1St Mariner Bank: Warning!!!

Almost verbatim from my post on www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance :

PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!

If you're as unhappy as I am with 1st Mariner Bank's policies, besides the Better Business Bureau and the appropriate regulatory agencies, please send your complaints to:

Pat Wellbrock, Director of Consumer Affairs, pwellbrock@1stmarinerbank.com. Her department is responsible for receiving and processing all consumer complaints.

You can also file an online complaint with the FDIC here. The institution information is:

First Mariner Bank
1501 South Clinton Street
Baltimore,MD 21224
(443) 573-4800

From FWF poster depreshun on 10/13:

What a crappy sign up. My account was confirmed and $2500 pre-authorized on my Schwab card. Received a welcome e-mail. I attempted to set up online access since the account number was included in the confirmation. It kept rejecting. After a painful chat session with a CSR, they now tell me the account was denied due to "too many recent accounts at other financial institutions". I explained my concerns for their apparent process. Awaiting a call back from a manager. I will post the outcome as a data point, once I know.

[update] Well, no luck. Katie at 1st mariner still would not open the account. She said it gets denied if there have been more than 4 bank inquiries in the last 2 years. [edit from glxpass: per Mary Scheufele of 1st Mariner, it's actually 3 ChexSystems inquiries in the last 2 years; 1st Mariner would be the 4th inquiry.]  I, of course, respectfully asked her to have their process reviewed. The chexsystems pull is done before funding and approval. Other banks send off an "under review" notice then either open your account or deny it. Her reasoning for an initial approval and respective "account opening" was "we have paperwork that new customers must fill out and return within 30-days of account opening. We want to be sure customers have time to complete it before the 30-days is up". My response to that was "why would I want to waste my time filling out paperwork and mailing it only to discover that my "approved" account ended up being "denied"?". She told me she would pass along my concerns to her management.

In summary, if you're a person who takes advantage of bonuses for opening checking accounts or chases rates by opening RCAs, 1st Mariner will gladly accept your application, allowing funding your account (even with a credit card), and then will reject your application for excessive ChexSystems inquiries and return the funds to your credit card 3 - 5 days later, reversing any CashBack or rewards you might have gained.

The net result: no $150 bonus from 1st Mariner, your funds tied up with 1st Mariner before they are credited back to you, and one more ChexSystems inquiry that might affect your ability to open checking accounts at other banks or CUs who are sensitive to recent ChexSystems inquiries, yet who at least have the integrity to reject your application during the application process.

Although 1st Mariner might have done nothing illegal, complaints to the above-mentioned agencies are very appropriate, especially WRT to their holding on to people's funds 3 - 5 days and giving the initial impression that opening one's account was successful.

There are a lot of angry people on this topic at FWF.

Of course, it is wrong for this bank to take/accept applications and initial fund, but turns around and rejects the application but holding the fund. 

But people are trying to get the $150 bonus and close accounts (taking the bank for a ride).  On top of it, charging credit card of say $5,000 for initial funding and get an extra $100 cash rewards.  There is no such free lunch.  There is always a risk of getting such seemingly-free bonus.  And this risk happens to be realized in this particular case:-)

With respect, 51hh, 1st Mariner chose to allow credit card funding and to impose whatever limits it wanted to.  There's nothing wrong with a potential customer trying to take advantage of that.  It's not that 1st Mariner is rejecting applications that's the issue.  The issue is that 1st Mariner Bank is:

1.  Accepting online applications.

2.  Allowing funding, whether credit card-based or otherwise, and charging said credit card if applicable.

3.  Sending a "Welcome to 1st Mariner Bank" e-mail.

4.  *Then* informing people that they weren't approved for the account after all.

5.  Taking at least 3 - 5 days (in some reported cases, far longer) to return the account funding money to the applicant.

There simply is no excuse or justification for this behavior by 1st Mariner Bank.

BTW, I haven't applied (and naturally won't apply) for this account, but I thought what 1st Mariner Bank is doing is outrageous enough to warrant people knowing about these issues and encouraging people  to lodge complaints against the bank.

1st Mariner Bank has been in trouble before.   $50K penalty for discrimination in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.