Generally speaking, I ask very little of a bank. When one manages to plummet beneath even my tepid expectations, it deserves special mention. This is one of those branches.
We needed to open a business account for a new association. We opted to set up our finances with Citi, partly because of the positive experiences of a board member who opened an account at a different branch, but mostly for the convenience of having a bank in our neighborhood. At first, everything seemed fine. We set up an appointment, went in, and the representative we spoke to said she got our account set up and would send us a debit card and checks as soon as the paperwork got approved. Great, thanks, nice to meet you.
Weeks went by. No checks, no debit card. We tried to call. Evidently the only way to get in touch with the folks at this branch is to stop by during business hours, which are from 9 to 4 on weekdays only. Outside of business hours, it is impossible to contact anybody from the branch. There is no way to direct dial the branch, which is not itself surprising, so there is no way to leave a message on you own. Fair enough, that, sadly, is not uncommon at a big bank. What was surprising, however, is that the folks at Citi's 24-hour help line also have no way to contact them. Contrary to good business practices and common sense, this branch has removed its contact information from the company's internal phone directory, which means that nobody at corporate has a way to even leave a phone message for anyone there, from the tellers up to the manager.
Fine. We go through the automated system at some point during their 9-to-4 work day and get someone to connect us to the branch. The representative isn't available. We leave a message with someone to have her call us back. She doesn't. We call again. No response. At this point our association is starting to accumulate bills, which we really need to be able to pay, which means that we need access to the money that we gave to the bank. We eventually go into a different branch and discover that the representative never actually put in the request for the debit card. So they do that, we get the card within a week, and we're in business. We later discover that the representative has been fired for gross incompetence. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who had a problem with her.
A few weeks go by. A board member receives a phone call from someone at the branch, who tells us that the representative has completely screwed up setting up the account. Not only did she not have us fill out the right forms, she evidently neglected to file the ones we gave her. The new rep gives us a phone number to call, which of course doesn't work. We eventually track down the new rep, who gives us more paperwork to fill out. We fill that out and send it back to the bank. Weeks pass.
This afternoon, our treasurer tried to pay a bill with our debit card. Didn't work. The branch, which either lost our paperwork again or forgot to have us submit yet another form, put a hold on our account, and didn't even have the decency to notify us first. We're not sure what precisely the problem is because, as mentioned before, there is no way to get a hold of them past 4 PM.
So, if you are a small business or association looking to open an account somewhere and enjoy working closely with the flagrantly incompetent, being subjected to multiple iterations of byzantine paperwork, and general obfuscation from the day you open your account to the day you decide your money would be better off buried in garbage bags in your backyard, this place should be at the top of your list. If not, do yourself a favor and get a real bank, one that is interested in retaining customers.
To give credit where credit is due, the tellers are very nice in person. read more
