Eastern Bank

While the manager of this branch is nice if you know him, the tellers are generally not that good for regular day to day transactions. There’s a tall gentleman that’s bald who generally isn’t nice to customers. Not sure why he’s still there.

Great bank if you want to be racially profiled?
I went to this bank to cash a check written to me by my friend. My personal bank is Citibank which is next door, but I rather cash checks from the bank they are drawn from to be certain they clear.
I handed the teller the check and my ID. We exchanged pleasantries and asked if I wanted to open an account. I said possibly, and give me your business card and brochure. After a few minutes of reviewing the account, I asked what the delay was. He told me the signatures didn’t seem to match and he had to call the customer. Perturbed, I said go ahead I have my friends number and last text conversation on my phone — I can even give you his number.
I asked and requested if he had a written policy about this procedure. This is important because if the signatures didn’t match, he should have handed me the check back and I would have been on my way to Citibank next door and reluctantly deposited the check into my account. End of story.
However, the teller was dumbfounded and requested help from the assistant manager after he called my friend and left a message on his voicemail to return his call.
I went to another line with Ms. Sadeghi and waited while she had to access the account. I asked again if there was some sort of problem with the check and she said no and proceeded to review the account. While she processed the payment to me, she asked if everything was ok and I responded no and told her that I was put in an embarrassing ordeal. I asked her again if this was the policy and if they had something in writing I could reference. And her comes the doozy –my response to her brief exchange was a reply — I asked her how she would feel if she had to go through this (20 minutes of run around to cash a check), and I questioned if there was some sort of profiling here. Not racial profiling, but just profiling since I do have long hair and I was wearing shorts and flip flops, just your everyday run of the mill — profiling.
Here comes doozy number two; a tall slender customer buts in and raises his voice to me and states I’m making everyone in the bank miserable. I reply back and tell him of my experience and he raises his voice again and tells me to leave.
Here’s doozy number three, Thomas T. Mclaughlin the «Vice President» comes out and berates me, says nothing to the tall slender customer, states he saw the whole thing from his glass office 30 feet away and asks me to more or less conduct my business and leave.
Just wow. I didn’t even have the nerve to have a verbal battle. Granted no vulgar language was used in any way by my part towards anyone, and the tone of voice was appropriate when dealing with customer service people.
I was having a good day considering, life is good to me in general and I was cashing a check from my friend. «Slender guy» maybe was having a bad day to raise his voice to me when he wasn’t even part of the equation (albeit a «customer who comes in weekly» as he stated which could be why there was favoritism), but Thomas T. Mclaughlin, «Vice President» handled the situation poorly sans any sort of fair customer service or clear judgement.
I proceeded by requesting Ms. Sadeghi’s card and then requested the same from Thomas T. Mclaughlin. The first teller, Mr. Travaglini was absolutely useless, I could have put up a fight, but I didn’t. I used no words of insult, didn’t threaten anyone, hardly caused a commotion — I just left knowing that I would be calling Eastern Bank’s Customer Service with a lot of questions about how they treat customers.
So basically, this is me filling out that «How are we doing today?» Card left at the counters.
— not good.
I hate using any sort of race card in this day in age. But I probably got your attention and if you can’t provide answers written or non-​written, good chance I could be right.
Good luck with the new location, I’ve been in Brookline as a store owner and neighbor for over 25 years. I give you guys 2 years before you close shop.