Bank of the West in Carmichael

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comments 5

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  oaklanddba

  :: 11 January 2023 16:38:35

  I opened a new account, it has been 14 calendar days since I made my initial deposit and the funds are still not in my account yet. We were told that the bank holds all deposits for nine days in the first 30 days of a new account to get to know us. The funds were debited from my other checking account that night of the initial deposit, but bank of the west is holding the funds in suspense for 9 business days, while they “get to know me“. At no point has anybody offered to accelerate this process until I called after 14 calendar days. In the meantime, I have a zero balance, so I have no transactions, so there is no activity with which to get to know me for the first half of this month. The bank is effectively, holding my money hostage for half a month while they make money on it and lying to me by saying that it has to do with getting to know me. They cannot get to know me if they hold all funds hostage, preventing any kind of transaction. The fundamental dishonesty of this process is why we are going to close these accounts as soon as the cash clears. I was told that if I wanted to wire money in that it would be available the next day, or I could take a massive pile of cash from one bank across town to another and that would make funds available immediately. Of course, this would trigger a suspicious activity report and make me a target for government compliance and robbery. We were also charged an “excess cash fee” for depositing cash into our business account in actually use the account — a fee that was not applied to our personal accounts. And all of these were the “highest” level of retail checking account openable. The process is at this bank just do not function, and the representative who open the account for us has left the bank in the eight calendar days since we opened the account. There’s no strategic differentiation between this bank or Wells Fargo or other corporate bank. At this point we were done with this bank. When the money finally cleared, i tried to do an external transfer to dump the money back to my original bank, and Bank of the West had the audacity to try to charge me for this (see printscreen). None of these fees was disclosed when we opened our accounts and I genuinely think that their staff is so untrained that they did not know. The sneakiness is on par with the fraud perpetrated by Wells Fargo. Truly a pathetic nickel and dime bank, no different from large banks but with a smaller network so zero value proposition for consumers.

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  Jeff Duncan

  :: 13 February 2020 01:29:34

  This bank is in the stone age. I made a "mobile deposit" that has taken 12 days to clear so far. They charged me for a return credit from Walmart (thinking it was a debit) and then overdrafted my account which gave me a fee. The senior staff in the branch isn't helpful, and even make snide quiet comments about the customers in their branch. I wouldn't recommend this bank, and especially this branch to anyone. Sadly, with Direct Deposit, it takes months to transfer to a new bank. Screwed.

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  Blake Morgan

  :: 10 June 2019 20:12:51

  Super friendly staff!

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  Chris Minnatee

  :: 11 May 2019 18:07:15

  Horrible bank made me wait 2 weeks for my card. Why would I give the bank my money if I can’t even use it.

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  Joel Fleischmann

  :: 04 October 2017 17:06:13

  Made a special trip here and was told that the only banker available was on lunch (at 2pm). None of the 4 tellers were able to help make a simple wire transfer.