Small regional banks are so much better than the huge monsters like Bank of America or Chase.
I’ve been trying to open an account for my professional organization of which I am treasurer. We don’t move large amounts of money, we conduct just half a dozen transactions a year, our membership fee is $20, but BofAm was treating me like they suspected I was a drug lord. They wanted mountains of paperwork. I provided all of it. Then they wanted letterhead, which we don’t even have. Then they wanted me to go on a conference call with a Business Specialist in Florida, the local banker, and the president of the organization. I wondered why we don’t ask the President of the US to be on the call just to make it even more fun.
After struggling with them for a month (!), I came to my senses, went to a small regional bank, talked to a live human being in person, and had everything done in under an hour.
And it was the same thing for our mortgage. We had first gone to BofAm who treated us like total undesirables, although we had great credit scores and a good down payment. But they just couldn’t get over N being a recent immigrant. So we went to the local bank where the bank’s owner met us, showed us pictures of his grandkids, and assured us that if we ever encountered any financial trouble and had difficulty coming up with a payment, we just had to talk to him and we’ll figure out what to do. And it’s been fantastic ever since.