Braindead. Their entire customer service department must be asleep at the wheel. If they aren't acquainted with the adage "the customer is always right", you'd think they would at least know about the one that says "a satisfied customer tells his neighbor, a dissatisfied customer tells the whole neighborhood".

It just reinforces my personal opinion: find and use good, local businesses whenever possible. The bakery and butcher instead of the supermarket, the local coffee shop instead of Starbucks, the community bank, the garage around the corner - whatever you have in your neighborhood. It may take more time than going to the big chains, but it pays off in the long run.

Unfortunately, they used to feel like a local bank. Deanne Stillman, whose book on the mustangs just came out, referred me to John DeAngello there, who was great. I used to have my bookkeeper Fedex him my stamped checks for deposit when I was in Paris. Never a snag.

Now, it seems nobody's ever working at my branch for long. And most annoyingly, when I went there the day I found out about all the fraud to close my account (and reopen it with a new number), the guy at the desk directly in front of the woman taking care of me looked about 19 and was playing with a plastic slinky.

Let me tell you, when you've been financially screwed by a bank you've been with for, I dunno, I think around 20 years, and you're waiting for the fraud lady to get on the phone, the last thing you want to hear is the noise of a plastic slinky, again and again and again, for about 15 minutes.

ING is a good online bank. They'll kick back a few bucks a month for online checking. Their savings accounts aren't what they were a year ago, but nobody's are. If you can commute to their office in WLA, you get free coffee when you drop off paperwork or deposits.

The First Entertainment credit union can give good rates on car loans, etc and a reasonably useful website. The SAG card will probably get you in.

Wells Fargo is convenient because there's a branch in the local grocery store. (They're aggressively pushing web services that I haven't tried.) The service is OK... But personal service doesn't really happen in banks anymore. (The closest simulacrum to human involvement is at the Bank of America in Brentwood, which is in a tony enough neighborhood that they don't have three inches of Lexan between the customer and the cashier. But it's still not worth it.)

(BTW: The secret to sleeping at night as a BA employee is probably the exhaustion of poverty: All the people you see in there are part-timers, uninsured etc)

Thanks so much. Can't commute anywhere...need local service.

Will check out the credit union when I wake up.

First Fed does seem more personal service'y, but I can't be with a bank that doesn't offer online banking for Mac.

How about Wells Fargo as a bank? I don't see them generating the kind of white hot hatred BofA seems to these days...over on Consumerist and in general.

I know folks have trashed them on Consumerist, but I personally have had very good service from Chase. (Don't know if they're in your area, though.)

They seem to pay attention to online security - when I created the account, I gave them my email address, and they gave me a piece of paper with my online (one-time) username. Go to my computer, and they've emailed the password to me. Go online, put the two together, then create my own username and password.

Any time you log in from a new computer, they have to either email or text you (your choice, and you have to have already given them the email or phone number) a verification code.

And yesterday, when I had to deposit two checks and wanted to pull cash at the same time, they actually asked for my driver's license. And appeared to look at it. (Don't know what else they might have done had I walked in without a deposit and asked to withdraw significant amounts of cash. . . .)

"Identity Theft" is a BS insidious term, designed to transfer what used to be the bank's responsibility (keeping your money safe) onto the customer. The phrase implies not "oh we accidentally (or purposely e.g. inside corruption) gave your money to some total stranger that obviously wasn't you, oops", but implies "you allowed some stranger to steal your identity from you, and we, the innocent third party, merely got presented with the fake identity". I hope somebody sues the banks and puts the responsibility back on them, but alas I think the public might have been effectively conned by this "identity theft" term.

I personally like PNC. All the branches I've been to seem to be staffed wtih friendly, knowledgable people. Don't know if they're around where you are, but they are all over the place in the DC metro area.
Suntrust was good too. I got a phone call from them when someone in Italy tried to use my debit card number at a service station. They actually did what they were supposed to do, and left the transaction pending until they contacted me. Got a new debit card and there was never any hassle.

It sounds like convenience is the most important factor for you, so my suggestion is to make a list of all the banks within an acceptably close distance (Google Maps might be helpful here--zoom into an area near your home and search for "Bank"), then go with the smallest one which offers the services you need.

I've generally observed that the smaller the bank, the better the service. That's not surprising: big banks win customers through their brand name, advertising, and geographic footprint. Small banks have to build individual relationships and earn word-of-mouth.

BF has a credit card with WaMu, through Cabela's. They've so far been very good about security, and the website actually tracks his credit score, so that's handy. There have been no problems so far, even when he's given it to his daughter to use, and I also have a card in my name that is linked to the account. I rarely use it, though, as I have my own credit cards, but BF likes me to use it for car maintenance and the like (because he gets points that he can redeem at Cabela's).

(My bank is People's United, and except for the security breach scare earlier this year, which didn't affect me anyway, I've had no problems whatsoever with them. But they're East Coast, so I guess they wouldn't be available to you.)

I asked a teller at my bank yesterday if they do anything to verify the integrity of a license presented as ID, and she told me they do not.

If I go to a bar, they check to make sure it hasn't been tampered with.

So it's harder to get drunk than it is to hoover my bank account.

I suspect that some small part of this comes from the belief in the infallibility of government-issued identity cards. And I'll grant that it's not as simple as splitting the license with a razor and inserting a new picture under the laminate, but it's still relatively simple to create a fraudulent license.

Now you've got me nervous about doing business with my own bank.

I highly doubt there is any mistaken belief regarding the fallibility of government-issued ID cards; banks are not stupid and probably have more expert knowledge on forging IDs than most organizations. It's instead a deliberate choice: The banks are unlikely to be motivated to check IDs properly if the risk for not doing so can be shifted onto the customers - instead they then just see an area where they can heavily cut costs by not doing things properly. If they were more likely to be held accountable for money they give away to obviously wrong people they might take a different view. Not sure how the laws work there exactly.

Well, that's the rub, innit.

They ARE responsible for giving out money to the wrong people.

But it's easier to put the money back in my account and allow me to continue to be victimized than it is to actually apprehend the criminal.

I went through this little dance with American Express. My card number got lifted from someone's backend system and used. They reversed the fake charges, and changed the account number - which entailed altering the last 4 digits in a highly predictable manner. Which, of course, wound up with the card being hacked again. The only way to get a completely new account number was to close the account entirely and open a new one.

Lesson: If you keep your fraudulent activity limited to small numbers, you'll get away with it.

Brian, do you mind saying what bank that is?

And David and Brian, I think you're right. I think it must be cheaper for them to replace the money than have tellers check ID, which would mean putting in a system to do that.

Oh, and thanks for the recommendations, everyone. I am in Santa Monica, so I don't think we have Chase here...and I do need a bank in the area.

Some of them: WaMu, Wells Fargo. Opinions?

I do business with 4 national banks. Wells Fargo is the easiest and safest of the "Big" banks. Their customer service is very good! I have a B Of A checking open with $200 in it. The only reason I keep it is if I get a big check drawn on B of A; I can get the $ quickly. B of A has proven to be a pain in the ass many times. Chase is also a good bank.

P.S.
I would stay away from Wamu for other reasons that I would rather not post.

In the 90s and maybe after 2000 for few years, they used to clear checks for me right away, soon as I deposited them. Mostly, my checks are checks from papers, the same every month, and they're a bunch of little checks, lots and lots of them, and then a bigger check from Creators. Now, it takes an interminable amount of time, and I read on Consumerist and other places that they hold people's money and then charge these huge overage fees. It happened to this darling girl who sometimes does some filing for me (most recently, I had to pay her to put all my Bank of America stuff in order, when I would've had her doing stuff that actually benefited my business).

And thanks for the Wells Fargo and Wamu tips. If you want, you can e-mail me at adviceamy at a o l dot com and tell me what the deal is with Wamu.

No problem, Amy. It's Webster Bank. I didn't start out with them, but in the Great Bank Accumulation, the small bank I was with got sucked into their gaping maw, and I've been too lazy/preoccupied to do anything about it.

This? This is motivation, baby!

I happen to be in New York City for the first time in 14 years and mainly I notice two things: the World Trade Center is missing and BofA is everywhere. When I moved here in '94 I had to dump them for Chase because there was like one BofA ATM in the whole of Manhattan -- in some dank corner near Grand Central Station -- and I didn't even find that one until the week I went back to California. I seem to remember somebody telling me that their absence had something to do with their involvement in NYC's financial crisis back in the 70's but they may have been full of it.

Thanks, Brian. P.S. I just left a review on Yelp.com. Some guy wrote about Wells Fargo on Larchmont:

I like this branch but years ago I did not like it because of a single experience. One day I could not find my ATM card nor my wallet. Having gone to the branch with my old driver's license which has my picture on it, the idiots would not let me withdraw $100 from my savings account because my ID was expired. My informing the manager that I was not using the outdated license to prove I could drive yet I felt it served as proof of identity did not overwhelm her insistance that my expired permit is not acceptible within WellsFargo as a form of ID. More recently I applied for a line of credit and the personal banker was helpful in getting the review completed quickly. The bank valued my being a customer and opened the credit line immediately. I am not enamored by the one inch thick plexiglas separating me and the tellers but the machines which read my ATM card are placed conveniently next to the slot at the bottom of the plexiglas. There is a free parking lot and a RiteAid pharmacy directly across the street.

I responded:

Honey, I'm here because I'm looking for a new bank. Bank of America is firing me as a customer; apparently, for complaining too much. Why am I complaining? Because their tellers gave away $12,000 of my money, on seven separate occasions to a woman with only a fake driver's license in my name. Go back to your branch and thank them. Oh, by the way, your post made me feel good about Wells Fargo. Maybe I'll go with them, so thanks for that. And a suggestion to everyone out there: freeze your credit bureau accounts if you can. Californians can, as can people in 43 other states.

WaMu carries our house mortgage... you do NOT want to deal with them if they've screwed up.
Talk about a ring around the rosy pole phone tag chase getting someone who can or more importantly who WILL make a deicison.
Gunner Retired

You certainly know your banking needs better than us strangers, but I think you should give the credit union idea another look. Credit unions do generally give you a much better deal in all your transactions.

I'm a member of a smallish credit union, and when my job changed, I had to move almost an hour and a half away from the nearest office. Dealbreaker, right? I thought so at first, but many credit unions are cooperative. I found that this meant I can go into a totally unrelated credit union 5 minutes from my home, do my banking there either via teller or ATM, and it's as if I'd done it at my own credit union. It *might* add one more day to a deposited check clearing... but most times it does not.

It's worth at least seeing if the credit union you can actually join is part of a similar deal (I think most are).

Thanks, Quint, that's really helpful. Somebody high up in AFTRA called me the other day, personally, to see if I'd voted in the upcoming election (I had), and then stayed on the phone with me quite some time answering questions about the AFTRA rules on doing a web TV show. If the credit union is at all reflective of that call, I'd be thrilled. I'd really like to find customer service instead of customer brush-off, or worse, BofA-style customer contempt.

I can wholeheartedly recommend Commerce Bank. Since they only operate on the east coast so far, that recommendation is LAME. So I researched your area a bit and came up with...
http://www.1stprivate.com/ (520 Broadway)
https://www.bankofthewest.com/ (407 Colorado Av)
https://www.uboc.com/ (several locations)

If you check out customer reviews of any bank, you'll see that there will be half of the reviews ranting and half raving, with very little middle ground (people passionate about their money, I guess?) I would never use a bank as large as WaMu or Wells Fargo. WaMu is the largest savings and loan in the US and B of A is the largest commercial bank, so even if Bank of the West is the 5th largest in California, it is a midget in comparison and hopefully the customer service would reflect that.

I hadn't heard that Santa Monica outlawed ATM fees in '99, only to see Wells Fargo and Bank of America overturn it in a lawsuit. I wouldn't have banked with B of A just for that, on principle.

I actually didn't even know about the fee thing, because it's been so convenient to bank at BofA in Los Angeles, and to use Bank Paribas, their affiliate in Paris.

If I have to pay ATM fees in Paris now, so be it.

And thanks, Hasan, that's what I was thinking about with First Fed.

Bank of the West might be a good bet. Will check them out.

As for people giving thumbs up and thumbs down on banks, there's an important thing to look for: are they ranting about an individual employee at a bank, or is it something like this -- where they clearly have a pattern of lax security, giving out money to somebody with only a fake license in my name, and the wrong expiration date...multiple times, at multiple locations.

It seems clear from this that their "multiple layers of security" are multiple layers of bullshit.

I use Umpqua. I don't know if you have one near by, but I really like them. 12 years with this account and never a problem. I online bank with my mac using firefox or safari with no problem. They are always really nice, remember you by appearance, I've never lost a penny to any fraud of any kind and I am one of those idiots who uses my debit card EVERYWHERE.

I speak for the evil giant--Citibank. They're everywhere, I know the people at my three home branches, and I almost never get an off-shored customer service rep.

When I had a bout with a stolen number, they were amazing. Fast, sympathetic, and nearly as vindictive as Amy.

It's too bad you don't live reasonably close to a credit union. They are, far and away, the best for service, rates, and services. I will never do business with a bank. My credit union in Texas was great, and when I moved to Minnesota, this one is great as well. I would drive whatever distance was required to do my banking with a credit union.

I'm looking for an institution that doesn't seem to have contempt for the people who bank with them….

Good luck. I’ve worked for two banks in my lifetime (the last one a long time ago). It’s not the contempt you have to be concerned about; it’s the indifference. To the majority of people working for (and managing) banking organizations, customers are an abstract concept at best.

When I was in banking, the average DDA (Demand Deposit Account) was worth $15 per year to a bank. More valuable customers got "Private Bankers." As a result, most employees dealt with customers (actual and conceptual) who simply weren’t that individually valuable to the bank. Customers were viewed collectively.

I remember one meeting in which the giant bank that bought the bank for which I worked wanted to charge fees on Internet banking transactions returned as Non-Sufficient Funds. Each transaction was passed through the system twice to ensure accuracy (once before all other transactions were processed and once after). Big Bank Inc. wanted to charge an NSF fee on BOTH passes. That meant that if your deposit that night was needed to cover your Internet transaction, you still got charged $25.

…banks are not stupid and probably have more expert knowledge on forging IDs than most organizations.

In the fraud department, yes. At the teller level, I doubt it.

If I go to a bar, they check to make sure it hasn't been tampered with.

When I worked as a grocery store cashier waaay back in college, we were given an orientation lecture about selling alcohol to minors. The lecturer informed us that the penalty was a minimum fine of $1,000 and could include up to two years in jail. The store, of course, would disavow and disown us if we were caught selling alcohol to minors. As a college student, I didn’t have that kind of money...or time...so I checked IDs every time. I was what you might call, motivated to be diligent.

Bank tellers are not similarly motivated to be diligent. It’s the "someone else’s monkey" school of behavior. If the ID is fraudulent and your money is stolen, someone else in the bank (at the service center) will have to deal with you. The teller will be out of the loop on that one. The hassle for the teller is the person immediately in front of them complaining about getting his ID checked, not the one whose ID was stolen. That monkey is on someone else’s back.

Others may say otherwise, but I have had two experiences with Citibank that have made me feel good about keeping my money there.

1. A few months back, I thought someone had opened a cell phone account with Verizon in my name. It turned out to be just a clerical error on Verizon's part, but when I contacted Citibank to check on my other accounts, they were very helpful in making sure that nothing else was fiddled with.

2. This past year, my mother was in the hospital for over a month. My father has dementia, and I was responsible for handling their finances during that time. My parents do not have an ATM card. Despite the fact that I have an account at Citibank and my name is on their accounts, they asked to see two different forms of ID and really appeared to look at it carefully. I was grateful for that.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but several friends of mine have had trouble with Wells Fargo. Not the "oops we gave your money to someone with a fake ID" type of trouble you had with BofA, but more the really, really crappy customer service type of trouble. One friend missed the closing date on her house because Wells Fargo couldn't get her loan processed in time. A couple of other people have had long delays in processing checks, and another guy I know had a 'bait and switch' experience with the terms of his checking account...suddenly there were lots of fees, etc.

I have heard that Wells Fargo is better for commercial banking than it is for individual banking...and what I've seen happen to my friends seems to support that.

> I personally have had very
> good service from Chase.

I hate Chase with the flaming cancer hatred of a sea slug in Mojave. Hate Chase. Hate Chase.

I had a heartening experience with Wells Fargo when some tool behind the counter at a convenience store used one of those swipey things to steal my debit card info and then took out about a thousand bucks in Vegas.

(rule number one: do not make debit purchases, ever. use it as a credit card if you must use it at all.)

I was in Virginia at the time, trying to access cash in a now-empty checking account.

Within a week, I had my money returned, and the thieves were arrested. They'd pulled the same scam on several WF customers, and all the fraud unit had to do was compare our statements to see what store we had in common, then go to the store with a still from the security camera at the Vegas ATM.

It took exactly one phone call to get it all taken care of, so while I was never thrilled with the people behind the plexiglass, as a company Wells Fargo takes their customer relations seriously.

ps: had a car loan through B of A, and as soon as that final payment was made, I severed my ties with those morons for good.

I would also stay away from WaMu. I wrote a check to a debt collector to pay off an account, who used that check to create more. When I finally figured out what happened and went to WaMu, they said it was my fault for writing a check in the first place and refused to return my money. This was after they froze my account, without telling me, bouncing my car payment, but still let this company write hot checks on a "frozen" acct.

Wow. The stories I keep hearing, mostly about BofA, because they seem to be particularly contemptuous of their customers, are just shocking.

I feel terrible if I don't live up to my obligations. It's astonishing to me that these people can live with themselves.

"We're the phone company. We don't have to care."

"P.S.
I would stay away from Wamu for other reasons that I would rather not post."

That they're heavily invested in bad home loans? ;)

I have relatives who've had no problems with Wamu. USBank hasn't been too bad, not great though.

I've not been happy with BofA since they bought out MBNA credit cards. They're web security is better but they're worse on various fees and in sending me "checks" to use on my credit card.

Sarahbeth: that's the worst story I've heard in this entire thread! They seriously told you "too bad" when your checks were forged??

Paul: Most likely the reason you see lots of BofA's in NYC now is because they were purchased by NationsBank (Charlotte NC) in the mid 90's. When this happened they took the B of A name because it was more recognizable than NB. It spread the B of A name from primarily the west to across the nation.

Amy: Anecdotes on the banks you're looking at: I hold a mortgage at WaMu, along with a small checking account which I transfer $$ to pay the mortgage. They're friendly and their online banking is adequate. I did have one weird snafu where my transfer (from B of A -haha) was returned "account doesn't exist". I found out that a live body does the data entry, so a key stroke cost me a rushed trip to WaMu when I didn't have the funds to cover the mortgage in my account. It kind of surprised me that there wasn't a bit more QC.

I had to take over my mother's accounts at Wells Fargo when she passed away. It was a trustee account and my name was on it. The paperwork to get it in my name took over two weeks, I am not kidding. The reps I spoke to in person couldn't remember me from one day to the next. Then once the accounts were in my name, they ended up being frozen when someone found out my mother had died - and didn't look at the account to see that I had already dealt with it. I also have another mortgage with them, so I still have to deal with them but they seem to make it easy for me to give them money.

One last thing. I worked for B of A when it was NationsBank and I lived on the east coast. Not in a branch. I was the accountant for their employees' child care center. They were a pretty good bank at the time. When they became BofA thinks went downhill fast.

One other last thing. I agree with you, Amy, that the person who couldn't get a withdrawal using an expired license should be grateful, not mad. Any time anyone asks me to verify my identity I thank them.

Would you mind telling us if you know how these miserable low lifes got enough of your information to steal from you, and if the bank refunded everything to you?

"Anybody got any experience with WaMu?"

Hey - think back, then go back to the beginning and look at my post with a graph of bank ID theft rates. HSBC and WaMu were the only two worse than B of A.

And make sure you've done what you can here if you haven't already.

Thanks so much, Raddy.

And here's one that came via e-mail from somebody who'd rather remain anonymous, and who asked that I post it for them:

I work for a medium-small bank that has about 50 branches (OH, FL, SC & CO) so we wouldn't be a good for you. We're getting into online banking but it isn't our specialty yet.

Anyway, we have a system set that your signature card is imaged and saved against all your accounts. If anyone goes to a branch to do any activity against your account (check cashing, large withdraws, etc) the tellers can pop-up the image of your signature and compare it right on the teller line. We have stopped more than a few fraudulent checks and such.

Just want to let you know that some of us in the industry actually do make an effort.

So great to hear that there are some out there like this.

My problem with BofA: if they'd advertised that a woman could go in to a branch with a fake ID in my name and take my money out with ease, , as is clearly the case, I could've made an informed decision about whether to bank with them.

Instead, they brag about their security.

My regret right now is that I have this book to write, plus my column, so I can't spend much time each week doing what I should be doing, like calling bank regulators and reporting them.

Also, they are well-aware I have a book due August 1. This firing of me as a customer right now, on top of everything I've had to deal with because of them, is just unconscionable.

I just saw Deanne Stillman, who recommended John DeAngello, the old manager at our bank, and talked about what a great guy he was, and how he looked after us as customers. Those were the days.

I can definitely recommend WAMU; I banked with them for YEARS when I lived in Seattle and then in Portland.

B of A sucks.

Just in case there is a Chase bank in your area, I wouldn't necessarily recommend them. I have banked with them for about two years and I have good and bad things to say about them.

Around the time I started the account, the retarded lady who opened my account got my address wrong and my checks and debit card were sent to three different addresses before I ever received either. In the confusion, somebody got ahold of my checking account number and started debiting my account of 50 dollars every month for several months for internet porn.

I called the fraud department several times in those months and they told me to call the number listed on the charge and that that company that was debiting was in charge of paying me back all charges accrued. Problem was, the number was not complete and so I was at an impasse until one month I noticed that there was a number that I could call.

I called the company and found out that the person who had set up the account had a name completely different than my own AND they lived in California and I live in Arizona.
Also, that month I had not only two charges from this company but I also had an electronic check debited from my account. I never write checks unless strictly necessary. Hate them with a passion. Looked up the electronic check and it was this mysterious person who lived in California.

So I went to my branch and talked to several people about the issue and they were very cool and got all my money back and opened a new account to a number that was night and day from my old one.

However, the fraud department were complete assholes and accused me of giving out my information. I literally got yelled at by them.

I only stay with them because I haven't had any problems with them since and they do call if I'm traveling and make sure that it's really me. Now.

In conclusion to my seriously long post, it seems they do have some security measures, but woe be to you if somebody actually gets past those.

Keep in mind that unless you have had a service problem, you haven't dealt with the part of the bank which will be important to you if your card or other info is stolen.

Keep in mind also that account protection can vary depending on the size and diligence of the IT department at your bank. They can protect you along with their big accounts, or assign you a lower priority.

However Chase does it, I was surprised to get a call from them within an hour of an unauthorized charge on my card. My name and mother's maiden name were filled in correctly, with the card number, by someone with a (possibly spoofed) IP address in Romania. They even had an e-mail address that looked like my realname@yahoo, which fooled the vendor - but not Chase.

When I called, I was instantly reassigned another card, the previous one was "shut off", and the vendor - who sent me a handheld barcode scanner and printer at the behest of the foreign agent - took the items back and credited my account. This was altogether a more successful time than anyone else I know of has had with most companies. I was most effusive with my thanks.

I use my cards a lot - and my habits haven't changed much in years, so they had a lot of data to establish what "unusual" might be.

Jesus, Amy! I wish I had something more comforting/useful to say! Hope this eventually gets sorted out for you, and I'll just throw my two cents in here and go w/the "Credit Union" chorus. I use a little local credit union, and they were quite awesome when my identity got stolen by some schmuck from a Sprint store two years ago. You've probably already done this, but if there's a wee local credit union near you w/in driving distance, I'd research it a bit to see what its members think, and set up an acct. w/them, stat!

I gave up on big banks ages ago after nothing but misery w/Fleet, which (I think,) was later bought by BofA. I switched to a little local bank in my old hometown, which was awesome, and was delighted when I moved to find the credit union in my new city to be just as terrific as my old bank. (It gets "Best Bank In The Region" awards year after year for a reason!) My mom used to work for small banks back in the day, and she said then, as now, it's way more customer-friendly at a small institution than it is w/the faceless multinantionals. I wouldn't mind having one of the said multinationals prove me wrong, but after hearing your story and others, I'm more than skeptical about their treatment of the people who, y'know... actually keep them afloat.

There is a lesson about banking to be had in the study of Hurricane Katrina.

If you do NOT have a bank with branches outside of the disaster area, you will be without money AND credit, because your bona fides will be difficult to establish at best.

Considering that you in California are more likely to be savaged by an 8.0+ earthquake this year than I am to win the lottery - umm, the NFL football pool at work, not the big multistate thing - this should be a consideration.

Consider, also, establishing an encrypted file with your account and contact information in a backup location. This can be a simple as an e-mail to yourself which remains on a secure mailserver, or a contract with a company like Iron Mountain. Burn a CD with that file on it to jam in your luggage if you have to leave.

@Radwaste A USB key is better than a CD, which can be corrupted.

My husband had an ATM card number duplicated and while his credit union made noises about how bad they felt, they weren't lightning fast on making it better.

DO NOT go with WAmu!!! They have surcharges for everything! And once a hotel resturant put the entire bill on my card (my friend paid cash and I used my debit card--which I signed for the correct ammount) I was on hold for an hour and a half. Then it still took another 8 weeks to get my money credited back to my account.
I just moved out to CA from MI and I kept my credit union. Credit unions are the way to go! There may not be an ATM on every corner but they ususally work in a "co-op" so you can use other credit union's ATMs. For example, I have MSUFCU but I can use WESCOM free of charge. So there is usually some credit union in the area. Go credit union its worth it!!!!

I've been with Wells Fargo (Norwest) for about 15 years and they're about what you'd expect from a big bank these days.

On the positive side: All of the basic stuff is usually done right. Their web site is pretty good and keeps getting better. You can get online statements instead of paper ones. Their staff is generally competent and courteous with the basics. Sometimes I've even gotten what I considered to be very good customer service. They have national ATM coverage and I've had good luck getting my money out from ATMs from major European banks, too.

On the negative side: They love to nickel and dime on fees. For example it's $5 a pop to make a foreign ATM withdrawal. They used to have the ability to payoff a line of credit via IVR, but now you have to talk to a banker. I can only think this is a scam to collect more interest. If you go beyond the basics, their customer service is extremely spotty. Go to two different branches, ask two different "bankers" the same question and the odds that you'll get the same answer is very low for anything but the most basic issues. When you wrote this story about BofA, the first thing that popped into my head was "I can imagine Wells doing the same thing."

A couple of bad things they've done within the last year: Their credit/debit card processing went down for a couple of days last August. I had a digital camera ordered from Amazon and the processing failures delayed its shipment. It almost didn't make it to me before I left for Europe. A few weeks later they changed my billing address without my consent or even notification, which caused two of my automatic recurring payments to fail.

There are two things that keep me from changing banks:
1. It's a big hassle.
2. I can choose among other big banks that suck (maybe even more) or small ones that don't have ATM coverage and good online service.

Raddy, I think that's great advice, and thanks, everybody for all your advice...it's really, really been helpful. I called First Federal of California yesterday morning before I went off to write, and their manager, Monique, was great, and had this great guy call me back -- he'd be the one doing all the work if I do go with them. Their website actually does work with Safari -- although it makes you authenticate every time, when it doesn't do that for PC's (what's your favorite flavor of Jell-O? or whatever), but, as I told him, MORE security is not a problem for me; quite the contrary.

Anyway, the guy - Dustin - has been there a while and talked about how he liked working for a company where they care for the customers and get to know them, and how they pride themselves on being a community bank. He seems like a great guy, and smart, and somebody who'd take care of issues.

And stuff happens, mistakes are made at any bank, but I just want a bank where they address them in a smart, timely manners, and where they seem to care about you as a customer, and also, where they have actual security not the kind of "security" I experienced at BOfA.

I'm still going to consider a credit union, but it really makes a difference that this is close, a community bank, that they were nice to Gary Musselman, and that I like this guy, Dustin.

Props to everybody who made comments about the web site designs.

If you try out more than one or two of these bank website interfaces, you learn something that I learned the hard way in my career as a technical functionary in TV: The average engineering guy is a bitter, do-it-my-way asshole.

Here's a meta-example. Watch this TED talk from a Microsoft functionary. The material under discussion is fascinating, right? Now, watch the guy's body language when the talk-show-host-style weasel asks him a question at near the end. The computer guy stares at him with tense arms as if ready for battle... He wants to get to the point, man.

Geeks (even weenie, low-voltage ones like myself) are like that. They soar high at the cost of nautical miles. Despite whatever brilliance this guy brought to the project under discussion, I can promise you that if the guy in the video was in charge of the interface for the final product, no one in the world would want to use it.

But bankers often trust their IT geeks to design these financial websites. And it's a hideous pain in the ass.

I would highly recommend looking at Credit Unions. I hear to avoid WAMU like the plague now (it was supposedly great like 10-20 years ago). Chase is not too bad - just don't get a credit card through them. Actually I hear the best is Bank Of America - sad to say.

I work for a bank though I am in the investment banking side. I don't think I would bank with retail side. (we aren't in CA.) sure we say the right things, but I doubt we would do the right things. The investment side is different, though a lot of that probably comes from a lot stricter laws we have to follow and closer monitoring.

Amy, glad to hear you found another bank.

I'm curious if anyone has an opinion of DCU, Digital Credit Union. There is a branch office near me in Marlboro MA and I checked and they are in Santa Monica, too. They seem like a huge outfit. I hear their radio commercials frequently about refinancing your car (which sounds like a really dumb thing to do, but hey, mine's paid for).

I've had Citizens Bank for 30 years and I'm not unhappy with anything except their online banking. They just "improved" it, but I still don't like the lag time. If a payee doesn't accept E payments it takes 7 days for Citizens to process my payments.

Your story is pretty infuriating. The worst thing Citizens bank has ever done to me was about 20 years ago. I had a really good job with the phone company. I went into the local branch every Thursday and cashed my paycheck. It was a pretty small branch with only 4 windows and it had no turn-over, so it was the same tellers every week for at least couple of years.

I had bought my first house and I was really tight on money. So I decided to get all my change together and cash it in. I managed to come up with about $35.00, which back then was enough for beer and cigarettes to get me to pay day. It was all rolled, but it was mostly pennies, with a couple of nickel and dime rolls.

They wouldn't take it. This teller, who had cashed my paycheck dozens of times, would not take it. A bank that won't take money. I was pretty incredulous. She was totally indifferent to me. She told me it was the banks policy, but if I wrote my account number on the rolls she'd make an exception.

So that's what I had to do. I had to write my account number on every single roll and I got my $35.

Funny, that was 20 years ago and it still pisses me off. I'd loved to switch to DCU. I've stayed with Citizens all these years out of habit. I only have to go to the local branch about once a year, if that. DCU has one nearby so I'm thinking about it.

BTW, I wonder if Bank Of America would take rolled coins from a 50 year old black woman with no teeth?

(Oh, and I have two credit cards with BoA and they have not been the same since they bought out MBNA.)

Another Wells Fargo deserter here. I got majorly pissed when they would take out my automatic payments BEFORE my automatic payroll deduction, then charge me NSF fees. The hell? They KNEW every 15th and 30th that check went in, but they took out the debits before adding in the credits, just so they could get a few extra (like $25 at the time, a few years ago) bucks.

I was in there right after that closing my account.

I too still have my credit union in MI, though I live in CO, and I use Compass Bank here for all my local banking. I love them. They still do have all the great customer service when you go into the bank, and they have totally free online banking, which I use on a Mac and it works perfectly.