Citizens Bank

I think Citizens Bank once cared about being different than the other big banks. Those days are long gone. Now they are just a big conglomerate that cares nothing about the individual banker.
I opened both a personal & business account several years ago, with the promise that I would never incur any fees. Everything was OK for a while, but I started receiving fees for paper statements & inactivity fees. In the last 2 years it amounted to almost $ 400. As a small business owner, I am very busy all the time, & just didn’t have time to deal with it. When I approached customer service inside the bank, they told me to call the 800# from home to get better results. Customer service on the phone offered me $ 10. What?
They would not reverse any of the crazy fees for me, so I closed both accounts.
Do yourself a favor & stay away! Go to a smaller bank that doesn’t have these fees. There are a few of those in Arlington.

Super-​friendly staff who go out of their way to help. They even remember my name! I wish they had later hours every day, but overall no complaints here!

Let me start by saying, I know its not the teller’s fault. But still… My son (pre-​teen) got a 25 dollar check from a relative for his birthday. Since it was drawn on a Citizen’s Bank account, we went to the branch on Mass Ave in Arlington Hieghts. He had his school ID and was ready to do the transaction just like he’d seen his mom and dad do many times. Problem: The teller informed him that, since he (nor his parents) had accounts at Citizens Bank, they had to charge him $ 7.50 to cash his $ 25 birthday check. SERIOUSLY??? Of course, we opted to go to «our bank» (TDBank) and do the transaction there. The teller honestly seemed embarrassed to tell a child that she had to charge his $ 7.50 to cash a $ 25 check… drawn on Citizens Bank. My opinion: Really Bad Policy = bank I’ll likely never do business with, and warn my circles to consider last when choosing a financial institution. All the charming Alexander Hamilton TV commercials in the world don’t counter bad policy.

I came to this branch because it’s the closest one to my office. I needed to deposit wedding checks (yay!) which the branch manager told me would be easiest done by opening joint accounts. It was «no problem» that my husband wasn’t with me… they could do it all that day and get them deposited. It took almost two hours to open two accounts (I’ve worked for banks so I know this is a ludicrous amount of time, but I paid the parking ticket afterwards and didn’t complain much).
I wasn’t happy with the service from Shiva — the CSR who «helped» me with the accounts. But I thought that upon leaving I was all set. Little could I have known that for over the next month I would receive dozens of phone calls from him, tracking down forms he’d forgotten to give me to sign but that were now somehow super urgent. He called me, and my husband, who doesn’t even handle our finances and even though I spoke to him on Friday and told him I’d send the last documents (for the umpteenth time!!!) again on Tuesday after the holiday weekend, he called MY HUSBAND to get the paperwork.
I am so fed up with this bank and the people who work in it. I asked Shiva to list me as the primary on the account since I was the one who had accounts there prior to opening the joint accounts. He listed my husband as the primary. Patriarchial society much? I informed him we did NOT want a debit card for the joint checking account and one arrived in the mail.

Pretty decent service in the heart of Central Square. Minus one star because I don’t like that their ATM is in a nook off to the side of the building. Minus another star because usually one of the two machines is out of order and it is pretty filthy in there.

Another Unilocal entry claims this branch is CLOSED…
It is NOT !
I go there once a week.

By far the friendliest staff I’ve ever encountered in a bank!