US Bank Review

There's only one word that can describe US Bank - greed.

Our experience with US Bank began in 2006, when we made the switch about our old bank, UMB, decided to have a computer malfunction for a few days when we couldn't touch our money. To make matters worse, their customer service lines weren't open 24/7. After this, we made the switch.

At first it was fine. You get free checks (initially) and a free debit card, fully customized of course. There are branches anywhere, meaning that when we made the move to our new neighborhood about 20 miles away from our first home, we easily found a branch. There was even a branch that was open on Sundays in a Price Chopper down the road.

Then we overdrafted. I understand that it was our fault - I'm not denying that. However, let's say I had $30 in my account, bought a new book for $35 and cashed a check all on the same day. Guess what? They would consider that $35 through and put a $38 overdraft fee on it, even though we had just cashed a check.

Okay, so maybe I understand that. Once again - our fault.

Note: You should know the overdraft charges - if you overdraft, day 1 of each charge if nearly $40 and each day until you pay (or hit $800) is $14. I don't like it, but hey - they have a business to run to. You can always have the money overdrawn pulled from a savings account or charged to a credit card.

Of course, when it's our money coming OUT, they are the first ones to speak up. If it's money coming IN and they mess up, there is no rush. My husband gets an auto-deposit for his work, and one pay day we noticed that his money was missing. Funny, it wasn't just our account but ALL of his coworkers who banked at US Bank too. We pressured them to fix it and sure enough, there was the money. They called it a computer processing error.

To top it off, here is the kicker - mysterious charges they can't explain. We were doing fine. Let's say we had $20.00 in our account and made a $17.00 purchase. That would mean we had $3.00 left in our account. For some unexplainable reason, they added 7 (count ‘em)...7 overdraft charges. It turns out that although we cashed a $400 the few days earlier, only $100 of that money was actually live. The rest of it was being held for a few days. This means that we went into an overdraft, despite having cashed the check. Had we not been paying attention, we would have had to pay ALL of those charges, despite the fact that the money was there.

In addition to this, they like pushing their credit cards. They had no problem calling us at home and spending 10 minutes telling us how we needed this credit card. We don't use credit cards. Saying NO to them wasn't enough.

My advice for people questioning big banks - leave. They will NEVER treat you like a hometown bank. They are run purely by greed and filled with people who just want to get you to overdraft, even by one cent ... even if you just cashed a check, because that's the way to get your money. I need to know that at the end of the day I can trust where my money is.