First Financial Bank in New Albany, Indiana

Stopped in to make a payment on my home equity line of credit, and was told by the teller that it made no difference whether I paid by cash or debit, that no fees are charged by any bank for debit payments. I told them that did not sound right to me, but they insisted and ran my card anyway. Sure enough, my other bank charged a $5 fee because over-the-counter transactions at other banks are always considered non-ATM withdrawal cash advances. I contacted the bank and shared my complaint with the branch manager, but all they did was have the teller call to apologize and say they would not refund any fees to make it right. The branch manager is gutless and unhelpful, the teller is ignorant (but apologetic at least), and the bank should be avoided. Fortunately my other bank was sympathetic to the story and refunded the fee, even though it was not their issue to resolve. There's a big difference between serving customers and taking advantage of them, and for a pittance like $5 after our years with the bank, really they should be ashamed. Fortunately it was not for a larger, more important transaction, which I will certainly be avoiding in the future. Customer displeased, business lost; hope the $5 was worth it for them.

Please note: my issue is with First Financial in general, NOT the New Albany branch! I have a bank account established to pay our mortgage. This happened because Mainsource offered a slightly lower interest rate if we opened a bank account with them and agreed to ACH our mortgage payment each month. Jump ahead three years and Mainsource was acquired by First Financial. First Financial offered online banking so I downloaded the app after the acquisition was final and explored the online services being offered. Apparently I clicked on their bill pay feature, I'm sure I did because I was just checking things out. I NEVER created a payee. I NEVER paid a bill out of the account. I was simply reviewing the on-line services offered by the new bank. Apparently since I clicked on that link to explore the services they offered, I agreed to pay a monthly bill pay fee and so I've been charged $5 each month for that service. A service I have NEVER used. I never noticed this until I went into my account last night just to check to make sure my mortgage payments were coming out, blah, blah, blah. Keep in mind this account is for the sole purpose of paying my mortgage, so I don't do anything else in this account. I don't have checks for this account. I never had a debit card for this account until this acquisition happened. So I called today to see what this $5 fee is for and that's when I learned it was a result of clicking on the link to explore on-line bill pay; not a result of actually using the service...but for simply exploring it. They are more than happy to refund the last two months but they "can't" refund the previous five months. Really? Why would they position the initiation of the service fee at the point of entering the on-line bill pay tool vs at the point of creating a payee? The creation of a payee is really when the end user starts to impact the bank's resources. I get storing payee information requires server space; not $5 of space a month but whatever. I get there are costs to the bank to create and support this functionality and service, but to initiate the fee BEFORE an end user creates even one payee is ridiculous. So...check your accounts. If you clicked on anything you might be paying for trying to get to know your new bank. Can you imagine the revenue this creates? It's $5 so people easily miss it. Think of the hundreds or possibly thousands of people who did the same thing I did and also didn't notice the monthly fee. It's an interesting way to create an income stream. It's shady but I have to acknowledge their creativity.

The merger with MainSource has shown that first financial bank has the worst customer service possible.

Staff was very friendly and helped me so much!