Tri Counties Bank

Tri Counties has totally lost my business and respect. For 3 months in a row they declined my card to pay a monthly bill only to push it through 23 days later. When I called to ask why the card was declined the customer service lady told me very condescendingly that it was pushed through when I sufficient funds. I must say I always thought that $ 1000 was more than enough to cover a $ 100, but hey I am old school and not up to date on the new math. So after 3 months I pay off the bill completely only to have the bank once again push through another payment. Thanks to the bank I have over paid the merchant by $ 200. When I asked the merchant for a refund they informed me to go to the bank. I did. TCBK will do nothing as I have done business with the merchant and cannot provide the receipts for the transactions. If you are looking for a trustworthy bank you can rely on, keep looking cause this isn’t the bank for that. I am out $ 200 with no chance of recovery.

If I could give Tri Counties negative stars, I would. I had no trouble with North Valley for all the years I dealt with them, but I’ve had nothing but grief since Tri Counties bought them out. The employees there are completely incompetent and rude, and always try to blame the customer for their mistakes. I can’t even list all the screw ups here, so I’ll just describe the most recent, which is the last straw for me. North Valley online bill pay was a breeze, but after Tri Counties took over, I was only able to pay ONE bill online, and they took so long to pay that one, the company kept calling me because their payment was weeks late. So I decided to order new checks and go back to manually paying my bills. I have two accounts, one interest bearing, and one non-​interest bearing which I use for paying bills. (I set this up after bogus charges appeared on my debit card six years ago.) Tri Counties sent me checks for the wrong account, resulting in a bounced check – the first bounced check I’ve had in six years. And of course, they’re now deducted fees for «insufficient funds» even though, with North Valley, I had overdraft protection that would just take the funds from the other account if I made a mistake – not that I ever did, until these fools messed me up. So now I have to go through telephone torture AGAIN in order to straighten this mess out. I’m done. I’m looking for a new bank tomorrow. I’m seriously ill, and I just don’t have the strength to struggle over every little thing with this horrible excuse for a bank. It’s just not worth the trouble.

I loved doing banking in Ferndale with NVB. Then Tri Counties Bank bought them out and it was a disaster from the beginning. Like any merger or buyout, they always say it’s to provide better service, but what it really means is that they can reduce competition and increase fees. Every account we had with NVB had new or increased fees with Tri Counties. A two year IRA account that was earning a whopping .25% interest rate is now going to cost $ 15 a year to maintain. So I’m going to end up paying them to use my money for two years. We’ve already moved our savings, personal and business checking away from them, and as soon as the CD matures it’s getting moved too. Oh, and they want to charge $ 20 to do that. I also have my mortgage with them, and I wish it was easy to move that. I hate that I’m paying this company $ 1290 every month.