rtom

I had a pretty bad experience with this bank. In early December I opened a checking a savings account online, just to get the bonus. They were slow to get back to me, but by mid-January I was all set up, and I had the direct deposit working for the Jan 31 paycheck.

Now things got interesting. Sometime in late December or early January they sent me a note saying I hadn't returned the signature card, even though I had already done this. Strange, I thought -- so I filled out another one and mailed it right away. A few weeks later I got another letter saying they would close my checking account in about 2 weeks if I did not send the signature card. So this time I went into a nearby branch and filled out a signature card with a bank rep. Weird, I thought, and a pain -- but at least I had finally got that taken care of. I started trying the billpay service, and a few had gone through when, early one Saturday morning, I logged in to check on the account. Imagine my surprise when I saw that someone had transferred -- apparently by phone -- my entire checking balance to the savings account. I quickly canceled the remaining billpays that were scheduled to go out; fortunately I never went into a negative balance. I phoned, and a rep told me that the account had been closed, but she couldn't see why. "We'll have to put in a research request", she said. A few days later I phoned again and another rep still could not tell me anything more. Finally I went into my local branch and was told that the account had been closed because I had never sent in a signature card. I did mention that I had sent in a total of 3, including one from the very person sitting in front of me. Anyway, the accounts are all closed now, I got all my money back (plus about 10 cents of interest), and now I am eagerly awaiting the results of their research.

I won't bother to explicitly enumerate all of the various ways these guys screwed up -- but beware!