ZERO STARS. I used to interview banks before doing business with them. Really. I had a list of questions I would ask. 1st Bank failed my interview process. A past bank board chair was a client of mine and asked me to try them out anyway. I told him they failed my interview, so he had a past bank president call me and try to jolly me over. That was a very long time ago. I was never as happy with them as I was with Yuma Community (best bank I ever worked with), but they were okay-ish.
My opinions based on my experience follow. I may not remember every detail, but I can remember every time they made me feel like they thought I was trash.
Everything just kept getting harder, but a ran a fair amount of money through them for years. Big checks they would put holds on, then they would put holds on smaller checks, and then they increased the length of time they would put holds on, even for local checks drawn on local banks. Even on modest size bank drafts. I never had one of those financial instruments bounce. In my opinion they were just deliberately stringing customer money to make their deposit look bigger. It made it hard to do business when I customer wrote me a deposit check and the minimum time before I could use that money was nine days. They said seven business days, but you always had at least one weekend added on. Sometimes two depending on what day you made your deposit. 13 days sometimes. 14 if one of them was a holiday weekend.
Then they started demanding to know where every little bit of money I deposited came from. 1st Bank was locally owned, and I really wasn't comfortable sharing inside company data with potential competitors or bankers who might invest in competing businesses. I looked it up. It was their "bank policy" to DEMAND AT THREAT OF DEBANKING that information. It was not the law. I know some of it is the federal government and their "know your customer" big brother spycraft, but some of it is banks leaning into the sh!t. 1st Bank leaned into it.
I pretty much quit doing business with them. They weren't easy to deal with, and they weren't nice about it either. I use two other banks, and currently, and while neither is a shiny example of customer service they are both easily better than 1st Bank.
When I saw the OneAz was taking over 1st Bank I hoped some of it would be better and some of it would run down hill. That has not been my experience. They are leaning into treating customers like mushrooms even harder in my opinion.
A couple days ago I needed a cashier's check. I was going to stop by one of my other banks, but they had long lines, so I drove on up to OneAz/1st bank. There were only a couple vehicles in the parking lot, and there was no line at all inside. What followed made me realize why. Next time I will go to one of my other banks and wait in line.
I emptied two of my accounts using online tools as soon as I got back to my office, and I'll close the third when I get automatic payments and deposits set up on an account at a different bank.
These are my opinions, but they are based on my experiences.
ZERO STARS. read more