WaFd Bank is headquartered in SEATTLE and is the largest bank in the state of Washington. It is also the 76th largest bank in the nation. It was established in 1917 and as of December of 2024, it had grown to 2,175 employees at 214 locations. WaFd Bank's money market rates are 5X the national average, and it boasts an A+ health rating.
Customer Care Home Run
Customer care? Customer service? Customer support? Client services? I’m not quite sure what the trendiest term is for what, essentially, is how a company addresses its customers’ or clients’ needs, but I prefer customer or client care. Why? Well, right there in the label is the notion that an organization cares about its customers or clients. That’s at least a start.
There’s little guarantee (we know they don’t exist in real life, don’t we?) that just because an organization has the name right, that they also have the thing itself right. How many customer care departments have you encountered where there is no real “care” evident? I’m old so there have been quite a in that category over my lifetime.
WaFd Bank (formerly Washington Federal Bank), headquartered in Seattle, Washington, is not a large banking organization (although it operates in eight states and maintains over 200 local branches), and it did not appear on any of the several lists of “best customer service” banks that I consulted. If, however, the response I received from WaFd’s leadership after I fired off an unhappy customer email yesterday reflects the organization’s commitment to customer care, real customer care, then I wouldn’t be surprised to see WaFd climb the ladder of those “best of” lists, as well as the list of largest banks determined by assets and customer accounts.
The details of the situation that resulted in my displeasure aren’t important, and it did take several calls to get things resolved. However, what is important is that at multiple organizational levels (call center, branch management, executive leadership), I encountered at least one person who displayed exemplary customer care.
At the call center level, despite my admittedly irritated phone demeanor, Nick, the fourth online banking consultant with whom I spoke, performed quintessentially. Nick was patient, attentive, listened well, established rapport, diagnosed the issue, informed me of how he intended to address the situation, and informed me that, although he couldn’t complete the fix himself immediately, he would bring the problem to the attention of those who could. He also assured me that he would follow-up before he completed his shift for the day. Nick did follow-up with a call, checking all the boxes for outstanding customer care.
Moving on to the local branch level, being advised that the local branch needed to be involved in the fix, I called our local Silver City, New Mexico branch, specifically seeking to connect with Jaclynn Rodriguez. We had opened our WaFd free-checking account in January of 2020 with Ms. Rodriguez and her customer interface skills were superb. The few times we have needed to connect with the local branch, we sought out Ms. Rodriguez and have yet to be disappointed.
I eventually reached Ms. Rodriguez late in the afternoon and through her efforts the troubling situation was resolved in fewer than 30 minutes. Consistent with our previous experiences, Ms. Rodriguez had been the ultimate professional, displaying all the traits exhibited by Nick above, including the addition of problem resolution with a vocal smile.
During my time on hold, I began detailing the experience, including documenting the individuals I had spoken with, noting the time I was spending on these calls, etc. Having already spent far more time than I would have liked on the situation, I decided to take additional time to write to WaFd’s executive management. Honestly, I wasn’t really expecting much except perhaps a standard, cookie-cutter email response within a few days.
My email was sent at 5:24pm to multiple individuals on the executive leadership team, including Brent Beardall, president and CEO, and Cathy Cooper, executive vice president and retail banking group manager. At 7:16pm, I answered a call, and to my pleasant astonishment, the caller was Michelle Coons, New Mexico regional president. Seriously? After 7pm on a Friday evening? A follow-up call from a regional president? For the mathematically challenged, it had been less than two hours since my email was sent.
Ms. Coons was on her way into an athletic facility to watch her son’s football game when she called, but she told me that she had received a call from Mr. Beardall who had read my email and wanted immediate action taken. Ms. Coons had obliged, assuring me that their team was investigating the situation and would follow-up.
I must admit to feeling a tad regretful that my email had resulted in Ms. Coons losing some valued time with her son, and I ended the conversation after a few minutes. Let me be clear, Ms. Coons didn’t not seem in a hurry to get off the phone. She seemed most concerned about my experience and about making things right.
The response from WaFd’s leadership thus far had already been world-class, but this morning I opened my inbox to see an email from Ms. Cooper, the executive vice president I mentioned above. I saw the email this morning, but it was time-stamped 9:02pm last night. An email from WaFd’s leadership team at 9pm on a Friday night, following a call from a regional president?
Okay, you might not be impressed, but by now you should be able to tell that I most certainly am. Surely there’s a hefty dollop of damage-control involved, but listen folks, we have a microscopic account balance at WaFd. Viewed financially- actually, from any perspective- we are not upper echelon customers. Heck, we’ve only banked with WaFd for just under two years, so we are not even long-term customers. And yet, we received upper echelon customer care initiated and executed by the most senior of WaFd’s executives.
The story that I might have told today, had WaFd’s executive leadership team not cut that narrative off at the pass, would not have been a pretty one. However, their response reminded me that this was the very first time that I had been displeased with WaFd’s customer care. Of course, perfect is nice, but 99.9% ain’t bad either. Instead of panning WaFd for yesterday’s experience, today I am singing the praises of an organization whose leadership team is willing to go the extra mile to address its customers' concerns and to protect organization’s public profile.
I don’t often think about having a vast fortune, but today I wish I did so that I could make a momentous deposit at our Silver City, New Mexico WaFd branch. Maybe one day. Thank to every member of the team that contributed to the restoration of my faith in excellent customer care and in WaFd Bank!
I Was Attracted To Their 5% APY 3 Month CD
So I went in and opened a free checking yesterday and transferred money in today to open a 3 Mo. CD.
I WAS TOLD THAT I HAD TO COME INTO THE BANK TO SIGN A SINATURE CARD FOR THE 3 Mo. CD.
I found it odd that I could open other CD’s for lower rates on the internet without having to go into the bank.
So, to open this 3 Mo. 5% CD I had to drive 50 miles to sign a signature card at the time of opening the CD.
SO, 1/2 of my 3 month interest is already spent on the gas it took to go sign the signature card…
I feel that some of their policies need to change if they want more customers.
Not very customer service oriented and many weird rules..
I will see how it goes, but, so far I’m not impressed.
I hope they get it together and become more customer service oriented…..
Zelle Transactions
I've been a customer at this bank for 25 years and had always been satisfied with their service until 2023. Unfortunately, I noticed three unauthorized transactions on my account, all to the same person, at 1:14 p.m., 1:17 p.m., and 1:25 p.m. I wasn't notified about these transactions until 5:08 p.m. I immediately requested for the transactions to be cancelled, but the bank allowed them to go through, deducting the money from my account. Despite my numerous attempts, the bank has refused to acknowledge the error and has denied my requests for reimbursement over the past 7 months. Don't trust WAFD with Zelle.
Bad Service All Around
I opened the account a few months ago. For 3 weeks I could not use online banking because the bugs in there app. 4 or 5 times I tried contacting support and they never answered or returned the phone call like there system stated would happen. I did a transfer between accounts on Sunday at the ATM it showed it went through , I had the Receipt. The next day the money was transferred back to the other account without my knowledge. I went in the bank and the teller couldn't find the transaction. I deposited my pay check through the ATM and here it is almost closing of the next business day and the teller can't find that transaction, so now they lost my paycheck. Thank God I never closed my old bank account. I'm going back to that bank.
Horrible Customer Service
Poor customer service. New web page doesn't support quicken. Been trying to get support for 4 weeks. No responses in their online chat or email. Always have to wait on hold and don't get call backs. They say with Stellar checking you get free checks don't believe it. Getting hard to believe anything from them, especially when you can't get responses. This bank has gone downhill fast. I was with First Mutual then WaFd bought it. Was ok at first, but now just an extremely poor customer experience. Avoid. I am now looking to move my longtime account with them to another bank.
Very Bad Experience
This is the worst Bank I've ever seen.
They recently bought my mortgage and after a struggle I was able to set online payments online.
After a month the recurring payment that I set up was cancelled without any notification. Luckily I've checked the status of my account a saw that the order was canceled and the site did not allow to set it up again. If I haven't check it, this could impact my credit score.
Then I've called the costumer service and they told me that it is a bug in their system and I cannot set it up online. And I need to fill an ACH form and send to them.
After I filled the form, I called after a few days to see if it went thru and they told me that I received the form but it will be start charging only from next month.
So in order to pay the current month I need to go physically to the bank and bring them a check. Why it is not possible to pay my mortgage online???
OK, so I drove to the bank and gave them a check for the payment.
But, this is not the end of this horrible nightmare...
Today when I checked my bank account I discovered that I was charged twice!!! One for the check and another time for the ACH form that was not supposed to happen.
This is so frustrating, I would recommend to avoid this bank at all cost.
Data as of Q4 2024
Learn why bank health mattersHealth Grade Components
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| FDIC Certificate # | 28088 |
| Year Established | 1917 |
| Employees | 2175 |
| Primary Regulator | FDIC |
| Profit Margin | |
|---|---|
| Return on Assets - YTD | 0.73% |
| Return on Equity - YTD | 6.93% |
| Annual Interest Income | $1.43B |
| Assets and Liabilities | ||
|---|---|---|
| Assets | Q4 2024vs Q4 2023 | $27.67B$22.64B |
| Loans | Q4 2024vs Q4 2023 | $21.07B$17.59B |
| Deposits | Q4 2024vs Q4 2023 | $21.57B$16.17B |
| Equity Capital | Q4 2024vs Q4 2023 | $3.01B$2.38B |
| Loan Loss Allowance | Q4 2024vs Q4 2023 | $204.5MM$179.3MM |
| Unbacked Noncurrent Loans | Q4 2024vs Q4 2023 | $72.5MM$45.3MM |
| Real Estate Owned | Q4 2024vs Q4 2023 | $3.3MM$6.8MM |
