OneWest Bank

My Mom and Dad went to Palm Desert location where the branch manager was very rude and upon my parents withdrawing money and ultimately decided to remove money to place with a different institution we're denied because my father has dementia, when my mom tried to help her husband, my dad the branch manager threatened to call the police, and kicked us out.

The social services showed up at our family home because he called them. This was very upsetting to my mom and dad and family as we didn't do anything wrong but rather the branch manager did by making a financial decision regarding my dad's account without consent.

My father is a long term member as well as my mom.

My mom moved some of her money to another bank and had to provide a paper trail as such. It's very apparent that the branch Manager caused unnecessary strife to my family and never once offered any services to assist us, he even waited until my mom barely finished signing her name on paper before he kicked us out and threatened to call the police.

Once our investment period is up we will be taking our money elsewhere.

Very bad management.

CONS:

-Their website is awful; there's like 18 security authentications everytime.

-They don't allow mobile deposits UNLESS you have a certain $$ balance, which means if you use this bank as an extra account and you don't deposit regularly after 180 days you lose your mobile deposit priveledges and have to go deposit in person

-Their customer service sucks. When I called to request they "turn back on" my mobile deposit ability, they said they couldnt do anything. "So you took away my priveledges to deposit money....because I hadn't deposited money. And now that I want to do what you're punishing me for.....you're telling me I can't?" SO COUNTER PRODUCTIVE

-It's catered toward baby boomers who enjoy going into the bank and doing everything in person

PROS:

-When you do go in, they are friendly bank tellers and provide personalized service

Needless to say, I am sticking with my online banking accounts like Ally Bank and keeping my traditional Bank Of America account who both let me deposit via mobile phone. AND Ally Bank has the best service and millenial friendly banking I've ever seen.

Closing my account tonight. (Update: went to try and login and SURPRISE! Error message that reads: We are unable to complete your request.

To log in, you may need to set your Internet browser to accept cookies or go to our website to begin the login process. Please contact us if you need further assistance."

I don’t usually bother with writing reviews, but my recent participation in dealings with OneWest bank has been such a horror show that I feel obligated to do so. So a guy is a 25 year customer of his friendly local neighborhood bank and tries to get a cash out refinance with an eye towards some remodeling.

The bank calls up a loan officer from Pasadena and everything starts out ok. After personally handing most requisite paperwork to the loan officer, it is then required to re-upload these documents to their web system (by far not the best I’ve seen, by the way) and at this point the loan has been passed on to a processor and the loan officer goes incommunicado for a week — having failed to pass on the correct phone number for the appraiser to get in touch with the customer. After much delay, the appraisal was finally done. (In the meantime of course there was an error on the 4506-T form.) Then — presumably instigated by the underwriter — they start prying into everything from divorce agreement to bank deposit statements to rental lease, repeatedly requesting letters and explanations for purpose of loan and intent to occupy; all the while the loan officer appears to be under the impression everything would be fine.

The underwriter turns down the loan on closing day, having worked extremely hard to come to the conclusion that the property under consideration must have been unoccupied for 2 years (false) and that the applicant must have intention of continuing to reside in his current apartment and rent out the house. In addition to everything else, the entire mess was designed to stretch out over 6 weeks (that’s not counting a couple more weeks of “escalation” to try to overturn the underwriter) when the national average for getting a mortgage is 3. Maybe all of this can be considered very funny, but it cannot bode well for an organization to have employees so dedicated to antagonizing the customer.

I thought that even with all the mishaps, at the end of the day a bank advertising mortgages at least wants business — I was wrong. On the subject of funny, the bank loses a mortgage deal and a customer, the customer loses much time and money, but somebody did make a small profit from all of this: the appraiser.