Complaint Review: Prairie State Bank & Trust - Decatur Illinois

Looking for somewhere to place your hard-earned cash?  Look no further than the inept and arrogant small town bank of PSB & T.  At least four times, we have found ourselves without access to our accounts because this bank arbitrarily places spending limits on customers' accounts.  Understand that we typically keep a running balance of over 20K in this particular account.  There is absolutely no reason for our credit or debit transactions to be declined.  But, yet they are.

And here's the real joy of banking with PSB&T.  If something like this should happen on a weekend - you're screwed.  There is no one available to take your call.  Their automated system will ask you to leave a message  (is this 1994?) but guess what?  If you select this option, you will be disconnected.  This bank will carelessly leave you marooned without options until they re-open on Monday, assuming it's not a "bank holiday".

If you're "lucky" enough to speak to a representative, they could not care less about your issue.  We have been blamed by a random teller for 'spending too much money' over the course of a 24 hour period.  You read that right.  We were scolded for spending too much of our own money.  If they deem this to be true  (and good luck trying to get them to explain the reasoning behind when these supposed caps go into effect - because none of the employees can - not even bank management).  Regardless, if the bank declares your spending 'suspicious' they will cut off access to your card and you will no longer be able to withdraw money or make card purchases.  Again, until they open again - which, if it is a weekend, could potentially leave you without cash for over 48 hours if you have not prepared.

You shouldn't HAVE to prepare for your bank to cut off access to your money.  Meanwhile, they will keep stressing that this is only for YOUR protection.  Uh huh.  I don't know what they stand to gain with this but it certainly is not in the customer's best interest.  Perhaps have an actual customer service staff that works to monitor suspicious transactions and then contact the customer to confirm that the purchase is legit BEFORE they remove access?  How about that?  After all, that's what other, real banks do.  

Most recently, we had a teller advise us about a way to bypass this system.  Her advice?  Go to a gas station and buy a pack of gum.  Yeah.  Stay with me here.  'Go buy a pack of gum,' she said.  "Then, you can ask for, like, $100 back from the gas station and avoid using the ATM.  Somehow that works."   Wow.  OK.  That's some high-finance advice there, PSB&T.

Management at this bank needs to be completely fired & replaced and all employees retrained in customer service; probably would be easier to just fire them too.  We run a very successful business ourselves and we are embarrassed to be associated with these imbeciles.   So, we're closing the account immediately.

Note that we somehow tolerated this for over a year.  Changing banks can be an enormous chore, especially when a number of auto-bill-pay accounts are attached.  We kept putting it off.  Well, finding ourselves literally stranded out of state, our card declined at our hotel because of this, and unable to contact anyone, we were almost forced to sleep in our car as the last straw.  We.  Are.  Done.

Do not work with this bank unless you enjoy the stress of playing ATM/Debit roulette every time you approach a register.  They don't even provide the courtesy of sending you a text or something if you're over their arbitrary limit.  Nothing.  You have no idea until it's time to pay.  Insane.

Avoid At All Costs.