Trustco Bank

I have had many years of experience dealing with banks, nationally and internationally. I have been banking with one of the major banks and have been for many years. Like many others, my wife and I were looking for a smaller bank, one here in Florida whereas we could establish a more personable relationship. We felt good on the first day, at Trustco, our experience in meeting Jose the manager and his assistant Francis who opened our accounts for us. A business, personal checking and savings account. Everything seemed to be okay. We are getting ready to go on the road for the next several months in our RV and we wanted everything organized before we leave. My wife has a small sole proprietorship business and we made it very clear that our primary interest was opening our business account and being able to do our banking online, with the ability to move funds from our business account to our personal account. You would think this was an easy enough task for most banks. Not this bank. This has been the worst bank that we have ever experienced. We went home and for the next three days we tried getting online, without success. We found out that we had to sign more papers at the bank. We could not simply do it online. Then about a week later we found out that I could not sign on my wifes business account. So we said no problem, just take me off the signature list. at the same time, we were also told that we could not transfer money from our business account to our personal account until we had been with the bank 6 months. Wow! figure that out! Then a few days later we were told that having our business registered on SunBiz, (which is an official State of Florida listing) and having a EIN number was not enough (it is for every other bank). After telling us in the begining everything was fine, they wanted a certified copy of our business listing from Sunbiz. That can take a couple of weeks, getting it from the State of Florida. So after 2 weeks our business account never got opened, although we were making deposits. This bank has wasted 2 weeks of our time. The manager does not return calls as promised, he is arrogant and not helpful, and his assistants are very inefficient and obviously lack the knowledge to properly open a bank account I would not reccomend this bank under any circumstance. We closed our accounts. That was a good experience. We did find a bank that we really like. If you want the smaller bank experience, I highly reccomend 1 First Florida Bank. It has everything that we were looking for and more, like intelligent and friendly staff. We have our business account. We can do online banking. We can transfer money to any account. It works just the way you would expect a bank to work.

This bank is great. Take it from someone who knows how to spell. I just opened both a checking and a savings account today and they were very helpful. I love doing business with the smaller banks becasue they are always so much more personable and knowledgable. Thanks Trustco!