Westamerica Bank

Westamerica "Takes Over" Sonoma Valley Bank And Cannot Handle It
- lacynthia - Friday, March 18, 2011 - 11:20 PM

My bank was Sonoma Valley Bank, which WestAmerica took over on February 14, 2011.

I was out of the country for a month before and unbeknownst to me, my ATM cards, which I needed for travel, were no longer valid as of Feb. 14. There was not sufficient warning that these precious cards that we count on for travel would not be valid for the future. (WA Bank has since apologized in an email to me, but the situation was unacceptable, to be left without ANY ACCESS to funds.

I came home and went to the closest branch of WestAmerica Bank, in Lafayette, California, where they seem particularly disorganized, overly demanding with security measures and inept. The first time I went in, the teller had no idea how to find my SV Bank account to deposit my checks, even though WA Bank was supposed to do the transition. I left and drove to Sonoma [about 1.5 hour drive], to do my banking. 

Again today, I went to the Lafayette branch [optimistically or stupidly] and had $31,000 [9 checks] to deposit. I also needed $2500 cash. They again fiddled around trying to find my new account information and said they would have to get the Fairfield office holding the SV Bank signature cards to fax mine to them before I could get any cash, BUT the Fairfield office's computer's were down. I had my valid CA driver's license with me but was told that it was useless, that plenty of people had fakes.

Then the teller added up my checks wrong, about $5000 short.  Each of the checks I was trying to deposit was over the $2500 that I wanted in cash, but they didn't seem to know how to do the deposit. I took my checks and left and drove to Sonoma again, to the WA converted branch. I am now going to close all 3 WA Bank accounts and will find a new bank. Whew.

As constructive criticism, the employees need TRAINING if they are going to transition customers from one bank to another. WestAmerica is a disaster.

Unfair To Employees
- helloeverybody - Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - 8:21 PM

I wasnt to happy when they started to downsize and laid off a lot of good workers ,as a bank they also dont work with the cutomers fees even if it was not their fault they act as if they care and make everything sound good but it is not really how they make it sound they have grown but what good is that when customers are upset and leave to other banks some of thier staff is really nice the bank itself are pretty but needs a lot of upgrading they are way behing in their times.