Well I have been with the bank for 3 years and to tell you the truth there ways of doing business are lack luster at best. 1) If you have a debit or credit card issue after there business hours get ready to be stranded where you are at! Wow other banks are open for customer service 24 hours a day! There tellers take forever to process your transaction "no experience"! If you have issues about your account no one ever calls you back to discuss. There on-line system is out dated and not effective. Also, the employees at corporate have such attitudes it can make you sick!! Sorry Sandy Spring!

Allow me to explain to you how Sandy Springs bank would like for you to link an external transfer account.

- You start by logging into your online access, ok pretty normal stuff.

- Navigate over to transfers and click on add a transfer account.

- Fill in your account information (this is where it starts to get interesting), once you click submit you think you'd be done, right? Wrong!

- Then you print out what you just submitted and MAIL (yes, standard post) it to the bank. Ok, this is annoying, but it can't possibly get any dumber, right? Wrong.

- Once they receive the paper work, there is another 3-5 business day delay for 'processing' followed by them finally making a communication to the other bank.

- Once they communicate with the other bank using smoke signals, there is then a 6 business day delay to complete this step.

- If you made an error on any of your forms, be prepared to completely restart this process.

Really Sandy Springs? 2 or so weeks BEST case to set up an external transfer account? This is a task that takes other banks perhaps 1-2 days to complete with out any actual paper. I think it's time for you guys to take a look at your business practices and catch up to the speed of your competition. Customer service seems to be completely oblivious to the speed anyone else does business, so if you do plan to bank here bring plenty of patience with you.

If I had a choice in the matter, I would simply not bank with Sandy Springs and this would be a moot point of the company failing all by itself. However, I'm forced to bank with here b/c this company won the contract that holds an HSA Flex account.

They seem to move the same lazy employees from branch to branch. I swear it is the same lady at the gaithersburg branch that i used to see at the olney branch. she should be fired. she never smiles!!! I think it is a bad place to work as well as a bad place to bank. I only banked w/ them for 4 yrs but i closed my acct after i saw an employee crying at the rockville branch may 2010. i over heard the branch manager in montgomery village talking about her supervisor brian within ear shot of me while i was filling out my dep slip.

I was so not impressed with this bank.

They charge over and over serivce charges for a Health Savings account.. The service charges are more than the interest rate.

Then I closed the account, when I went to cash the check, they billed me a service charge again and then charged me an overdraft fee.. Now they want to report me to the credit people

You can't be rid of them. Close your account now if you have before it's too late.

I opened my account because I was sick of BOA (15 yrs). I walked into the gaithersburg branch and waited 10-15 mins for the one person sitting at her desk to even say hello. I should have stuck with my 1st impression. the bank looks closed. when i walked in it was weird that the tellers are behind a massive empty dead space 'welcome center'.

the lady sat at her desk typing an email for 10 mins before she even bothered looking up to see me sitting on the chair. she apologized but didn't seem sincere. I said I wanted to get some info about a checking acct. she didn't ask me a single question. pushed a 50 pg booklet in front of me and said the "free checking account would be perfect for you"

she said, "$25 will open the account there is no min balance" I didn't feel she even wanted to get to know me. I did open my account but not at her branch.

it's now been 3 weeks since then and Im being told by the young man who opened my acct for me that whoever opened the account did not order my check card nor my first order of checks. he obviously forgot it was he that opened my acct.

of course i closed that account. I dont get it. small banks claim they want our business but act they way i just spelled it out with these 2 experiences.

I closed my acct at the gaithersburg branch, when i went in I told the same lady in the front of the branch--i needed to go to close my acct. she smiled and pointed to the tellers they can do it for you. i went to the teller at her window and she said that the other lady could close it for me. it took less than 2 mins to actually close the account ($3500.00) but almost 15 mins to find someone who would do it without pushing it off on someone else. nice . The worst part was there was no other customers waiting ANYWHERE --DRIVE THRU INCLUDED!! and there were 4 employees..I did finally move my full relationship from BOA but not to Sandy spring bank like i originally thought i would....but to PNC across the street.

I have been with SSNB for more than 20 years. Wow have they changed!

I have never had any problem with the tellers, many of whom have been there for the entire time I have had accounts there. I do get a sense that they are NOT happy anymore. The smiles are there as required, but their eyes are blank.

As far as customer service, i.e. those at the desks and the branch managers - they are truly horrible. If you have money, loads of money, they will treat you better - but don't expect promises to be kept. If you don't have money, or have hit hard times in the recent years - you are totally screwed. They won't even talk to you, or treat you like a human being, but rather someone from the sewer or under the rug.

As far as fees - THEY WILL KILL YOU IN THIS DEPARTMENT! You have to be very careful NOT to trust the amounts you might see online for your account - they will not be the same as what the bank uses to assess fees. The fees being $35 a pop and if your account is overdrawn more than 7 days, you will be charged an additional $5 per day.

Several years ago, one of their reps was trying to talk my grandmother into doing a reverse mortgage on her home (now my home). Thank god she didn't do it! They probably would have figured out some way of tossing us all on the street and we'd have been homeless - but they wouldn't care about that.

I am planning on pulling ALL of my accounts over the next few weeks - they can kiss my bumper!

I worked at this terrible place briefly and thank god it was brief. I worked for Patrice Ffolkes. Patrice was the meanest person you could meet in your life. She didn't allow you to have a cell phone and she did not let her employees socialize. If you do talk to your fellow employees Patrice Ffolkes would come out of her office and ask why are you talking and tell you to go back to your desk and make sales calls. On top of that everything that ever came out of her mouth was negative. She never had anything positive to say. She treated her employees like children. The bank itself has terrible rates and is run like it is still in the 1800's. Their is nothing good going for this place. They make everything way more complicated than it needs to be. Their online system sucks and if you are a business owner and you bank with them GOD HELP YOU because they will Fee you like crazy and make everything hard on you. STAY AWAY from this place all together.

If you need a mortgage---run away from Sandy Spring Bank. They are liars and scoundrels. When our lot loan was in trouble, they would not even talk to us until we brought the loan current...and then they STILL would not talk to us. Our realtor FINALLY got a contract from qualified buyers, but Sandy Spring flat out rejected the offer of a short sale that was 20% below the loan amount. They will not take a call from us or our attorney. We have since learned that they accepted short sale deals from lots of builders. Unethical scumbags.

Found daily banking experiences excellent. Folks at Urbana branch were always friendly and helpful. No, repeat NO, charges on daily banking activities; even got interest on checking accounts (small but much better than fees).

Regarding mortgages, weak experience. Bought a townhouse last year for investment purposes. Talked with SS about the mortgage. They wanted a larger down payment and a larger interest rate. Found they would not budge on those inordinate values compared with other banks. Naturally, I got the mortgage from another bank. Since I do not establish a new mortgage often, this negative aspect is only a small portion of the overall, in my opinion.

cordially..................................jtb