December 2023 by Leah Hoppes
As a local small business owner banking with Sterling for about 8 years I will be closing ALL of our business and personal accounts as soon as I can transfer funds. Not only were we lied to but we were told our business doesn't matter. I do find it ironic how our business doesn't matter while they hold a check for two full weeks so they can make every bit of interest off of it TO MAKE MONEY, so apparently it DOES matter a little bit.They made an error and how do I know it was their error? Glad you asked, because I called the company who issued the check AND the issuing bank. I was able to confirm that Sterling already received the funds yesterday (!) but Sterling refuses to call the issuing bank to reverify funds because they already HAVE the funds and they don't want us to know that they verified with Heartland because now they know we will call Heartland and the woman will tell me they called, lol. I don't even NEED the money, I have more in one account than the check is even for, so that's not the point the point is we deposited a GOOD Check, and the issuing bank released those funds so now it sit's in Sterling so they can make interest on it all the while I won't have access to it.What if I needed that money to cover OUR bills? Would then they bounce our checks and charge us fees and make even more money that they allegedly don't care about? Funny how that works. I know they won't care about this review because they clearly don't care about us or retaining our business so this isn't written for them, this is that others will read this and know going into a banking relationship what Sterling Bank really thinks of small business owners and the people of St. Charles - the truth is they don't care, they don't think about us at all. Good riddance.