Recently my daughter spent a semester in Spain studying abroad. Since Sovereign Bank is owned by Santander which in Spain is like Bank of A-ManyFees here and on every corner it made sense to see if we could set up her account at Sovereign so she could access her money there and were assured that the two banks were one and the same, problem number one THEY AREN'T. WE WERE LIED TO and every time my daughter went to take out money we were charged an $6 ATM fee, lesson learned we should have just left her money at TD Bank at least then I would have expected the $6 ATM Fee. On top of this we set up the account as a joint account with me and my daughter so I couls handle everything from here while she was in Europe and again were assured there would be no problem AGAIN THEY LIED. Unfortunately my daughter lost her ATM once and had her purse and cell phone stolen for a second loss, got locked out of her online account once and had her pin number deactivated and here is where the real problem began. Sovereign banks phone service employees do not know how to handle a customer instead of looking to resolve and put out fires all they know how to do is pour gasoline on the fire. They are 95% rude, nasty, uncooperative, and useless. I had to twice wire money to my daughter because they refused to help resolve the problem and demanded my daughter call even though she was overseas and had no phone.. Again why the hell did I open a joint account there if they refused to talk to me and why did they lie to me that I could handle the account from here. Now the real test came when my wife called TD Bank to report my daughters ATM card missing the first time and stolen the second time were courteous helpful and issued a new card immediately since my wife was also on the account there with her. LESSON LEARNED SOVEREIGN BANK USED TO BE A GOOD BANK BUT THAT NO LONGER APPLIES, THEY HAVE NO CONCEPT AS TO WHAT CUSTOMER SERVICE IS AND WILL LIE OUTRIGHT TO YOUR FACE TO GET YOUR MONEY.

Back in June due to relocation; I've moved my safe deposit and updated my address with Sovereign Bank located at Bay Terrace, Queens. My husband and I wasn't happy with their customer services at all so I decided to cancel all my accounts with them; including the safe deposit box all at once in July 2012.

After almost one year; I received a letter sent by this bank from their Collections Dept. stating that I have an overdrawn amount of $65 in my checking accounts. Getting very concerned with this would affect my credit score which I have excellent records; I called their 1-877 sovereign bank customer service dept. and was told that I need to deal with the branch directly. This $65 is the annual renewal fees for the safe deposit box which I cancelled in 2012 and if I don't resolve this within 35 days; the case will transfer to an outside collection agency and I won't be able to open any bank accounts within USA!

Of course I was so concerned about my credit which I have excellent score; I called at 9:00 a.m. and the gentleman by the name Frank Yalo told me that he will get back to me when he can. He stressed that he has many customers to attend to (mind you it's 9:00 a.m. on a weekday). Until noon time, I didn't hear back from anybody so I called the second time and asked for the branch manager, Vincent Marino and left a message. Again more wait until close to 3:00 p.m. I called again and this time I got Mr. Frank Yalo again. He was unbelievable rude and raising his voice to me "I told you I will get back to you when I can; we have short man power today and I just have no time to do this! So ok wait for my call back" and he hang up on me!

This is like a nightmare which I have to re-live all over again a year again when I closed all the accounts. I signed all the papers; returned the safe depoist key and everything and not only they have not closed my safe deposit account; but they also left my checking accounts open!

This is THE WORST BRANCH OR BANK EVER!

DAY ONE

6/13/13

I have been a customer of this banks for some years and had my first big problem with them a couple of years ago when I got a shut off notice from my Electric company. I couldn't understand why because I had been using the BillPay feature with the bank and saw that the payments had gone out. I contacted the electric and they couldn't find the payments and thought that it maybe be a problem on their end, but as it turns out two months of my bill payment to pay my electric bill had gone to pay someones loan. The person's loan I was paying had a loan through the bank and I had never, ever had a loan with them. I ended up talking with a ton of people all the way up to the corporate level and even though the saw it in black and white in their statements that they had made a mistake they still wanted to so call investigate further. It took the bank a month or more to put the money back into my account that had gone to pay someone elses loan through their bank. Now today I am forced to not be able to go grocery shopping because the bank screwed up and did not get my replacement card to me that I requested over five days ago, but there is a five business day requirement for delivery and I have no card because they were claiming that my address must have been incorrect. They checked my address and it was correct. So since I needed to buy food I requested that they reactive my old card that I asked them to deactivate because I had bent it by sitting on it and was told that they couldn't. I requested to speak to someone higher up and even though I told him that there would be some days that I would be without food and unable to eat he still stood firm telling me that they would not send me my card until two business; today is Thursday! This meant that I would not possibly receive my card until Monday, if I can believe what they say. He told me that they could not send me the original replacement card because it had been deactivated, but that was not true because it was not listed in the system as being

Sovereign Bank is like a clown car of inept people. We arrived to close on an equity loan only to be told that they did not have a notary on site and we would have to travel to another town. Could they have called?At the closing, we explained that we wanted to pay this loan off quickly and would be overpaying by hundreds of dollars. In order to get a discount on the loan, we agreed to have the payments automatically taken out of the Sovereign checking account. This is not our main account. We set up an automatic transfer of funds from our regular bank to the Sovereign bank to be paid way in advance of the due dates for the loan payment. They never took the money out of the checking. Not our overpayment - not even the regular monthly payment. After three months, they:

** threatened to close the account because of a lack of information needed for the Patriots Act (information THEY should have asked for when the account was opened but they failed to and were now threatening us. ** whined that we were behind in payments and they charged us a $36 "you suck" fee. AND, they were reporting us to the credit bureau. After several visits and phone calls, the manager assured me that they don't really report, they just say that and she would make sure that it was all cleared up. This week, my real bank pulled a credit report for a mortgage refi and called me to say that it was reported that we were more than 30 days late for the Sovereign payment!!! I called Sovereign and demanded that they fax a letter to my bank to state that this was never our fault... it was the clown car staff at Sovereign. She had to "escalate it to her boss who had to escalate it to God, or whoever has the power to write a mea culpa letter and it can't be done til next week. We are rolling our Sovereign loan into our refi mortgage and I cannot wait to be rid of them.

Have already started the process of closing the account and it is not 30 days old. Ask for manager to call back, always told is on another line and will return call which is never returned.

Have switched my $15 million dollar account to Bank of America. Excellent customer service!!

Sovereign has made unnecessary charges to my account. I have been to the branch 4 times, called numerous time for the last 6 months to no avail. The employees in the branch are constantly changing, never get the same agent twice. Same with the phone. I have opened complaints to research my account to no avail. It is all so frustrating. I am re-financing with my local credit union on Tuesday. I feel my $2,650.00 will never be returned to me. Once I close the account they will stop researching, that is, if they have even started! I suggest you make the move toward small banking, where your satisfaction matters.

I opened accts with Sovereign in Massachusetts after or around the time they became affiliated with (part of?) Santander (a huge multinational bank if I understand correctly). I have had no problems with my accounts or with branches/tellers. I actually have had pretty decent experiences with customer service (telephone).

I love my accounts' Online Bill Pay. You can make anyone, including any individual, a biller - so that means you can have the bank send a printed check via USPS to your mom, yourself (I was traveling), or some person who doesn't use Paypal... you get the idea. But maybe all banks have great Online Banking features now.

All the bad reviews here remind me of dealing with Bank of America and other banks in the past. Seems that all the huge banks offer crappy experiences in one way or another!

I opened an account by sovereign bank and I told them to make that I shouldn't be able to be over drafted and it didn't happen and I was overdrafted and I spoke to a few representatives and they gave me disgusting service they didn't help me they just hung up the phone on me I recommend everybody to close their accounts by sovereign they will steel ur money

The Whitehall PA branch is only equipped to handle personal transactions. I have business loans with them (in good standing). When I had a question about a balance on the loan, no one in the bank could access that information for me. There have been other situations like that in different branches, as well.

So, my questions have to go to an 800 number with the bank where I deal with people who sound tired and have no customer service skills, except to call me "mam" when I start to get agitated.

I faxed a form they needed yesterday and this morning I was told they didn't receive it although I sent it to the attention of the rep I was dealing with.

I can't wait to pay off our loans so I don't have to deal with this bank again.

and no one seems to be helping me !!! chase is much better!!