BMO Bank Of Montreal

Our manager, Susan, is very pleasant and always helpful

Had occasion to deal with this branch and BMO in particular last Saturday August 2nd. I was wiring money to Ireland. On Tuesday AM around 8 I found that the deal had collapsed. In order to save the round trip wire charges about 80 dollars I called the branch and since they weren't open yet used the option on their system to access telebanking. Talked to operator 43 and he assured me he would send that bank a message, and try to halt the wire. I assumed that it would happen. He indicated that the branch would call me shortly to confirm. Well I had to go to work and got engrossed and didn't think about it. I got a call from the branch in the late afternoon (after 4:00 pm). Apparently this ebox where the telebanking rep sent the message to wasn't checked till then. The branch rep then tried to explain "well that's the folks from telebanking" . Now to me that's throwing your company under the bus. As a consumer I expect that when I call in, go to a branch, or go online, I am dealing with BMO. I don't expect you to be using your organization as an excuse. Banks are a commodity item supplier. I pay plenty in account fees and interest charges. BMO makes a fair bit of money off of me. I did leave a message on the branch managers vmail, and she did get back to me the next day. She has refunded me the outbound charge and has promised to watch for the inbound charges and to refund them. She agreed with me that procedurally something didn't go as expected. As a result of this I have found another wire service which will charge me less and they are more accessible having offices around the world that I can talk to 24 hours a day. I do appreciate her response. However being a business and having other options available I will be using them. You cant be great at all things. I am happy for the most part with my chequing and savings accounts with these folks. I also use their personal line of credit option and have a Gold Air Miles MC through them. I am very satisfied with the interest rate on the line of credit, and have flown every year for the past couple of years on my Air Miles. I would however not recommend using their services for wire transfers.