Kay G.

Between the stellar customer service, easy to use online banking and low fees Bank of the West is awesome. After suffering through the subhuman experience of banking with big guys like Wells and BofA I am very appreciative of the consistently high level output by a relatively small institution. I moved back east ten years ago but their online banking is so good that I saw no reason to close my account even though the closest location to me is 2000 miles away. Highly recommended.

Their customer service is very good overall and the support chat app on their website is one of the better available especially for a large creditor.

On the negative side: 1.The rates are entirely too high for someone with my credit history. 2. They offer no balance transfer options. 3. They are not accepted by enough stores on account of their very high merchant fees. In the eighties American Express used to advertise as the worlds most widely accepted credit card that's hardly true anymore. I made the mistake of taking it with me to Ireland where i reserved a car with it knowing that I would be able use the insurance coverage that comes with it only to find out after i arrived that not only did i have to buy insurance separately because Amex's coverage was not valid in that country but that no one else in Ireland save for one or two international chains accepts Amex at all.

After ten years selling on ebay I still don't know why I do it. I feel like a battered wife who continually returns to her abusive husband because he's convinced her he's the only one who will ever love her. Or a hostage whose dependence on her kidnapper starts to confusingly feel like love. Every year in the Spring they announce their "improvements" which inevitably includes higher fees, lower discounts and smaller hoops with bigger flames to jump through in order to keep the great rewards I've already earned. They're so busy trying to compete with Amazon they have NO IDEA who their sellers are anymore. They forget that it was THE SMALL BUSINESSES who BUILT EBAY and individual people who sell UNIQUE AND INTERESTING ITEMS THAT YOU CANNOT FIND ON PLACES LIKE AMAZON. And still even though I've spent so much precious time and energy sourcing beautiful items and present impeccable listings I don't get enough traffic because i'm still somehow forced to compete with Chinese sweatshop junk and to jump through these ridiculous hoops that no small seller of unique items should have to jump through in order to get any traffic at all. HAVING TO ACCEPT RETURNS OF ANTIQUE AND VINTAGE JEWELRY AND CLOTHES WITHIN THIRTY DAYS? ARE YOU KIDDING? I should be able to charge a rental fee. And now this year they've announced they're not only INCREASING the seller standards for top rated sellers but DECREASING the discount! Why should I bother? Here's what I think: They should separate eBay into two factions -eBay USED / and eBay NEW (eBazon) eBay USED would operate like the traditional glorious eBay of long ago: Powerseller/ No powerseller. Lower the fees, give everyone an level playing ground and let the quality of the listings and the product speak for itself. Sellers who throw their junk on the floor and take crappy photos will get the consequent lack of sales and they'll either learn to raise the bar for themselves or stick to selling off their lawn. The eBay NEW can do what it does to compete with Amazon and let the big box sellers duke it out over the margins of their cheap overseas chotchkies. Either way they better do SOMETHING because hardworking sellers like myself are dropping like flies.

What more is there to say? I appreciate that I can easily upload all of my ebay listings for free, and that it is free to list which is the only reason why I still have an account at all. But they don't offer much else. I understand they're going to offer more perks to those sellers who pay. However I feel like they could do better for their free sellers in order to at least *entice* them to upgrade. Otherwise why would they? Until Bonanza figures out a better marketing strategy for ALL of their sellers I will stick with other marketplaces. Free is great but you get what you pay for.

This used to be the only decent alternative to TWC and then TWC bought them and destroyed it. The information is never accurate and I don't just mean the obscure stuff but basic temps. They can't even figure out that the temperature of 44 degrees is WARMER NOT COOLER than yesterday's 32 degrees. Seriously? And I'm in a suburb of a major city, no where obscure. Sometimes they don't update their info for over a day. I think the only option anymore is NOAA directly.