Commerce Bank

This bank has screwed up my family at least 3 times I know of. The last being today.
They kicked me out because they «didn’t like the way I handled my business account». Of course before that they took hundreds of dollars of fees out and even made the fee situation worse themselves. They did me a favor. I switched to a better bank.
My brother waited 2 weeks for a loan approval. Well when he didn’t immediately get a yes from them, he went to another bank and was approved the same day he applied. Then they called back with a yes and he told them they were too late.
Finally they won’t accept my aunt and uncle’s power of attorney document even though every other organization and every other bank has taken it. My aunt and uncle are sick and don’t want to have to handle their finances. They want me to. But the power of attorney is missing a phrase so they will make one last trip to this bank to close their accounts.
If you have very simple personal checking and plenty of money, you’ll be fine here. If you need anything unusual it has to go to their corporate offices and those people are idiots. The local branch has NO power to do anything out of the ordinary.

I’m a former employee of a different financial institution so when it comes to banking I kind of know my stuff. My husband and I took our business elsewhere when this branch of Commerce Bank was built close to our house (plus the other place was getting to be a pain in the ass… we had to call once a week to get something fixed.)
The first thing I like about Commerce Bank is the innumerable locations in the St. Louis area. No, I’m not able to bank anywhere in the country, but I don’t do a whole lot of traveling and when I do, I’m usually willing to eat an ATM fee (or two) if need be. The second thing I like is that I have NEVER had anyone try to sell me something through the drive-​thru. That was HUGE at the bank I worked for and it’s one of the reasons why I was so unsucessful as a teller there. If people want to open accounts and apply for loans, they’ll ask you about it. Generally speaking, most people just want to cash their check and go! This doesn’t appear to be a problem at Commerce, though. They’re never trying to push you to do anything with your money that you’re not already doing. (Plus, in this economy, it’s not like the interest rates are anything to brag about…)
Unfortunately, not everything has been love and light with this particular branch. I am very old fashioned and I HATE paying bills online or over the phone. I can remember to do it much more easily with my system using a check book and check ledger. I actually RELISH in the process of paying my bills (I know, I’m a freak, whatev.)
So, I go through a lot of checks, because the hub and I have a lot of bills. The reordering process was never a big deal at the bank I worked for because you could literally just call us up and we’d order the checks for you through our system. Super easy. We’d have to screw something up really royally for the checks not to make it to you (or you lived in a shady neighborhood and someone stole them out of your mailbox.)
Assuming the process was similar, I called the branch one day and asked someone to re-​order me checks. She said she would and I left it at that. One mistake on my end — I had let my checks get REALLY low before remembering to re-​order. I needed the checks to be there in less than a week in order to pay some of my bills on time. This had never been a problem before so I wasn’t too worried about it.
Flash forward to a few days standing between me and the due dates for my bills (generally they probably would have already been in the mail by now) — my checks still have not arrived. So I call the branch to get an ETA on the checks. Surprise, surprise, little miss DIDN’T ORDER THEM. The bank offers to give me some starter checks which they assure me will work for my needs. Wrong. I call some of the companies and they won’t take them. So, instead, I plan to make some ONE TIME bill payments by phone. WRONG. To do so, it would cost us up to 15 dollars processing for several of our bills. Since Commerce had most certainly dropped the ball, we asked if they’d be willing to pay these fees. No dice. They encouraged me to use their free online bill pay system. NO. I DON’T LIKE TO USE THE INTERWEBS FOR MY FINANCES. But, they wouldn’t budge… even though this is technically their fault to begin with.
Instead, we figure out that the one or two late fees we may or may not be hit with will actually be LESS than paying the bills by phone, so we just let the mailed the bills late when the checks FINALLY arrived.
Flash forward to the next billing cycle of my credit card where suddenly my credit limit has decreased, literally, by THOUSANDS of dollars. What? So, I call them to figure out what was going on. My payment arrived to them only 6 days late, but due to new rules (probably because this country’s economy is such a shit show) they are now able to lower your credit limit even after 1 day delinquency on your credit card (and this was my first late payment, EVER.) I tried to explain the situation to them, but they wouldn’t budge. (So, basically I should have just dropped my hissy fit and paid the outrageous 15 dollar processing fee, because in the end it cost me thousands of dollars… not that I was going to use all of that, but it’s nice to have a safety net.)
In order to rectify this situation, I had to make 6 months of on-​time payments in a row to have my credit limit restored (but not to it’s orginal amount.) Making on-​time payments isn’t a problem for me at all, but basically Commerce Bank screwed the crap out of my credit with their mistake. I do realize I am partially to blame due to my weird principles about paying bills online and not paying outrageous fees as well as my poor planning when ordering the checks, but in the end… I need a scape goat and Commerce is it. Not worth leaving the bank, but definitely a lesson learned.