When I setup the DBA for my company, Gruby Solutions, I went ahead and found a free business checking account with Washington Mutual. While I didn’t need a bank account as my company is a sole proprietorship, I figured it would look more professional and could have some benefits down the line. When Chase bought Washington Mutual, the free account transferred over. When my wife was looking for a bank account for her business, she also chose Chase.
Things were fine until last month when Chase sent us letters saying that they’d start charging us $15 per month for our accounts, but with a minimum balance of like $5000 or a large number of debit card transactions, the fee would go down. As my company isn’t bringing in any money right now, I decided to simply close my account. My wife, on the other hand, needs her account for her business. She did some research and found that Comerica bank offered free business accounts; there is a branch pretty close to our house, so it was a no brainer for her to also start the process of closing her account. (They do charge for allowing us to hook Quicken to it which annoys me as I’ve gotten used to downloading transactions from my bank.)
While I understand that Chase probably considered us freeloaders, they lost 2 banking customers that will likely never return.