Wow. Just, Wow. Never in my life have I had this much trouble with a bank. It might be the branch (Chelsea, on 26th and 7th), but I'm closing my account with these people ASAP.
Right from the get-go, they got my zip-code wrong, which made it impossible for me to do a lot of online transactions, but *they* didn't catch this error; a merchant did. It was months before I got this corrected- during which some of my online purchases were refused. After many such ridiculous slip-ups, here's the clincher: two weeks ago, the ATM at my branch ATE MY ATM CARD. Seriously.....I put in the card and was denied access to my cash and never saw that card again. I went in the next day, *furious* (because I had no cash, and was in the middle of doing laundry); they gave me a new debit card....and then got my balance wrong. I was charged for an overdraft because of this. When I called the "bank human" number, and waited 20 minutes to talk to a "human", that person *was* kind enough to credit me with the overdraft fee.....
....and then, there was the lovely experience I had, yesterday, with an extremely rude man who works at my branch. Oh, he's a real prize. I went in there with most of my change, to use their much-touted penny arcade, and get some change.....and they tried to charge me 8% for access to the *cash* I had just put in their counter. Why? Because I am overdrawn (because THEY GOT MY BALANCE WRONG). I was, I have to confess, outraged....the teller (who looked new and was probably being trained) told me they were going to charge me 8%, even though I'm a customer, because my account was overdrawn. I couldn't believe it, because that's never happened to me before. So Mr. Charm comes over and tells me that yeah, my account is overdrawn, addressing me by my first name (I'm way older than he is, and we've never been introduced and this is pretty disrespectful) and I say "You know, I'm on Social Security; this is my last $12 (which was true; I'm a musician and next time I gig, I'll make it up, but I needed that cash) and he tells the teller to just give me the money, but then proceeds to lecture me about my account as if I were a little kid in the Principal's office, calling me April, and again, THIS IS NOT RESPECTFUL.
So I say to him: "If you think giving me that 8% break gives you the right to talk to me like that, you can keep it. We are *not* on a first-name basis; I'm Mrs. Stewart to you." And he breaks into a big, smarmy smile and tells the teller, "Okay, take out the 8%. Okay, Miss Stewart?" I accepted it, saying "If that's what you need in order to be respectful to A CUSTOMER, fine....but shame on you. I *will* be writing about this online." He continued to smirk at me and I looked the poor little teller in the eyes and said to her "I'm sorry you have to work for such people." There *was* a customer standing right next to me who saw and heard the whole thing.
In their defense, I will say that, when I called the "bank human" toll-free number, and told this story to a supervisor, she was outraged and clearly embarrassed. But based on all the snafus, culminating in this abusive and condescending encounter I had with this man, yesterday, I will not continue to do business with TD Bank. They have a cute change counter, and they put out cute little doggy-bowls in their vestibule, but the service in the actual bank is appalling. read more