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Old Jul 6, 2003 | 7:52 pm
  #20  
Stefan Daystrom
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
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<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by gleff:
So.. 4500 miles isn't alot if I'm giving up something. But I want to move my checking account anyway, so I just need to decide where to move it.</font>
Someone please correct me if I"m wrong, but wouldn't you have a hard time getting thousands of dollars in cash (or a cashier's check) if you needed it quickly from an internet-only bank?

I bank with a major regional bank that has branches in plenty of grocery stores and such which are open on weekends. I've had the following kinds of occasions:

1. Recently I was looking for a used car. I found a FANTASTIC deal from a private party on a Friday, saw the car that Saturday at noon, and if I hadn't been able to rush to that grocery store branch office to get a cashier's check within the hour, the next person seeing the car an hour after me would likely have driven away with it. Now, I didn't need a cashier's check per se, but the only other option was cash, and my understanding is that ATMs typically limit you to a few hundred a day cash withdrawal, which would have meant I would have had to have been withdrawing cash for WEEKS to pay for this car. How/could I have bought this car (with so little advance notice that it would be available) had I been using an internet-only bank?

2. A couple years ago my ATM card was damaged (no longer worked with my PIN), right when I very much needed to do some transactions. Not only was I able to eventually (tho it took a couple tries at different branches before it worked) to get the ATM card reprogrammed with my PIN correctly, but I was in the meantime able to use tellers at the branches to do the transactions I absolutely had to do then. What would have happened had I had been with an internet-only bank?

Let me further point out that I've gone for many years at a time between being in situations like this. It doesn't change that when I have been in situations like this, I needed things resolved immediately, and couldn't wait necessarily even for FedEx (if that's even an option in situations like this with internet-only banks). So I don't care how rarely I have a need for a physical bank, if I EVER have a need for one (where not having one would likely cost me much more than what 4500 miles are worth), why would I want to risk it for just 4500 miles?

Of course, YMMV. But I suggest you consider rare cases, not just your everyday usage of banks, when making this decision.
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