Community Bank of Pleasant Hill

A Few Annoyances
- thiseye - Monday, June 4, 2012 - 7:45 PM

I've had the CBPH Rewards Checking account for many years now, and it has overall been a good product. It started at 6.1% APY on $25k in the heyday of interest rates and slowly dropped to 3.01% and then 2.5% where it stayed for some time. More recently, however, it has dropped to 2% up to $10k only and a few days ago down to 1.75% where it's to the point (for me) of not being worth the hassle that I'm about to describe.

For some time now, they've only accepted pin-based transactions in certain states (the most recent list I could find was "Florida, Texas and California" however, I feel like Oklahoma was part of that list too) due to "fraudulent activity". Signature-based transactions are not accepted. This was fine for me until a few years ago when I moved to one of these states. Since then, it has been a bit of a hassle reaching the 10 transactions needed to qualify for the high interest rate. Forget about using it at a restaurant. And this restriction has been in place for several years now, so I question what kind of "fraudulent activity" they're encountering that they haven't addressed after so long.

Secondly, I like to use Mint to manage my finances, and this bank does not work well with their site (you have to enter the "captcha" anytime you want to refresh the account). Minor annoyance, but it adds up. Those 2 issues added on top of the reduced rates and reduced maximum (which was big) made me close my account. I realized I could easily get 0.8% on a regular online savings account without any of the above hassle and only miss out on about $9/month (at the current $10k cap level).

On the good side, I've talked to the staff on a few occasions, and they're generally friendly and have good customer service. It definitely has the small town feel when talking to them (generally, in a good way). Although in that light, I do wonder about security when talking to them because they generally ask for very little information to confirm your identity. One big highlight for me has been that ATMs are free even internationally.

Certainly better rates can be found, especially if you can find one locally. I've been impressed that they've been able to keep the rates competitive up until recently considering that they're open to out-of-state applicants (unless that's changed recently). I've never been to Pleasant Hill, but I've made good use of this bank in the last several years.