Verizon for the fail

The first time David and I moved apartments, back in 2000, it took us four months to get a working phone line.

The problem was a fight between Verizon and MCI. For reasons I happily no longer remember, we were caught in a giant wrangle between the two over whose job it was to physically hook up our line -- one company owned the wires in our area, the other had our account, and resolving the standoff took me more than two dozen phone calls and countless hours of battling through Inferno-like levels of "customer service." In retrospect, I can't believe I didn't just swear off landlines on the spot and go mobile, but the whole thing eventually got so Kafkaesque that I was determined to pry a phone line out of these companies just to prove that I could.

It was good foreshadowing. Ever since, pretty much every interaction I've had with Verizon has been fraught with errors and incompetence.

I was all set to join the modern world and scrap our landline in April in our move. We'd be just fine with Skype and mobile phones, I figured, and hey, it would save us $50-$70 a month. That's what it was costing us to have a dial tone and an occasional phone call to Australia. (I was paying $10 a month for an international calling plan that gave us sensible per-minute rates, since I learned the expensive way how bat@%^! the rack rates are for overseas calls.)

But then we found out our new building was wired for Verizon FIOS. That meant that instead of kicking Verizon to the curb and consolidating our communications bills with the cable company, we could instead give Time Warner the boot and go all-in with Verizon.

Like every other cable customer, I've watched my bills creep up over the years, from about $100 six years ago (for cable and cable-modem broadband Internet) to more than $160 this year. On the flip side, Verizon was touting its "triple play" cable/Internet/phone combo packages for $89.99 a month.

I knew our bill wouldn't really be $90 a month -- fees and taxes always seem to add another 50% to telecom bills -- but it still seemed worth investigating. So I rang up, asked many pointed questions about the plan ("Are there installation fees? Equipment fees? Fees for extra computers? Required blood sacrifices every fortnight, which you charge extra fees for missing?"), and signed on. The add-on fees I agreed to were an extra $5.99 a month for equipment rental (which really should be part of the standard cost quote, but whatever) and $10 a month more for a 300/minute overseas international calling bundle. So, total bill each month should be $106 -- plus, I figured, an extra $20-$40 for taxes.

On Friday, the first bill arrived: $203.96. <insert primal screams here>

It wasn't just that the bill was too high that irked me. It was that I would now have to slog through "customer service" to untangle the mess.

And it was indeed a total mess. Despite email records confirming my order of the triple-bundle-package thingie, Verizon ran my bill for each service individually. The amounts listed didn't even reconcile -- random charges and credits skittered all around the bill, making no sense on their own and, even better, not actually adding up to the listed grand total. Instead of even attempting to sort it out, I threw up my hands and called Verizon.

Where it took half an hour to fight through the automated prompts and connect with a live human being. Happily, once I finally landed one, he looked at my bill for about 30 seconds before agreeing that it was fubared.

Twenty minutes of hold music later, I had my bill "repaired" (in theory) and knocked down to $140.56. That seems to include two months of Internet charges (prepaying May), which doesn't make sense to me if this is supposedly a level-monthly-billing plan, but I'm not inclined to battle about it.

I'm also not convinced this whole thing is actually fixed. We'll see what shows up in next month's bill.

And since my bill has been screwed up literally every single time I've signed up for new services with Verizon, I've got to assume this isn't actually incompetence. It's a business strategy -- mess up the bills and see what percentage of customers notice.

Grr.

Chase's incredibly sleazy WaMu bait-and-switch

Well, I need a new bank. Again.

As mentioned before, I have one hard-and-fast, possibly irrational demand for my bank accounts: No fee for using outside ATMs. I'll pay a fee to the ATM operator. I think the fees are obnoxiously high ($2 to spit out some cash? Really?), but I can at least recognize that the ATM owner is providing me with a service. For my own bank to charge me a fee for daring to venture outside its ATM network is punitive and controlling and it makes me wildly angry.

I realise that getting as wound up as I do about something that, at the outside, would cost me maybe $100 a year is unreasonable. I'll drop $100 for a dinner out without wincing. But. For whatever reason, this is my flash point. I do not want to do business with a bank that charges me for outside ATM withdrawls.

The last time I went bank shopping, WaMu won in large part because it didn't have outside ATM fees. That turned out to be not wholly true -- WaMu sneakily snuck in fees for checking your account balance at an outside ATM, even though withdrawing cash was free -- but I grouchily decided to let that stand.

When WaMu went down, this was my biggest and most immediate concern about getting rolled to Chase: ATM FEES, DO NOT WANT.

It took Chase nearly a year to actually force migrate me from the WaMu platform to their own, which finally happened in full in July. Chase sent out a giant, thick packet of diclosures about my new bank account. I, of course, skipped right to the ATM fees section, and found what seemed to be good news. For ex-WaMu customers, Chase was creating a new account, "Chase Free Extra Checking." Key difference between that and Chase's usual checking: No outside ATM fees.

I was pleasantly impressed. Chase seemed to be doing the right thing by its WamMu crowd. I carried on, relatively happy with my new bank.

Until this morning, when I went to balance my checkbook. And found, littered through my November transaction register, two $2 fees labeled "NON-CHASE ATM FEE-WITH"

What. the. hell!?

So, spitting bullets, I called Chase customer service. The rep explained that my account terms called for no fee for the first two non-Chase ATM withdrawls each month, and a $2 fee thereafter.

NO, I fired back. NOT TRUE. I have here this giant thick account disclosure paperwork stack which explicitly says no fees ever ...

While she put me on hold to go find an account specialist, I went Googling.

And found this blog post, with a warning in the comments about "IMPORTANT CHANGE TO NON-CHASE ATM FEES
FOR CHASE FREE EXTRA CHECKING"

Oh bugger.

Seems Chase snuck a pretty significant change in the account terms into the fine print of September statements. Here's the thing: Like almost everyone else on Earth these days, I have paperless statements. I don't read them. I scan my account register to reconcile things, but don't go reading fine print each month. And Chase never sent any kind of alert or special disclosure about "hey, we're changing the terms of your account, here's the explainer to read."

I pulled up the electronic version of my September statement, and sure enough, there's the ATM fee change notice. A whole TWO MONTHS after Chase helpfully assured me it wouldn't change fees. And the "two a month" bit is temporary -- starting 2/2/2010, all non-Chase ATM withdrawls are slapped with fees.

I'm pissed off and bank shopping.

It's not just the fee. It's the slimy way it was snuck through, and the lack of transparency, and the general sense I've always had from Chase that customer service is way, way down on their priority list, significantly below "pry every dollar we can from the marks we do business with." I always hated the way they treat credit-card customers. I shouldn't have expected them to treat banking customers any better.

So. Anyone have a bank they actually like? With no ATM fees. Because I am getting the hell out of Dodge, before Jamie Dimon's hordes figure out a way to slap a surcharge on customers for consuming oxygen or whatnot.

Greetings, JPMorgan Chase overlords

Sigh. This feels so ... familiar. All I ask is one full year in which my accounts stay in the control of an actual bank, rather than the FDIC. One year. Is that so hard?

Thin envelopes, part II

The 401(k) nonsense was slightly perturbing, but it was the second thin envelope in today's mail that really distressed me.

American Express is discontinuing my credit card.

There's a certain irony to this arriving in the mail the same day Amex announced no good very bad quarterly earnings. I imagine that at some point in the past few months, pressured Amex executives decided to "rationalize" ("right-size?" what's our current jargon for "whack things"?) their product offerings. And clearly, my preferred product offering got rationalized right out of the portfolio.

I've blogged before about how and why I picked Amex's In NYC card as my default card. I've had it since December 2004 or so, and it's been perfect for me -- I use the reward points, I pay little to nothing in fees, I've used the various protections it's offered (oh boy, have I -- that's the happy-financial-services post Coming Soon), and all my infrequently problems have been resolved fairly easily. Plus, it's black, and occasionally gets mistaken for an actual Amex black card. It's fun!

But as of November 2008, saith this letter, my card is discontinued. It's being replaced with an Amex Blue card.

Amex is trying to make this painless, I guess. My points roll over. My balance and (I hope, I hope) transaction history presumably will too. I'm assured I'll be able to use "Membership Rewards Express," which has "more than 140 redemption partners."

But they probably won't be my redemption partners -- local restaurants, a nice local spa I routinely drag friends to with my points, and so on. (Ok, I just loaded up membershiprewards.com, and the featured partner of the moment is Olive Garden. I'm doomed.) Plus, I have the fun of knowing that in two weeks or so I'll get the new cardmember agreement and have to pour over the fine print to see how similar it actually is to my current card. I'm assured that "many" of the things I "like about [my] In NYC Credit Card" are available with Blue. "Many" != "exactly the same."

Adding to the joy: I think I have a Blue card already. In college, I had an Optima card. I zeroed out the balance but never cancelled the card, and at some point it seems to have morphed into a Blue card; it still shows up on my credit reports and I get mail every so often about my exciting Blue cardmember opportunities. What happens now if I end up with two Blue accounts? No clue.

This bites. I'm gonna sign offline and go sulk now. (Actually, I'm trying to cash in my points for a Jean Georges gift certificate first. Then sulking commences.) RIP, my beloved In NYC Amex.

(Oh, and the third thin envelope was junk mail. After the first two, that was a relief.)

WaMu: No good VERY BAD fees

I may need a new bank. Again. GRR RAR GRUMP BOO HISS.

Back last year, when I was auditioning banks, I mentioned that my #1 absolute hard-and-fast requirement was no fees, especially for using third-party ATMs.

This is something I get irrationally cranky about. I think it's downright usurious for banks to charge their own customers back-end fees for using outside ATMs. (I'm OK with ATM operators charging front-end fees for using their machines, though I wish they were legally capped at something sensible. $1, maybe $1.50, fine. $3 and up? Sod off, Chase.) I scratched off my list every bank that charged such fees. I ended up with WaMu.

And for several months, all was fine ... until, in late April, what did I spy? A random $2 charge on my statement for "ATM BALANCE INQUIRY FEE - DOMESTIC."

Er um? This is WaMu, the company of "Start free and stay free," the company that advertises "free checks for life, free wire transfers, free ATMs, free online banking, free check safekeeping, no monthly fees." What is this balance inquiry fee nonsense?

Off went my cranky email to customer service. Back came their formulaic cut-and-pasted reply:

The fee for a balance inquiry at a non-Washington Mutual ATM is $2 per inquiry. Your previous statement period was March 11, 2008, to April 11, 2008. This $2 fee indicates one balance inquiry performed at a non-Washington Mutual ATM during that period.

ATM balance inquiry fees are charged for balance inquiries that are made at non-Washington Mutual ATMs. The fees collect during the statement period and will post as a single transaction at the end of the statement cycle. As a result, the balance inquiry fee may not post for up to a month after the balance inquiry was made. ...

In some cases, the ATM itself may initiate a balance inquiry to verify the balance in your account. In most cases, the ATM wont [sic] inform you of the balance inquiry. Because the balance inquiry doesnt generate a fee that is included in the withdrawal amount, the owner of the ATM isnt required to inform you of the balance inquiry.

(Yes, all lack of apostrophes are reproduced verbatim.)

The letter went on repetitively in this vein for several paragraphs, but the gist of it boils down to: We charge you $2 for balance inquiries (not withdrawls! withdrawls are free, because we are WaMu and market that to high heaven!) at non-WaMu ATMs. Even if you do not actually hit the buttons to inquiry after your balance, we may charge this fee anyway if the ATM decides to automatically ask what your balance is before giving you money. Because these are batch-processed and may not post till the end of the month, you have no real way of backtracking what ATM this came from and whether or not it's legit. Byebye!

At which point, of course, my blood pressure went off like Mount Vesuvius. I think I spent a full hour or two railing at David about this, who waited it out and then pointed out that I have to be one of the only "consumer advocate" types out there who can happily drop $22 for a single piece of sushi (er, we went to Bar Masa ...) and yet spend hours obsessing about a $2 fee. Which, ok, yes, point. But still.

I never, ever, ever inquire after balances at any ATM (my obsessive PocketMoney tracking means I always know to the penny what should be in my checking account), but I've been hit with this %^@$@$ $2 fee twice more. I'm toying with just how irate it makes me. On the one hand, even I realise that $6 is not worth the hell of going through changing banks. On the other hand, I deeply dislike the deceptiveness of the charge, and the general level of fee-grubbing sneakiness it indicates.

If this were my one and only problem with WaMu, I'd probably grit my teeth, write nasty blog posts, and stick it out. But I'm now on my third unrelated incident - in 10 months - that has me grumbling about my bank. Three times now (this weekend was the third) I've had debit charges come through improperly. Twice, a merchant charge ran through my account twice ($28 or so the first time, $50.50 this week); once, an ATM charged me $7 for a withdraw fee posted as a $2. David, who withdrew the same amount minutes later at the same exact ATM from his Citibank account, was charged $2.

Every time, I've clicked the "dispute charge" icon helpfully listed next to every item in my online account balance register. Every time, I've received a very clearly cut-and-pasted form letter which has been utterly unhelpful, blaming the merchant and saying to call WaMu if I need further assistance. Every time, calling has led me down a Kafkaesque chain of transfers which has ultimately resulted in me being told I need to take this up with the merchant, not WaMu.

I'm now trying to sort the latest charge, for $50.50, out with the merchant, who is being vastly more responsive and helpful than WaMu. It's entirely possible that the merchant, who I know and like and I also know has some kludgy low-tech systems in place, accidentally ran the charge twice. But in almost 10 years with NetBank and at least as long with Amex and various other credit-card companies, I've never had a double billing post to any other account. I am cursed with fraudulent charges, blessed without accidental ones. I have to assume there were some basic algorithms in place to catch likely double-billing attempts. (The same amount, from the same merchant, posted hours apart? Could it possibly be an error?) Systems WaMu lacks.

So. Much as I don't want to move accounts yet again, I'm eying WaMu very carefully and awaiting further annoyance.

Anyone out there have a bank that doesn't charge outside ATM fees (my admittedly irrational deepest financial loathing) that they actually like?

A rant about usurious long-distance pricing

I realise complaining about extortionate phone company pricing is like complaining about the sun rising each day, but -- ARUGH. I just got bit by pricing that has me very cranky at Verizon.

So, David is from Australia. At home, we have Verizon's international calling plan, where we pay $3 or whatnot a month and get a flat rate to call Australia of 14-cents-a-minute or thereabouts. Calling his mum's cell is slightly more expensive, 33 cents or so. Fine.

For Christmas, we went home to my Dad's. Dad has your standard no-frills Verizon package. I suggested David call his family to say hi, and told Dad we'd reimburse the cost. I figured it would be more than our discounted rate, but didn't think much about what it would actually be.

Just got the bill. 28 minute call. $105.56.

$3.77/minute.

Are they @^&%@^%@ kidding?

I am horked off, cranky as hell ... and realise I have no recourse. We made the call. I didn't ask about the rate. It is what it is. But RAR. Even more infuriatingly, there would have been no real way to find the rate in advance. I just spent half an hour banging on Verizon's website. If there's a way to find international calling costs, I can't excavate it. I eventually found a customer service number, and planned to call them and ask about the rate. Except they're closed weekends.

This sort of blatently abusive shit pisses me off. I am totally fine with paying a higher-per minute rate than I get under my discounted plan -- but I would like that rate to have some sane basis. It obviously does not cost Verzion $3 more per minute to provide me service. If I'd known that was the rate, I would have gone out and bought a damn prepaid card and saved $100 or so.

Grr. I guess there's nothing really I can do except remember from now on to never, ever, ever make an international call without a prepaid card, but does anyone know if there's a regulatory body I can at least send off a complaint at? BBB? FCC?

Sigh. I guess $100 is the price I pay to be reminded that phone companies are heinous bastions of usurious pricing that one must be ever-vigilant about.

Today's GRR award winner

I occasionally get unsolicited emails from people wanting to advertise on Birds & Bills. The site doesn't accept advertising, so while these emails are fruitless, they're generally slight mood-lifters -- it's reassuring to find out the site is on the radar and people read it, despite my woefully sporadic update schedule.

This week, though, I got an unsolicited pitch that had me reaching for the big spiky GRR bat. It's from a website called www.AboutYourMoney.co.uk. Let me let them speak for themselves.

We are currently seeking to put "sponsored reviews" of our website on the best financial blogs out there. We absolutely loved your blog so we wondered if we could write a feature review for it?

We would be doing the writing of course, so all you need to do is post it and get paid!

We'll pay you $65 for the privilege (paid by Paypal, straight after the blog post is up). This is dependent on the condition that the blog is not identified as a paid for review on your blog. We do not want you to disclose that in any way.

Blogs are not (generally; there are exceptions) journalism. Blogs are not and probably should not be held to the same standard as journalistic reports penned by staff writers. To my mind, they're more akin to piece written by topical freelancers, where conflicts-of-interest run rampant and all you can do is rely on everyone involved to exercise good judgment and be transparent about anything that should be disclosed.

But there is still a line between gray areas and straight-up unethical behavior. Undisclosed, paid commercial content masquerading as unbiased commentary is flat-out and unequivocally on the wrong side of it. Sadly, I see a few bloggers have taken the $65 bait. I'm putting this up in hopes it'll be found by anyone who comes across a post about
www.AboutYourMoney.co.uk and goes looking for info. Reputable sites don't need to resort to this kind of trickery.

(I might need to make GRR awards a tag. I see I have handed them out before.)

Getting scammed in Vegas

Or, "how I managed to (almost) lose money in the casino without so much as playing the slot machines."

I'm in Las Vegas this week covering a software conference. Vegas is, under the best of circumstances, not one of my favourite places, and for an assortment of reasons, this week is far from The Best of Circumstances. Feeling nauseous and mildly flu-like this morning, I decided to briefly escape the conference to hunt down some soup and hide with my book.

A minute or so after I sat down at The Noodle Shop (it sounded like a promising place for finding soup), another solo diner was seated at a table behind mine. Thirty seconds later, she was descending on mine.

"I don't want to eat alone!" she announced loudly. "Girls shouldn't eat alone! Can I sit with you?" she asked, as she sat down.

Well, ug. It had been a yucky morning. I was feeling sick. My brain was screaming "I'm an introvert in a cranky mood! No! Go away!"

But I am a polite introvert. So I sighed, forced a smile and said ok.

She proceeded to generally be loud, demanding and talkative. I said as little as I could get away with, trying to will the food to arrive fast so I could eat and escape, as she rattled on in a spacey way and I tried to melt into the carpet.

Here's where I should have twigged sooner something was up: She kept trying to involve me in her scene. Touching my arm. Trying to foist an appetizer on me, despite my strained insistence that no, really, I was feeling ill. Overall, creating the impression that we were actually dining together as a party.

And then, after the dishes arrived and she'd munched through most of hers, she stood up, announced she had an appointment, and walked out.

With me sitting there with a check.

Arugh. I was at that point so worn out and startled that it took me a full minute to realise what she'd engineered.

And then the feeling of stupidity set in. I live in New York. I have heard variants of almost every possible scam tried out on street corners and subways. I don't fall for them. But I'd managed to fall for this one.

Arugh.

My first inclination was to just pay the damn bill and be done with it. I'm traveling for work, most of my costs are being expensed, I could either find a way to write it off or just eat the $20.

But the principle of the thing annoyed me. I decided to see what would happen if I asked the waiter for a separate check. I think the restaurant staff saw what the woman had pulled, and the waiter brought me a check for just my side of the bill, quietly cleared away her side, and ignored it. I left a very nice tip.

So, in the end, the restaurant ate the loss, not me. But still. Just the kicker I needed for my Annoying Frustrating No Good Very Bad Day. And now I have learned the unpleasant way: If someone plants themselves at your table in a restaurant (especially in a place like Vegas), ask for separate checks straight off -- or fight down the polite impulses and tell them you intend to eat alone.

Today's GRR award winner: JetBlue

One of my first Birds & Bills posts was about how frequent flyer miles are a depreciating currency. The only motivation for airlines to make their frequent-flyer programs attractive is to please customers. Can anyone think of an industry worse at keep customers happy than airlines? With margins grim, fewer flights scheduled, and more flights flying at capacity than ever before, airlines have a financial disincentive to make those miles easy to redeem -- and the pain of redeeming them has long been a customer gripe. Blackout dates and small ticket allotments to miles-redeeming passengers are a chronic complaint.

So, really, I don't know why I expected any differently from JetBlue, except that I still sort of buy their marketing hype about trying to be a different kind of airline. About 18 months ago, I had a notably good customer-service experience with them: I was trying to fly to Boston (in December) the day a massive snowstorm hit. By 7:30pm, our 10am JetBlue flight was still grounded -- and I was officially no chance of making the 8pm dinner I was flying to Boston to attend. I opted to cancel my trip, and called JetBlue to see if I could get a refund. Which they gave, easily. Since my ticket was nonrefundable, I'd figured a credit for a future flight was the best I could hope for, so yay JetBlue.

This week, though, they are not dazzling me. Last year, I flew JetBlue a ton back and forth to the West Coast, and racked up enough points in their frequent flyer system for a free ticket (well, technically, two -- you get two one-ways, which can be used together or separately). JetBlue's frequent-flyer program is simpler than other airlines, but also stricter: you have one year to use points before they expire, and one year to use your free flight before it expires.

Actually using your free flight, however, is every bit as heinous as on other airlines. I don't know what kind of allotment JetBlue is giving per flight for points-redeemers, but it doesn't seem to be good. I've tried four times this year to use one of my free-flight segments -- most recently, for either a flight from Seattle to NYC anytime Sunday, August 12 or for a flight from Portland, Maine, to NYC anytime on Thursday, July 26. Both trips show plenty of flight availability -- multiple flights each day, still selling tickets -- when I search on JetBlue. When I search for award travel, though, it all dries up. Sorry, no flights available for booking. GRRR. What use are my points if I can't ever actually use them?

I finally, grumpily, used the points for the one flight from Portland to NYC that was available for award travel on Wednesday the 26th, a day earlier than I really wanted to book the flight. So, I did at least get my free ticket. But I am grumped about the limitations. It seems absurd that none of the four trips I tried to use the free ticket on worked out.

Which is why I think air-miles credit cards are for suckers. Air miles are one of the hardest-to-use, most-restrictive, most limited rewards systems going. In contrast, you never get the runaround trying to get your cash-back awards or redeem credit-card points for Amazon.com credit or restaurant gift certificates (my standard use of In NYC awards points). I'd rather pay cash for airline tickets and use my points for other, less fraught things.

Auditioning new banks, part 1

Why is NYC banking so especially heinous?

When I went looking for a local bank back in 2001, I really couldn't find anything without a monthly fee for dipping below a set minimum. Things aren't quite that dire now -- 'free' checking is catching on, and I have a few local options -- but it's also pretty clear that banks operate here differently than they do in other places, even when they're national chains.

For example, check out Citibank's EZ checking. One of its features is "Five free uses of non-Citibank ATMs." But there's a little asterisks next to that, and the fine print notes, "Applies in all markets but CA, NV and the NYC area where it's $1.50 per withdrawal."

Why? Why is NYC different? Is it simply that the competitive landscape here lets banks get away with higher fees, or is there something strange in our local banking regulations?

(And yes, as the financial reporter, I should be the one answering that question. I'll get on it, but figured I would first throw it out there and see if anyone has any insight.)

I haven't picked a new bank account yet. I've been swamped this week and have only now started doing a serious comparison. (For those who missed it, see last week's post about how my beloved NetBank is going away.)

I've gotten a lot of suggestions in the comments. To keep things straight, and potentially help others in a similar situation, I'm going to list out the banks I've considered -- and why I've crossed them off the list.

First, a recap of what I'm looking for.

Things I consider non-negotiable

• No minimum balance required to avoid monthly fees
  
• Good online account management tools
  
• No-fee online bill pay
  
• No fees for writing paper checks
  
• NO FEES FOR USING OUTSIDE ATMs. This is something of a financial moral issue for me. I wish the charges were lower, but I don't get irate about ATM operators charging fees for non-customers using their ATMs. They're proving me a service; I'm willing to pay for it. I get furious, though, about banks charging their own customers fees for using ATMs other than theirs. That's just coercive, punitive and monopolistic.
  
  This is not a financially rational position for me to be a hardliner about. I probably spend $10-$15 in an average month on upfront ATM fees -- the $1.50-$2 per-transaction I get charged by the ATM operators for using their machines. (I pay nothing on the back-end. NetBank doesn't charge for using ATMs outside its network.) I could spend less by getting a bank with good ATM coverage and using its ATMs religiously.
  
  But. I have this fiscally irrational objection to paying routine monthly fees, or paying my bank for using another bank's ATM. In exchange for avoiding those fees, I'm willing to pay more actual cash money in upfront ATM usage fees.
  
  I don't pretend this is sane. However. It's something I am surprised to find myself caring about very strongly, so I'm sticking to my guns on it.
  

Things I would really like

• Overdraft line of credit. With NetBank, I have an overdraft credit line. If I overdraft, it transfers money from the credit line. There is no NSF charge or overdraft fee -- all I pay is interest on the funds that get transferred over. This is awesome. I try not to bounce checks, of course, but it's a very nice protection to have.
  
• Good options for a money market account with the same bank. I want to open one this year, once I, er, amass some savings. For that, I will care about interest rates.
  
  

Things I don't care about

• Interest. 0% is fine by me.
  
• ATM network coverage. It would be nifty to have ATMs around where I can get money with no fees whatsoever. However, that hasn't been the case for me for the past decade. I'm used to the pain of upfront fees and willing to continue paying them.
  

This is getting hugely long, so I'll continue it in the next post.