BankOfTheWest

I recently paid off my RV loan with Bank of the West. As soon as they received the payoff, they killed my online account. Wondering what happened to my RV title after the loan was paid off, I have been attempting to contact someone with a heart-beat to determine where they sent my RV title.

For over two weeks now I have been trying to contact Bank of the West Customer Service for this issue. My god, what a stupid company. It seems like they do EVERYTHING they can to avoid talking to you. This starts out with one of the most onerous computerized phone trees I have ever experienced. Once you navigate their phone tree, you are put on hold for hours with no one ever answering your call. They have NO email customer support, No chat customer support, only their ridiculous telephone system that nobody ever answers.

Never again. I will never do business with Bank of the west again. EVER!

As you can see by the total 1.5 star rating for Bank of the West, they are a troubled institution. They operate as a predatory lender. Be very careful.
My father was convinced to take out an interest only loan, 15 years ago on his death bed. Father passed 4 months later. My brother took over the loan as it was for a business. My brother has since passed. The business closed. Now Bank of the West is attacking my mother who has dementia, who is 89 years old and nothing to do with the loan.
Interest only for 15 years Bank of the West had no intention of ever collecting principal.
Scare tactics on the elderly disabled citizens is never acceptable

The online banking is great. Bill paying and in bank transfers are easy and fast. I don't know what it is like to work for the bank, there is always new tellers.

Between the stellar customer service, easy to use online banking and low fees Bank of the West is awesome. After suffering through the subhuman experience of banking with big guys like Wells and BofA I am very appreciative of the consistently high level output by a relatively small institution. I moved back east ten years ago but their online banking is so good that I saw no reason to close my account even though the closest location to me is 2000 miles away. Highly recommended.

I would call this bank an absolute joke, but it's definitely more nefariously run. Therefore I'm calling it what it is - A legal scam.

I've been sent a lot of CC offers for "spend 1,000 and get 200". I use those cards and get the offer. Done deal, no hassle. Everything is explained properly in the offer letter.
This bank sends you the offer, with wording similar to all the others... HOWEVER, upon receiving the card, you will realize that you probably missed some fine print of having to SET UP A BANK ACCOUNT WITH THEM to even use the card.

There are multiple serious issues with this -

1. The way they set it up, you have to sign up through their app... no website option. The app doesn't work the best so... great approach you stupid bankers.
2. Upon setting up the acct. You will have to do some digging to find their AUTOMATICALLY APPLIED FEES: a "paper statement" fee of $3 for every account, monthly. Automatically turned on... and they like to use double-speak to say they are "green for the planet". If that were the case you would automatically make things electronic with the option to OPT-IN instead... I want to say this is dumb, but they know what they're doing; BOW is owned by BMO, a major player in the 2008 collapse, and one of the top financiers of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. (watch Madoff on Netflix) The only green the care about is money.

The other fee, which really gets me because of their stupid wording and how they have things set up, makes it really feel scammy - Upon signing up, you will see " $10 service fee waived with ANY deposit of 0.01 or more... So you would think, GREAT! Set up auto-transfers of 0.01 to avoid a $10 "save the planet" (lmao) fee. Again, HOWEVER, when you go to set up any kind of AUTOMATIC transfer, it has to be at least $10. And that's how they get you. The difference in the wording of "any DEPOSIT vs. TRANSFER"...

So, to avoid a "service fee" of 10 bucks, you deposit 10. Great, now, they take that $10, and, thanks to new rules of banks needing 0% reserves (thanks COVID), They get to take your $10 and "invest" it (gamble it away on Wall Street by giving it to hedge funds that bet against American companies, effectively destroying our economy and markets from the inside out.

This kind of nefarious, immoral yet legal, business practices are why we can't have nice things anymore. I hope to god this bank becomes nothing more than a bad memory.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
I'm going to go use MidJourney AI to make pictures of banks on fire now.

As a financial professional, I am frequently asked by my client to recommend financial institutions for their needs. In the past, I have been very supportive of Bank of the West (BOW), but no longer.

I contacted BOW concerning one of my clients who was looking for a local bank with whom to do business. This client is a multi-million dollar corporation headed up by a 34-year-old female president. She was looking for a local bank that could offer them a line of credit as well as the other banking services they required.

Bank of the West (know known as WestStar) advertises themselves as particularly interested in helping local businesses and they had assisted a variety of my clients in the past. Unfortunately, it seems they are only interested in doing business with men at the helm.

My client was turned down because "the Equity doesn't add up" which, in my experience as a financial professional of more than 30 years and multiple Master's degrees in the field, is simply not possible. One cannot have equity that 'doesn't add up' since the equity is, by definition, the result of all the activity of the business.
Therefore, one need only look at the activity to determine any changes in equity.

It is obvious to these seasoned financial eyes that the 'reason' was fabricated because it makes no sense and, in this world of computerized accounting, is, frankly, impossible.

Worse, when I attempted to speak to the reviewer who was the head of the loan department and a Board Member, he was borderline abusive about my client - implying fraud but not outright making the accusation - and personally insulting to me which was highly unprofessional.

I have a variety of clients who were approved for larger loans with much less income/profit and who provided less-accurate financial information on their businesses to the bank. I know this because I saw everything they submitted when they brought it in for my review after the fact.

This business provided much more information that was more accurate and professional because I prepared it for her to take to the bank. Her annual growth has been astonishing, her income exceeds that of every other business I sent to BOW but one and her profit margin is higher than most. Her income and assets to debt ratio are both better than the majority of the businesses that were approved and, in fact, her debt base is lower than all of them. These are the very things looked at by financial institutions in the loan approval process. So, since every one of the factors used to evaluate loans was better, why was she not approved like all the other businesses? What is the difference?

Since they refuse to provide a valid financial reason for the rejection, I have no choice but to assume that the real problem was that the management/ownership of the business was not to their liking. Unfortunately, the only difference between the management of the approved companies and this one is that the other businesses have men at the helm.
Which then begs the question of gender bias and prejudice. Obviously, I cannot say for certain this is the case, but the circumstances certainly lead this educated and experienced professional to believe that it could be.

Either way, i shall not be recommending this financial institution to any of my future clients. I require an institution that is trustworthy, consistent and that isn't going to dissemble when asked a valid question.

Regardless of their real reasons for refusal of my client's loan, at the very least, Bank of the West is none of these.