East Setauket: I was a long time Investors Bank customer. Citizens bought out Investors, closed the Setauket Investors branch and moved all the accounts to the nearby Citizens branch they had recently opened in an old HSBC location. Apparently none of the Investors personnel were picked up.
I tried to open my four "new" Citizens accounts on their website. The personal checking and savings came right up, but not my two business accounts. I spent over 2.5 hours on the phone (90% of which was on hold). The two people I did speak to tried their best, but apparently the business account was somehow mislabeled in the transition and could not be linked to the others. The second person said it could only be fixed by business account staff and mercifully advised me to go to the branch rather than being placed on a long hold for a third time.
The next morning I went to the branch where I spent close to an hour waiting then watching the gentleman doing exactly what I did the previous day, this time via a chat screen--without success. He told me he would continue working on it during the day and I left him with my phone number. He never got back to me. The following day I moved the accounts to TD--which by the way was paying five times the interest rate on the savings account.
Nice people at Citizens, but miss the folks at Investors. 3.5 hours wasted with Citizens, hours opening up new accounts/transferring funds, plus the cost of ordering new business and IOLA account checks that I'll never get back. But voting with my feet is better than taking it out on the front line people, when the issue was with the back office. Hopefully I'll be happier with how TD does things. read more