Spent 8 hours fighting a bank's biz account setup that should've taken 30 minutes

I hit a wall trying to open a simple business checking account for my side gig, and the verification process dragged on for 3 weeks because their system flagged my EIN as 'suspicious.' Has anyone else run into crazy delays with bank onboarding that made you question your whole financial setup?

3 comments

3 Comments

lewis.troy1mo ago

Idk if this is the same thing exactly but I had a local credit union flag my account because I deposited two checks from different states in the same week and they thought I was running some kind of money laundering scheme. The letters they sent were super formal and scary, like "suspicious activity detected" and I had to bring in my tax returns and a letter from my client. It took two more weeks and three branch visits just to get them to admit it was because of the two state thing. Your situation sounds way more frustrating though with the EIN getting stuck like that.

cooper.phoenix1mo ago

Banks are awful about that, way too quick to assume fraud.

rileyp4929d ago

Credit unions used to be better than big banks for stuff like this, but now they all run the same trigger-happy fraud detection. @lewis.troy had to deal with that mess over two normal checks while the real scammers probably have EINs they just bought online. It's like the system is designed to hassle honest people instead of catching the actual criminals.