Kevin Fujii with the Seattle contacted me about doing a story on the human face of the WaMu catastrophe:
“My name is Kevin Fujii. I’m a picture editor at The Seattle Times. And, Im wondering if you can help us out.
With all these stories we’re doing about the sell of WaMu, foreclosures, their failures, gov’t seizure, lay offs and such, I feel we’re missing something. We’re missing the people affected by this banking institution’s failure. “How does it affect the human condition?” I keep asking myself.
From reading your Web site, I gather you’re in Calif. Has anyone in the Seattle/Tacoma area who’s been affected by WaMu’s failures contacted you. And, if they have, would you kindly forward my email to them, please?
I would like to get a visual project of someting akin to “the faces WaMu failed”. Maybe a series of portraits or a multimedia piece for our Web site with stills and audio or a video piece.
I’m looking for people affected by WaMu’s failure. Maybe those who lost their homes because of the sub-prime mortgage mess, lost their job with WaMu and will openly criticize their former employer and any other way a Seattle-area WaMu customer/employee/contractor/client have been affected by their failures.”
If you are a victim of the WaMu failure, and want to be part of their story, please email Kevin Fujii at “kfujii at seattletimes dot com” (at = ‘@’, dot = ‘.’ and remove the spaces).
Washington Mutual, it seems, has done everything wrong. My criticism of them started out a few years ago about their poor customer service. In the last year, as their exposure to the sub-prime lending debacle has come to light, the bank has suffered considerably in their ability to keep going as an independent bank, and their customer service got progressively worse. Both their customer service problems and their sub-prime exposure were related to the same core problem – poor leadership. I have always stated that my desire was for Washington Mutual to take the information I publish on this site and use it to improve their customer service; it appears that this is up to JP Morgan Chase now, which I hope is a much better bank.
To continue to provide a place where people can share their experiences, I have added chase-sucks.org as an address for this site. Because I don’t have any experience with JP Morgan Chase and I can only hope they are a better bank than WaMu was.
The next few months will be a critical time for all (former) WaMu customers. Please continue to send me your stories so everyone can see how the transition is going. If things get better or worse, people need to know about it.
If you are a JP Morgan Chase customer, all of your WaMu brethren want to know what kind of a bank they are getting; please send me your stories, both good and bad.
SAY GOODBYE TO WAMU (WSJ story)
As reported in the Wall Street Journal today, WaMu is looking to be bought.
WaMu’s CEO got his walking papers today (WSJ story). While I am sure this is because of WaMu’s bad subprime lending history, I hope the new CEO will address their poor customer service as well.
Word from a friend at one of the big investment banks is that WaMu is the next big bank in danger of being taken over by the FDIC. That was before today’s infusion of investment in WaMu.
Reader Liz writes us that WaMu is bouncing her checks for $11,000 despite having over $30,000 in her account. Is WaMu running out of money?
WaMu failure | admin September 27, 2008 | 
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