Banner Bank W Bannock St, Boise

Great folks and good practices. Immediate responses to any issues. That is with the exception for the issue of your banking system vendor. Would like to see you fix your banking system such that it did not reduce available balance on pending transactions. It causes headaches with quicken during reconciliation. Frankly it is quite maddening. My other banks do not do that. As such, reconciliation is always easy with no adjustments there. Otherwise, I would give you full ratings. Cheers

I've been a member of Banner Bank for several years. Over the past year, I have encountered 3 major service problems, and have decided to move my finances elsewhere. The number one reason I'm leaving Banner Bank is because of the errors on their part when travelling internationally, and the potential risk of harm they put me in - followed up by an attitude of indifference to their errors. Last May/June, I traveled to 6 European countries. In 2017 when I was making my travel arrangements with flights and hotels, I discovered that even if I tried to buy a plane ticket, my debit card would be declined "for security purposes" since it was an international company I was trying to buy from. I called and spoke to a manager, and they offered to open up my debit card to foreign purchases for a limited time - like a week. I had to argue with them about it, since it was going to take more than a week to make arrangements for 3 weeks of travel. They made a compromise of allowing me to make purchases for one month. After that, if I wanted to do more, I would have to call them first and have them open the access. (Eyes rolling) I get it - fraud happens. But when the security measures are so strict that even I can't access my money, it's a problem. Especially when I was keeping my eyes open for extreme deals that airlines sometimes offer in short windows of time. I had to call another time before leaving for the same reason. Then, two weeks before I left, I called just to make sure that while I'm away, they have it all set up for the dates and countries I would be in, so I knew my debit card would work. They assured me that everything was set up to authorize purchases. (Since some of the countries are well known for pick-pocketers, I didn't want to carry cash or risk having more credit cards with me). As feared, the first country I arrived in, my card was declined. I had to wait for the Boise branch to open (Iceland is 7 hours ahead) before I could call to ask them AGAIN to open up my card. This could have left me in a lurch, had I not had some US dollars with me that I converted to krona at the airport. Banner assured me, once more, that they recorded properly the dates and times that I would be going to the next 5 countries, and assured me my card would work. When I arrived in Ireland, the last country before returning to the US, and tried to use my debit card again, it was declined. Only this time, I discovered it when I was in downtown Dublin on a Friday night - a popular night for drinking and partying. I called Banner again, very angry, and expressed to the manager that I was now in an unsafe environment without the ability to get back to the place where I was staying (since transportation options run on cash in Dublin). She was very indifferent. After a half hour of waiting for it to be fixed, and it wasn't, I was calling very frequently. The manager only gave an excuse of, "Well, we've had a lot of traffic walk into the branch, so I've been busy." I asked to speak to her superior, who was also not really taking the situation seriously, but she did get the problem fixed, and after an hour and a half of waiting. This was on a Friday night, and the local Banner would have closed in a couple of hours, not opening again til Monday. So I was panicking that if it didn't get fixed right then, I would really be stranded, and the last leg of my trip utterly ruined. Having to deal with incompetence like this really did taint my European vacation experience. The last thing I should have had to worry about was whether or not my bank has people working for it who can reliably set up access to foreign transactions. After having another bad experience related to service last week, I decided to find another bank. I gave two stars because, for the most part, Banner has served me well over the years. But in the past year, when I bring a service complaints to a manager's attention, and that manager doesn't seem to care, it makes me feel devalued. It seems like banks these days have lost standards for service.

I have been banking with Banner for 5+ years now and have had a wonderful experience. My banker, David Wray, is incredibly helpful and always willing to go above and beyond. Just amazing customer service!!