The Great Migration 0

I have been banking at Wells-Fargo.

It wasn’t a choice. It just happened.

I was banking at a regional bank that got gobbled up by Wachovia. Then, two minutes before the bubble burst, Wachovia bought Fly-by-Night Mortgage Company, Inc., and was taken down by the bursting bubble, so I ended up with Wells.

Though I have not had a bad experience with any local Wells-Fargo branches or any Wells-Fargo employees, it is difficult not to conclude from recent news reports that Wells-Fargo has a deeply corrupt corporate culture at the highest levels.

As my first wife would have said, they have plucked my last nerve.

Accordingly, I have spent most of the last two days moving my banking business to another bank. (This was made easier by my choosing to use minimal online billpay. I’m not agin’ it; I just feared that I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it, so I still write “checks”–they are made from paper and they take the place of currency; you may have heard of them. Consequently, I had only about four online thingees to change.)

Yesterday I called up my pension fund (I’m old) to change my direct deposit from Wells to my new bank. After we had completed our business, the obliging fellow on the phone told me that they had gotten “lots of phone calls moving from Wells-Fargo” in the last week (and good for the callers, say I!).

I reminded him of the news stories. He said, “Oh, yeah. I remember reading something about that.” What followed was a cordial discussion about how a three-piece suit seems to be a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card and about how he and I were on the same wave-length about bankers and banking, but I digress. . . .

Now, I shall wait a month or so to be sure that everything is copacetic and then I shall finally forego Fargo for all time.