The KeyBank Saga Part 2

Read part 1 here.

Because KeyBank has a multitude of different personal account options and there’s a minimum you need to keep in each account, I felt it was prudent to make a change to my account to avoid fees for crossing the minimum threshold with the upcoming expense of the wedding.

I did my research online and found the account that would meet my needs. One day, I called the national customer service center to make the change and they indicated that I had to do so at a local branch. I was a little annoyed, but understood and didn’t mind going to the branch to watch the person actually make the changes in the system.

The first week of January, I made it to the branch close to work at 11:15am. I was quickly met by one of the account managers who sat down and started asking me questions. After about five minutes of questioning, I asked to see the side-by-side chart that Key provides to new clients and asked if I could just change everything to the account I found online. They wouldn’t let me see it or make any changes until they asked some more questions. After another 20 minutes of questions, they finally put the side-by-side chart in front of me and started to explain the options starting with the most elaborate account, one that I couldn’t even qualify for at the time. It took an additional 30 minutes for the person to go through the motions of making the changes.

It was a big waste of time, because I knew exactly what I needed, and it took this (extremely slow) person over an hour to make the required changes. I fully appreciate that a line of questioning could help avoid future customer service snafus, but the amount of time that I was in this office to make what seems like a simple change was obscene.

In the middle of February, I noticed that the change was still not reflected in my online banking. When I called the national call center to find out what was taking so long, they indicated that the first request was denied. I was irate. I wasted over an hour and the requested change didn’t even go through! I had to call the person at the branch to have them process it again.

On this phone call, they indicated that they didn’t know why it hadn’t gone through, and furthermore couldn’t give me an answer as to when to expect the transition. Instantly would have been nice, but their advice was to wait until the end of March before checking back in.

This was an absolutely unsatisfactory answer.

A better answer would have been, “I don’t really know right now, but I will look into it and give you a call back.”

By that time, I would have spent enough to pass the threshold and would have incurred fees. So I immediately contacted KeyBank corporate, mainly to get an answer as to when I could expect the transition, but also to make them aware of the entire above situation.

The person I spoke with was extremely helpful and told me the change would be live within a week (and it was) and also agreed that my experience in changing over my account was abnormal and not what they want customers to experience. This conversation left me cautiously optimistic with Key’s customer service, and life went on…

…until I went to take money out of my savings account at a KeyBank ATM one weekend.

This story is a doozy!