Chevy Chase Bank was my first. I was still in high school at the time, looking forward to college. I needed to take my first step in financial independence and I knew Chevy Chase Bank was the dominant bank on campus. It was also pretty convenient that Chevy Chase opened a branch office that operated inside my neighborhood grocery store. So I’ve been using Chevy Chase for almost seven years.
I read a few months ago that Chevy Chase Bank was going to abandon its partnership with grocery stores and instead focus on its aggressive expansion through building stand-alone branches with Roman columns and drive-thru ATMs. Luckily for me, I never go the grocery store branches anyways and I bank exclusively through online banking and ATMs. I figure if its one thing in this economy I can rely on, its Chevy Chase Bank.
I was wrong.
Yesterday, Chevy Chase Bank announced that it had sold off my account deposits, along with over $40 million deposits of other customers that had happened to open a Chevy Chase banking account through their grocery store partnership. Provident Bank, another local bank in the Maryland area, paid a 3% premium to acquire my account. Here’s an excerpt from the letter I received from Chevy Chase:
There’s no way I’m sticking with Provident, as I hear bad stories about their service from my friend who has had an account there. There are so many Chevy Chase branches around me, they are probably the most convenient bank for my location. But then again, do I want to stay with a bank that severed our business relationship and pawned me off to some unknown third party? As you can see from the letter and news reports of the behind-the-scene deal, I wasn’t even given a chance to decide if I wanted to stay or switch. It seems like Chevy Chase felt like they could make buck ($1.26 million bucks, actually) by selling off their customers and shipping me down the river.
I called Chevy Chase Bank’s customer service today to say I wanted to stay. The customer service rep took down my info and said I should expect a call back. In the meantime, I need to do some research on my area banks.