Union Bank of California

I took out a mortgage with Union Bank and it has been one of the worst customer service experiences I’ve ever had. The amount of time and difficulty I’ve experienced just trying to pay them money is appalling. I can’t give a stronger negative review than this, really a horrible customer experience — stay away!

worst bank ever. I don’t blame the branch and the nice people in Big Bear… they are just lemmings doing what the corporate branch tells them. I finally closed my account after several disappointments and after paying $ 10/​month for my account and statements for 5 years, they want to charge me $ 5 for my last statement, which I can no longer download (like I did with my statements for the past 4 – 5 years) since they turned off access to my past history. That nickel and diming of customers earns these banks billions of extra dollars per year.

This review has nothing to do with the bank. When I’ve cashed payroll checks here, my experiences were all positive.
My poor review is for the Building in which this bank is housed, more so the high-​rise attached to the bank.
This is a Toxic Building.
I, while working at this place as a construction worker, was asked not to say the word «Asbestos» on the premises, or at least not within earshot of the many people who spend a third of their lives there.
The higher-​ups prefer use of the abbreviation –Asbestos Containing Material; «call it A.C.M., never Asbestos»…
Cough

Everything was fine until I moved out of state and closed my account. I called a rep, and needed to close my account BEFORE fees hit (actually discussed on the call), and get a check sent. The call went really well, easy to close, avoided fees… until I got the check. It was not for $ 50, which was my account balance when I closed. Instead, they stole $ 17.47 and pocketed it for themselves…$ 10 for a check fee that was never mentioned, and the fee amount that the account rep close out was supposed to avoid, since she checked the fee calendar with me on the phone and did it the way we did in order to AVOID the fee! I called them to get the rest of my money, and the new rep, after speaking to a supervisor, said she couldn’t do anything, because my account was now closed, and the fees were already charged. Backward much? The 1^st rep to mess up was Kamisha, and the second who wasn’t given any recourse to actually assist a client was Rashina. I told her we’d not be banking with them again.

How are you gonna take more than 15 minutes (it actually took 45 mins, basically my entire lunch hour for work) in just cashing one check, and not give me any communication as to what’s going on? Dude in here is acting like he has to make a call in to the pentagon just to cash a check that’s from your bank. I don’t even have an account with this bank, and thanks to this experience, I never will! FAIL.

Merchants watch out! This bank will NOT verify funds. A California company owes us $ 750, finally wrote a check after 9 months. The check bounced and the bank will not verify funds in order to redeposit.
Do not accept any check from Union Bank unless the customer is on the phone or standing there with you.

Greg T, the branch manager here is terrible.
It almost seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing and makes up random reasons not to help us get our banking done with Union bank.
We were there a few weeks ago to get some accounts transferred for our non-​profit club on our lunch break.
After some pleasant banter he says ‘oh you need a letter to get this transferred’. OK. reasonable. Since everyone involved is here, lets just write one up real quick. Nope. We need to go print it on non-​profit club letterhead stating that we want to transfer it. Weird. but ok.
We go to a kinkos nearby, type something up, sign it, and bring it in. We’re rushing a bit since our lunch break is pretty much over.
We bring it in and he says: «The letterhead is crooked» You need to do it again. wtf? we call him out on it.
then he says «The club address isn’t on the letterhead» you need to do it again. WHAT?
then he says «the wording has to be exactly what we have for you on file when you guys last elected your officers… otherwise the back office wont approve it» SERIOUSLY?
what kind of BS reasons are these? SURELY the wording does not have to be exactly what we had last time. The letter just needs to get the point across! Its almost as if he was making up reasons to get us to go away b/​c he did not know how to do the account transfer.
we ask him to just try it as it is and see if his back office will approve the transfer. Nope. He won’t even try it b/​c he ‘knows’ it won’t go through.
we are furious, but people have come from around the city to make this happen, so we call into work to let them know we’ll be late, and go AGAIN to kinkos to print out another copy.
We come back, and the manager is nowhere to be seen. One of the other people do it for us, it goes without a hitch. There are no issues. No «Back office person» asks if the wording is exactly the same as our last letter, or whether the address is correctly on the letterhead.
complete and utter BS. I’ve never been at a bank with such an incompetent manager. must suck to be an employee there helping him cover his butt all the time. they deserve better.

Bar none – theee worst bank in the U.S. I would strongly recommend that anyone who would be entertaining the notion of opening an account don’t. This piece of advise is especially true for the La Costa branch in Carlsbad, Ca. They placed a hold on my account after a life insurance check from Prudential had already cleared by 1 ½ weeks. So, instead of lifting the ‘deposits only’ only the account, they opted to not make notations to inform their staff of this, or communicate this to me. As such, I qued in a transfer online, from my personal account to my business account and not only did they screw that up but they placed twice the amount that I had given them. Then int heir infinite wisdom, they blamed me for the first 2 days, then realized it was their tele-​services that was at fault, along with the La Costa Branch which never lifted the ‘hold – deposits only’ on my account. Totally stupid humans tow tin particular Joann and Shiveta at the La Costa Branch. So, do run the other way when it comes to having anything to do with UBOC.

Union Bank, keep walking, don’t bother, horrible experience. First off Union Bank has limited hours and it is virtually impossible for you to get anything done at this bank unless you’re in-​person visiting a banker. The tellers have horrible customer service and if you ask for new bills, oh you must call in-​advance. I closed my accounts at Union Bank due to the lack of service and hours, easy of use.

Not reviewing the bank as a whole, just this branch.
I’m frankly not certain why this branch even exists. I have been in three times, and all three times I am pretty sure there were only two employees in the place (even though there are 5 teller windows and about 8 desks). Even on a Friday at lunchtime, two people in the whole place.
It’s like they have a contractual obligation to have a branch here but they have no interest in actually doing any business here.

Update: there seems to have been a real shift in service here since my original review. I have had wonderful experiences there as a small business person, hooking me up with every related service a business needs (insurance, payroll, etc).
I want to echo the gentleman’s comment of 2009 where his card was skimmed and he was SOL for ages. Same thing happened to us, in our business debit account — except Union Bank fraud dept. THEMSELVES contacted us to inform us thousands had been withdrawn in Europe (when we were in California). They nicely stopped the card but let the fraudulent shopping go through!
and then made multiple errors with the ‘claim’ process (and why should you have to do a claim process when they caught the fraud?!).
I have accounts with other banks where this has happened also, but they never put such a heavy burden on the customer to fill out papers, and wait while they ‘investigated’ to make restitution.
As this is a continuing serious and common problem, they need to update their policies big time!
**Update – once we contacted the powers that be I have to say they were most responsive, just today bank management made personal apologies and addressed the issue with the branch in question.

I don’t usually review banks as I stick mainly to food and drinks, but since I’m here I may as well put in a few good words.
As far as banking goes, this branch isn’t as bad as people say. Perhaps they read the negative reviews and decided to shape up or maybe they hired new people but I got quite possibly the best service a bank can give. Tim was very personable and efficient in processing my requests. He even went above and beyond his job. You can trust that he won’t screw you over because he has your best interest in mind. He was very helpful and explained the nuances of the many options out there! If you don’t believe me, go see for yourself and ask to speak with Tim and he’ll take care of you.

I have been a customer of UBOC for many many many years. I used them in the OC and now up here. The service in this office (44 Montgomery Street) has been great! I know most of the people and if I get a new person the others are quick on correcting any so so customer service I receive. Plus free checks, and really I’ve been with this bank well before I could write checks.
One bad time. I had really bad customer service at the California office (big one with columns). And I didn’t let it go, I talked to the person in charge and I got an sorry ASAP!

I have used Union Bank of Cal since about 94, I used it for my first job and throughout college in Fresno. We were fine, if not cold to each other — That was until I moved to San Francisco and found they offered about three ATMs in the entire city, and were not about to lose fees just because I didn’t want to go to Japantown for a simple fee-​free transaction. And their branch hours were incredibly lame.
It got even worse when my credit card information was skimmed in Las Vegas a week before Christmas — the bank I have used for over a decade treats me with no empathy, and would not even give a loan for a mere couple hundred dollars for Christmas expenses and travel back to see my parents. They coldly told me it could take 40 days to fix, and when I expressed basic frustration about the incident the bank manager snapped at me. It was shocking to see how much I really meant to this bank I trusted for so long.
I’m moving to Wells Fargo, where I can actually find an ATM and speak with a personal bank manager rather than be neglected by small location areas and be treated like a criminal during Christmas holiday break.

Great customer service and good online banking. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never considered switching banks, mainly because of the lack of easily-​accessible atms… but overall, I’ve had a positive experience with Union Bank.
And there ARE free checking plans. I’ve always had free checking with this bank.

If you’re shopping for a bank, this is the one to skip. Save yourself the headache, just skip it and move on to the next one…
Okay, here’s the rant:
I could handle that there’s no free checking. Ok, fine. I can manage that they only have like 3 atms in the whole city. Still do-​able. I’d just moved to SF and had to leave behind my cozy little credit union, so I knew I’d be putting up with some challenges.
Even the fact that they have a really hard time depositing checks is okay (why does it take 4 of them to deposit a $ 50 check into my checking account?)
But… at Christmas, I wanted to make some purchases with my shiny UBOC card. No can do. Despite transferring several thousand dollars into my checking account, there is no way they could manage to let me charge more than $ 700 to my debit card. I tried everything. I called them endlessly, getting a new story every time. Some customer service reps told me they would validate the charge to go through for the same business day, some told me for 24 hours, some for 4 days, but regardless of the story they would never let the charge go through! I asked if I could just write checks, and was told, «sorry, we don’t offer merchant verification services,» which they reluctantly explained meant that they wouldn’t clear any checks over $ 700 made at point-​of-​sales.
Even after storming into the bank and pleading with them, the best advice they could come up with was to just withdraw $ 1000 and go buy presents with a fat stack of cash. That’s what I ended up doing, but the reason I have a bank is so I don’t have to stuff a roll of hundreds into my jeans as I walk the streets…
I’ve taken to doing all my transactions through the ATM because their clerks are dead-​set on selling me on CDs and money market accounts.
Oh, and I’m sick of the second-​rate treatment on the phone because I’m not a «Wealth-​Management» customer.
Conclusion: I’m currently shopping hard for a new bank…

If you decide to Bank with UBOC you’ll have to decide what you value most. Is it the amount of time you’ll spend on the phone with them trying to determine what fees they’ve magically decided to add to your account? Or how far you’ll have to walk to find an ATM that won’t charge you extra? Either way, I don’t think the choices are very good.

I visit the bank usually once a month.
There is absolutely, positively, most definitely NO «uniting» quality of Union Bank of California. Not this branch, nor any other in San Francisco.
With a total of 3 locations in the entire city, my bank is driving me crazy. Yes, I said 3! WTF, Mate? The worst part about it, they are open on Saturday at the Japantown location, for 4 hours (9am-​1pm). Why would they even open at all – it’s just a slap in the face.
Oh, and when I visit the FiDi branch & actually go inside to make a deposit or withdrawl… the same damn teller tries to sell me on a CD or Money Market account.
I DON’T WANT IT! YOUR BANK SUCKS.
Just beacuse I carry a higher than average balance, doesn’t mean I’m going to let your stupid bank play with my $$$. That’s what a better bank like ING is for! And where the hell were you when I wanted FREE checks? You can’t give me free checks?
Ugh. If I wasn’t so lazy, I would change banks to somewhere better. Or just build a vault and store large amounts of cash in it.
End of rant… back to a life of unicorns & dandelions.

I’ve been a Union Bank of California customer for my entire life. People tease me since they don’t have ATMs on every single corner like BofA and Wells but who cares? I always have great customer service when I go in to make deposits and everyone is always friendly. There is always a bank located close by to where I live, work or both. That’s enough for me.
In particular, if you are looking for a Financial Service Specialist or someone to help you figure out where to possibly invest your extra cash, talk to James Miller in the Montgomery branch. Went to make a simple deposit today and ended up working with him to open up a CD in less than 20 minutes. For those of us who are super busy and don’t have time to think about investing, this really is very helpful.