Citizens Bank Locations in Your Area

Not unlike some other reviewers here, I opened a small business checking account with Charter One a few years ago. Everything was ok for a while (though I did have to babysit them to get my new account incentive credit). Policies were clear, branch staff were helpful. Then came the name change and IPO. I had a hunch it would be trouble and it surely was. Since that time, Citizens has adopted what appears to be a policy of holding checks deposited against an account and delaying deposits going into an account until the balance is low enough to cause an overdraft. Other banks have faced legal action for this in the past, and as I understand it, it was specifically outlawed in the Dodd-Frank act a few years ago. You can check your balance after the end of the business day on one day and it will show as positive, then check it again the next day before the bank opens and be overdrafted. Sometimes they have retroactively processed a check against my balance two or three business days prior (not because of the weekend). I know, my fault, "keep enough money in your account to cover outstanding checks, etc". Of course that's good advice, and I must be the jerk for not earning enough money in my dirt-poor city to maintain a thousand dollar balance, but it doesn't help any when another party double-charges you for something, as happened to me, and when you talk to the branch manager, she tells you they will correct the problem and waive the fees and suggests adding overdraft protection to the account (for a fee, of course), when in fact you are no longer eligible for said overdraft protection because of "failure to properly manage the account" (according to Citizens) because you had... wait for it... a couple overdrafts! In fact, I had noticed the error less than 24 hours after it occurred and added cash to cover it the same day. No matter, still hit with 3-4 od fees, of which only 2 were reversed. I also incurred a returned check fee from another vendor in this process. The branch manager actually told me that I should not have added funds to cover this snafu, and they would have been able to reverse more fees that way, and then strung me along for about 4 business days on fee reversal, each day saying the reversal would happen the next day, all the while blaming a Monday holiday for throwing the schedule off. I have audio of all of these discussions recorded and countless screenshots showing this process, btw. It's clear to me today, as they have once again back-dated a check process by 3 days (a recurring monthly which normally processes on the 21st or 22nd, this time retroactively processing on the 17th but only showing up on the 20th), that my branch manager is either dishonest and/or incompetent and does not understand her own bank's policies, and the bank as a whole is more than willing to engage in underhanded and unethical, if not outright illegal practices to artificially boost their revenue from fees. I've already begun migrating to another bank, and will advise any other Citizen's Bank customer I meet to do the same. I strongly recommend any small business owner or regular citizen avoid this company like the plague. They should be ashamed of themselves.