Portland State conflict resolution graduate student Erica Bestpitch opened her account with Wells Fargo two years ago while living in San Francisco and has had only kind words for the bank and its customer service ever since. The day she visited to close her account was no exception.
Anticipating bigger crowds on Saturday, Nov. 5—designated as the national Bank Transfer Day by the L.A.-based non-profit Move Your Money Project—Bestpitch decided to visit her local Wells Fargo branch on Friday, Nov. 4, instead.
For a Friday afternoon, the Wells Fargo at Southwest Fifth Avenue and Hall Street did not seem particularly busy to her. Bestpitch was greeted by a friendly banker after a short wait and was invited into his office. When he asked her what he could do for her that day, Bestpitch told him that she wanted to close her account with Wells Fargo.
“Is there a particular reason why?” the banker asked.
“You know why,” Bestpitch said playfully. Bestpitch, like thousands of other Americans that weekend, was celebrating Bank Transfer Day by moving her money from a large, for-profit bank to a credit union.
“Humor me,” said the Wells Fargo banker, whose identity Bestpitch declined to reveal after he expressed concern that her story may get him into trouble with his employer.
Bestpitch told him that increasing fees were behind her decision to leave Wells Fargo. After looking at her account file, the Wells Fargo banker let Bestpitch know that, from state to state, Wells Fargo has different policies. He told her that she could dodge the fees that were pushing her away from the bank by closing the account she opened in California and opening a new one with Wells Fargo in Oregon.
“He wasn’t being pushy,” Bestpitch said. “I could tell he just wanted to help me out.”
Nonetheless, she would not be deterred.
Bestpitch had been long considering the switch to a credit union. Even before the Move Your Money Project unveiled Bank Transfer Day, Bestpitch was attracted to credit unions for their accountability and cooperative, member-owned structure.
In terms of actually making the switch, Bestpitch said she “had the interest, but not the volition.” The Move Your Money Project provided the final push, and after doing some research and determining that all credit unions were about the same, Bestpitch decided to move her money to Advantis Credit Union, a Portland-area community bank.
Advantis wasn’t the only credit union to gain a new customer that weekend.
“We had record days for new memberships,” said Laurie Kresl, the vice president of planning and business development at Unitus Community Credit Union. “Our volume was up 72 percent over what is normal for those days of the week. We are also continuing to see very strong account openings even this week and I’m hearing the same from some of my credit union peers in the area.”
“I like that credit unions are joining the mainstream,” Bestpitch said.
Over their half hour together, Bestpitch and her Wells Fargo banker talked about the concerns that have recently been brought to a higher level of public awareness by the Move Your Money Project and the Occupy protests.
The Wells Fargo banker had a printout handy listing the many dollars and volunteer hours that the bank had spent serving community projects. But Bestpitch was not impressed. She admits that corporations are capable of community service, but “it almost doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Big banks can give as much charity as they want,” Bestpitch said. “But if their corporate power structure still upholds fundamental inequalities that keep people poor, real change can’t happen.”
For Bestpitch, though, the decision to leave Wells Fargo was not about retribution.
“It’s about making choices,” she said, “that support positive change on an individual level.”
“If it really doesn’t work out with the credit union, I can always come crawling back, right?” Bestpitch asked the banker.
“You don’t have to crawl,” the Wells Fargo banker said.
With the paper work out of the way, the banker counted out nearly $1,000 in cash, tucked it into an envelope and then handed Bestpitch her life savings.
“You’re really going to send me out into the world with a fist full of $100 bills?” she said.