Careful, if it's not actually closed they'll hit you with fees.
Balance: $0.31
"This account is dormant. Call us at 1-800-869-3557 to reactivate or close your account."
How convenient that there's absolutely no information about the consequences of a dormant account.
All banks, even the local ones, use something called Chex Systems, which works somewhat like Equifax for bank accounts. If you leave an account open with a $0 balance, and something hits it, and causes an overdraft, and accumulates fees, and then they close it later on for you with a negative balance for hundreds of dollars, then this gets reported to Chex and the next time you try to open an account with any other bank, they say, "Nope, we have a record here for you for account abuse."
These records stick around for about 7 years -- longer than many items on a credit report.
Two dimes and three pennies. It cost them more than that in angry phone calls and reporting it in the first place.
Broken system.
So, I mean, there are some good things to those pitches I guess. Wells Fargo is impressively awful.
I was about 20. Needed to get something notarized, someone mentioned that banks could do it. I googled and confirmed WF could do it for their customers so I went over to my nearest branch.
Asked the front desk if I could get something notarized. They said sure and referred me to a banker at a desk. I walked over and sat down and told him I was looking to get something notarized.
He said sure, but first can I ask if you've considered upgrading your bank account? I said I didn't think I was interested, but he decided it was worth a few minutes of my time to pull out a pamphlet and talk me through the benefits. I thought I was through it. But then he started asking me if I had considered opening an investment account. I told him that with my current earnings and burn rate it didn't make much sense. But he decided to walk me through the benefits. Then I thought surely, he must be ready to help me notarize my document. Nope. He wants to talk about - I don't remember - small business loans, life insurance? Something that made no sense to offer a 20 year old. Sat through that presentation. I'll make an aside - I was much less experienced with deflecting sales pitches at that age, today I'd have stopped it all much sooner.
But I digress. After 10-20 minutes of pitches for products I never expressed interest in, he finally gave up and asked me what I needed notarized. I honestly don't remember what it was, but he turned around and instantly told me that they weren't able to do that type of notarization. Despite wasting so much of my time, they didn't even have the courtesy to make sure they'd be able to help me out afterwards before launching into their pitch.
A few months later walked by a branch and on a whim decided it was a good time to close my account. Walked in, ask to close it, they said I had to wait, I said oh OK that's alright I'll just withdraw all of it. Good riddance.