Approval needed??????....not cool!

We conduct our business banking with Commerce Bank. Overall the bank does a good job technically. They make very few,if any, errors and their statements are always on time.

Is this what banking is all about though? I say not. Commerce has a lot of crazy rules that make it hard to do business with them. In their defense....Commerce is one of the few large regional banks that thumbed their noses at the TARP monies. So although they drive you crazy....your money is safe!

Anyway, not all their rules even make sense.

Last week we needed to move $100,000 into Commerce bank. The monies came from another bank so it was a bank check that I had to deposit. Bank Checks are like cash.

So I go up to the cashier and ask her to deposit the entire check into the account. An account that has been open for 15 years. An account that has more then the deposited check amount. All of our e-commerce business runs through this account.

She looks at the check and asks me to wait. I ask her why and she tells me that she needs approval for this amount! Approval....to take money? Really? She smiles an embarrassed smile and goes off to the manager.

5 minutes later I see the manager furiously clicking away on his keys....I finally catch the tellers attention and ask her what's the delay? She tells me that the manager is out to lunch and they are calling other branches to see if their manager can approve their bank taking 100 grand from a customer.

After 10 minutes, they finally have someone approve my deposit.

I have never seen such order prevention in my life!