SunTrust

This is not our «home» branch of Suntrust and thus, I have never physically visited this branch. However, I received a phone call last week from a woman named «Aarti» offering to refi my mortgage, which she implied was a) coming up to end of its lifespan, as several other Suntrust employees had indicated previously. She accessed our account and talked so fast, I felt like I was being sold aluminum siding. She seemed like she had many other more important things to be doing other than do this refi. I went ahead and did the application. In the same phone call, she wanted to set up a «brief talk» with this investments broker Richard Kurlantzick because, as she said, «it’s always good to have a second set of eyes review your investments.» Of course, she sold it as if it was a very chill, very low risk appointment. Within minutes, she calls back, saying she needs to know what our other assets were for the application. I did not list all, only one. Then, at 5pm on the button that day, which was a Friday, Richard Kurlantzick – who sounds like an over-​the-​hill Tin Man with anachronistic speech and all – calls and asks if he «could have a moment of [my] time.» Hmmm… if I were in financial sales, or any sales, I can promise you I would not call customers at 5pm on Friday and ask them to talk. That’s a recipe for a pissed off customer. However, I gave him a minute. He asked me about this asset I listed for Aarti – at which point it became apparent that the reason she asked was not to fill out the application but to prequalify our appointment with Richard, which we didn’t even want.
Richard – within 60 seconds – tells me – without asking if we had other assets or if we had other needs or wants – that this appointment will be a waste of our time and his. I responded that, we had other needs and had been planning on coming for a variety of reasons but yes, it sounds like it would be a waste of our time and hung up. Excellent, one less annoying thing to do.
Fast forward a few days out. I email Aarti and ask if she had any news on our refi. She plays dumb and says that she doesn’t typically get informed and that the mortgage people will contact us directly. A few days later, I touch base again and she again disengages, this time giving me the 800 number of the refi division. I call and they tell me what is going on. Number one, it is not due to be refi’d until 2017. Number two, there were some issues that we needed to attend to and number three, they did inform her of the progress.
The whole process was just icky. We were very disappointed – to say the least – in our banking experience with this Suntrust. Especially after banking with Suntrust for over 15 years.

Wouldn’t consider a bank to be a religious organization like the Unilocal category suggests, but I looove me some $$$s so maybe making a withdrawal is sort of like a religious experience. Drive-​thru atm is all I need.