let me use colorful pens....JK. —superdavis