STAY AWAY FROM STERLING NATIONAL BANK

The following story is true.

No names were changed to protect the guilty.

Sorry for the length of this tale of woe but it spans more than one year.

My mother in law (mom) had her money in three banking institutions, Astoria Federal, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and J P Morgan Chase (Chase.)

The main reason for Chase & Astoria accounts were their proximity to her home. Both conveniently had branches within a couple of blocks.

Since she was a sprightly 93 last year we decided we should be able to monitor her accounts for obvious reasons.

I always felt it was a good idea to start consolidating our accounts as we get older since we might forget where one or two were.

It has been said that W C Fields opened hundreds ofaccounts across America and when he died his heirs did not find at least 600 of them!

Complicating matters was the take-over of Astoria by Sterling National Bank and their decision to run parts of the new the division separately.

So, mom now had 2 small IRA CDs and a checking account at Sterling* and the interest offered on all was an embarrassment, so we decided to start moving all out. The first to move would be the IRAs since at her age she has to take out a required amount every year (RMD.)

My wife has Power of Attorney (POA) for all her mom’s financials, so we drove to the nearest Sterling branch and sat for nearly an hour on a Saturday morning before an officer could see us.

BUT their computers were down, so we could not do a thing except be ready with all the papers to sign and documents to present at a later date.

I went in the next business day with the 16 page POA document and was told the long form POA was not going to be accepted by the Sterling legal team. I had to find and fill out the POA short form!

But they could not give me a blank and my subsequent searches for one were unsuccessful.

The response from the people at Sterling was a frustrating, “Your mom will just have to come into the bank and do it herself.”

But mom left for the Florida portion of her snowbird life before we could straighten this mess out so we now had to wait until her return in April.

Five months later we had a better idea than trying to work with Sterling directly. We had Mom open an IRA account at RBC and asked them to take the Sterling accounts over which they did within a week.

Of course the next time we looked at mom’s Sterling statement we noted they charged her a $15 fee TO TAKE HER OWN MONEY OUT OF HER OWN ACCOUNT!

This was not an early withdrawal fee or a penalty for taking money out of an IRA since it went right into an IRA. And when you are over 71, which by any method of counting 93 is, you are allowed to even close an IRA CD without any penalties, by law!

No, it was merely a BWC (Because We Can) by Sterling.

Sterling was now in the process of fully taking over Astoria and dissolving them into their brand. They must have realized that just charging 93 year old ladies the occasional unfair surcharge or inane fee was not going to be enough for the CEO to buy another yacht so they started laying off ‘redundant’ workers and closing branches.

Of course it was not personal but naturally they were closing the branch my mom used.

That necessitated getting her checking account out of the non-customer friendly bank.

But once again Sterling would not take our 'legal anywhere else in the country' POA so my wife had to go to branch just before they closed with her mom and get herself added as a co-owner of the checking account.

Now all we had to do was wait for her automatic debits and credits to be switched over to her Chase account and we were ready to close out Sterling for good, in more ways than one.

We are now in August, one full year after we started trying to end mom’s relationship with this awful institution.

My wife left work early and we visited our local East Meadow Sterling branch once again.

As soon as we walked in the door we noticed two officers busy with customers, another woman sitting in the back corner alone but talking on the phone and one other officer available.

We told him we needed to close out an account. He told us he couldn’t help and we had to wait for one of the female officers who were both working with other customers.

We sat for 45 minutes before getting very angry and asked the one woman in the corner cubicle if she could help. This woman was on the phone the entire time we were there making doctor’s appointments and taking personal calls.

She said we had to wait  for one of the the ladies to which my wife said, “Is there a bank manager here I can talk to?”

You guessed it, that useless woman WAS the bank manager!

Now both of us were speaking quite loud calling this the worst bank we ever had to deal with etc.

Finally one of the officers took a break from her marathon with her customer and told us she’d be with us in a minute. She also asked what we wanted to do and when she heard we needed to close out an account she said, “Oh, all you have to do is go to one of the tellers and she can take care of that.”

AFTER WAITING ONE HOUR!?! AND WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FIRST GUY HERE FOR? THE IDIOT WHO TOLD US TO WAIT FOR ANOTHER OFFICER!
By the way that guy left for home a few minutes later so it was obvious why he didn't want to take the time to help us. JERK!

The teller asked all the right questions and while it took 15 more minutes at least she was able to get us the final amount in the account and hand us a check for it.

End of story, right?

OF COURSE NOT, THIS IS STERLING NATIONAL SCREW THE CUSTOMER BANK!

A week later my now 94-year-old mom called me all upset. She just received a letter from Sterling telling her she owed the bank $35.10 DUE TO AN OVERDRAFT!

I asked her if she had possibly written a check on her Sterling account and she reminded me my wife took her checkbook away so that wouldn’t happen.

With no nearby branch for her to go to, and I wouldn’t let her do so even if it was still open I asked her to mail the letter to me.

I took the letter along with the receipts from our last visit to the branch from hell and asked what new fraud were they trying to pull now.

When the officer explained she couldn’t talk to me about this since I wasn’t on the account I nearly lost it!

I explained as calmly as I could that NOBODY IS ON THE ACCOUNT SINCE IT’S BEEN CLOSED!

I also told her I do not want to know anything about the account other than why they are dunning my mom for money she does not owe.

After sitting in the bank for another half hour of my life I will never get back she explained what the charges were for.

When Sterling closes an account, they do so as if as if it’s the day before the action took place. In other words, closing the account after hours on a Thursday and their computers are programmed to make believe it’s Wednesday.

This meant that when the teller told us how much was in the account she was giving us the correct and final amount for Thursday night but Sterling corporate wanted her to give us the Wednesday amount.

So what?

There was 10 cents worth of interest to be added on Thursday and Sterling did not want to give it to the customer.
Name change imminent to Scrooge National Bank?

SO BECAUSE THEY CLAIM TO HAVE GIVEN US 10 CENTS TOO MUCH WE WERE NOW IN AN AUTOMATIC OVER-DRAFT SITUATION WHICH CAUSED THE ABSURD $35 OVER-DRAFT FEE TO BE CHARGED TO A CLOSED ACCOUNT!

If we ignore this Sterling would continue to go after mom until she passed away and probably then go after her estate for the 10 cents and the over-draft fee. And knowing what a crooked corporation this disgusting bank is I'd bet they would be adding interest charges and compounding them so in a year or so we'd owe them around $100!

I’m not certain what caused the officer to waive the $35 while I was sitting there. Perhaps it was my bulging eyes and reddened face but nevertheless she asked the bank manager, who was on the phone talking to another one of her friends, if she could waive the fee. The manager raised her head and when she saw who I was immediately said, “Just do it!”

BUT THEY INSISTED ON THE 10 CENTS!!!!

I PAID THE AMOUNT BECAUSE I JUST WANTED TO GET THE HELL OUT OF SATAN’S BANK AND BE DONE WITH THEM FOREVER.

AND YOU SHOULD TOO!

I tweeted corporate Sterling over and over asking to speak with someone but never got a response. I really did not expect one since they are the worst.

And so all I can say is:

DO NOT EVER BANK WITH THIS MOST AWFUL GROUP OF INCOMPETENT MORONS!
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!