Best Banks - Credit Cards, Checking

Financial Institutions

Best Banks - Credit Cards - Checking Accounts

This is a search engine survey of the biggest U.S. banks. I have summarized the negative complaints that have been reported by Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

There is no reason to stay with an arrogant, unresponsive bank. Consider switching to a new bank that may treat you far better, and cost you less money. Many smaller banks will try much harder to please you.

Banks - Best at the Bottom
	Feb. 20, 2007 "bankname s*cks" Pages Found					Feb. 20, 2007 "bankname complaints" Pages Found				2006 Depos. B$	Ratio Comp laints per B$	California Bank Name	Note
	Google	MSN	Yahoo	TOTAL		Google	MSN	Yahoo	TOTAL	2006 Depos. B$	Ratio Comp laints per B$	California Bank Name	Note
	536	409	1,060	2,005		685	282	816	1,783	683	2.6	Bank of America	Bought Fleet Boston (8)
	2,460 393	198 186	463 567	4,267		367 781	21 13	107 787	2,076	584	3.6	Chase Chase Bank	Bought Bank One (6)
	395 868	64 26	77 330	1,760		79 148	4 8	17 680	936	204	4.59	WAMU Washington Mutual	Many complaints
	581	222	377	1,180		172	8	214	464	330	1.4	Wachovia	Quite a few
	1,090	84	402	1,576		116	7	66	189	308	0.61	Wells Fargo	Many on Google
	35,800	1,599	83,400	120K		120	15	84	219	628	0.25	Citibank	Wild data!
	-	-	-	-		-	-	-	-	-		-	-
	27	2	7	36		23	1	1	25	45	0.55	Comerica	Looks good
	6	0	0	9		30	24	13	67	122	0.55	US Bancorp	Looks good
	9	1	2	14		8	1	81	90	42	2.1	Bank of the West	Poor ratio
	1	2	0	6		2	0	6	8	42	0.19	Union Bank	Looks excellent
10	50	50	50	50	10	50	50	50	50	50	50	180	150
	top of page Good banks and bad banks. What is the point? The point is that many people spend years and years with a bank that has treated them like dirt. They continue to put up with the same poor treatment. They are too lazy or too fearful to try a different bank. Or, just too accustomed to banking mediocrity. Or maybe their bank is in a super-convenient location, by chance (that's a tough one). What are we talking about here? - Checking Accounts - Refusing to credit your deposit for three days, even though the deposit is a check from a million-dollar company, and you have been depositing the same checks for over 1 year - GREED for the interest - Refusing to credit your deposit for three days, even though the deposit is "rock solid" (cashier's check, money order, etc.) - GREED for the interest - Online banking numbers do not agree with the automated teller numbers - INCOMPETENCE - Refusing to send you your cancelled checks, with no discussion, warning or recourse - ARROGANCE (This is the one that finally got to me, and resulted in this page, and a new bank account). - Charging exorbitant fees for insufficient funds, and onerous per-check fees - GREED What are we talking about here? - Credit Cards - Arbitrarily increasing your interest rate without notification or reason - GOUGING - Applying an extremely punitive interest rate for a single late payment - GOUGING - Not posting in a timely manner, resulting in late charges - GOUGING - Zero-interest balance transfer "bait and switch" - TRICKERY, BAD FAITH Have you experienced any of the negative activity listed above? Don't be a victim. Complacency can cause you much aggravation. And cost you money. Try a NEW CHECKING ACCOUNT, at a NEW BANK. If you have been treated poorly, you have nothing to lose, and possibly much to gain.

Disclaimer

My methodology of determining which is a good bank, and which is a bad bank, is fully described here -
Google bad company survey. I simply recount what others are saying.

This methodology is flawed in various ways. For example, I did not use the search terms "Wachovia Bank", "Wells Fargo Bank", "Comerica Bank", etc. which should have been included to achieve a more accurate picture. But my time is not infinite, so I used a sampling, just to get a flavor for what the method might reveal. Perform your own analysis, for more current data, that pertains to you.

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This Vaughns Best Banks according to search engines web page was updated on 2007-03-01.