MyCardBlog

Recently, I received a lot of invitations from WaMu about their new credit card offers. This time they are offering 12,000 bonus points after first purchase which is equal to $100 gift card. I have already had a WaMu visa platinum card and have been using it for about 5 months. It’s time to write a review for this card.

The most attractive feature of this card is you have free access to your FICO credit score with this card. They also promise to automatically review your account for every 6 months and increase your credit limit if you keep great performance with your account. Let’s me briefly introduce the free FICO credit score feature.

After you set up the online account, you can see “FICO Credit Score” on the up right of the screen. Click that text, you will then be directed to your credit profile. Here you can see your Credit Report Snapshot which is provided by TransUnion. This snapshot will provide important information about your credit report. And that information is enough to know your credit profile.

You can track your credit score by using the FICO score tracking which will provide your credit score month by month. Another great feature of their credit score service is you can see find out the primary reason why your score is XXX. They also provide FICO Score Simulator to let you know what actions are needed in order to improve your credit score. Wonderful!

As I mentioned before, currently I’m using the National City Identity Protect Service which costs me $8.95 every month. Although I can access to my credit report from 3 credit bureaus every 24 hours, they don’t provide official FICO credit score. Instead, they provide FAKO credit score. With this WaMu card, I don’t need the service any longer.

WaMu Visa Platinum Card will also occasionally provide special promotion to you. For example, they will send you a mail saying you can get 10% cash back gasoline purchases in the next 90 days! They will also send you some coupons together with your monthly bill. It’s a sweet card!

Recently, WaMu keeps sending me mails and emails about its free checking account service. Ok. Let me briefly introduce the free checking provided by WaMu.

WaMu is officially known as Washington Mutual. It is actually the largest savings and loan association in US. Wamu provides financial service across the US. After the acquisition of Providian Financial Corporation in 2005, it’s also the 9^th largest credit card company in US.

The most intriguing feature of the WaMu checking account is “free checks for life.” In this way, you can order checks from WaMu online for free at any time. This will save us a lot of money. WaMu offers one Overdraft/NSF fee waived for each 12 months. It also offers free outgoing international wire transfer. Another feature is they offer free Gold Debit MasterCard with Reward. Reward paid to the account on anniversary date and equals $0.03 for each Gold Debit MasterCard purchase transaction made with the last year up to a total reward of $250. (Is this similar to BOA keep the change?) If you open a free checking together with a saving account, you will earn 4.75% APY from saving account (Statement Savings account)! Minimum amount to open a checking account and saving account is $1 each.

I would say the banking service from Wamu is really great. They don’t impose common fees. No minimum balance required and no direct deposit needed. You can transfer your deposit from saving account to checking account instantly. Another nice feature is that online funds transfer. You can link up external accounts. Of course, they need to verify the account via two trial deposits.

The free of fees, convenience and high yield interest make WaMu checking/saving combination a top choice.