GTE Financial – Palm Harbor in Clearwater, Florida

Eh. I have not had an experience with GTE that warrants a one-star review, but this credit union definitely lacks a lot. To start, GTE automated all tellers, which is merely a ploy to save GTE money. It causes the customer to wait for a service representative to appear on screen even when there is no line for the machine tellers. You also have to go through a whole gig of putting your identification on a scanner and whatnot. Automated tellers definitely will not save you time in any manner, they merely serve to put more cash in the pockets of GTE higher ups. I also receive tips as part of my job, and GTE recently slapped a fee (even for members) on the Coin Star machine. This is super annoying because it means I have to pay GTE to have a machine that automatically counts my coins. GTE is not even paying to have tellers at each branch, and they now want me to pay for the automated replacements they are saving money on already! Really pathetic, GTE, taking a couple extra dollars unnecessarily from a student who has a low-paying job to put himself through college. And there is no way around this Coin Star fee, as there are no longer in-person tellers to take coin rolls. These are my two major grievances with GTE, and I will likely bank with a different credit union after college. Good luck, GTE, you are really going to have a time when you lose most of your members.

They deserve ZERO STARS. The customer service is absolutely terrible. Constant issues with my account. Constant fraud on my card. 30-40 minute waits for a virtual teller. Calling will not save you time either, i was on hold for 35 minutes just to speak to a rude representative that could not help me. I finally decided to switch banks and they would not even let me close my account same day. Save yourself the headache and DO NOT BANK HERE!!

Imagine waiting 40 minutes to speak to someone on a computer, just to be told to wait another 10 minutes for someone to answer, because they don’t use physical tellers. Worst customer experience I’ve ever seen and you couldn’t switch banks fast enough. Do not waste your time here.

They didn’t even try and help when my account was getting used by a third party and wouldn’t stop the purchase without a 35 dollar fee which is stupid since they are suppose to be protecting us from bad charges

I would give this bank overall zero stars if I could. And that’s zero for a banking institution in general, not just this particular location. I have had a GTE account since I was 3 (currently 28) and for the most part had no issues until a couple years ago. It started with a hiccup with getting my direct deposit from my job and then just went downhill from there. Their customer support are trained to transfer you from one person to another until you hang up or they just hung up in you in my case. I have spent over a week trying to do the simple task of pay my credit card with them and they have over complicated the process to the point that I have thought about just letting it all hit my credit score like a truck because this experience has been worse then that. I got the run around for 4 days on the phone and finally had a chance to go into the actual bank (which there are barely any of). Once there I was told to wait for the money to drop into my savings account and then from there I could pay into my credit card....which they said would be the next day and ended up taking 4 days to process. They lady in the office said she would waive my late fee and that all I had to do was call customer service and she would put a note into my account. I just called to get that done and got hung up on. Don’t join this bank. Just don’t. Risk having thousands in your sock drawer because this place is just not worth it.