Erste Bank und Sparkasse Reviews 457

not helpful . slow . . never on time . to much money . the worst bank in Austria

Worst bank ever, takes over 4 hours to get ahold of them and they take weeks to sort anything else . Don’t use them ever

My experience with this bank has been very disappointing. Customer service is slow and unhelpful, and resolving even small issues takes too long. I expected better professionalism and support, but unfortunately I did not get it. I would not recommend this bank.

Been with Erste for many years now and it used to be a good bank and I enjoyed using the George app too but the last year they have gone way downhill. The branch seems like it is run by younger under experienced staff, they didn’t seem interested in dealing with my request and I left there feeling let down. I will be closing my account as there are better ones out there with better customer service.

Worst bank ever, I've been with them for 7 years, never late payment on my credit card. One time, instead of paying 2300 I've paid 2000 so i can make the 300 payment with the next month's payment and they blocked my card. Customer service lady was very rude and unapologetic, the customer is always wrong for them. May be the bank pays customer service ladies too little and therefore they are so unhappy and aggressive?

Used to be 4 star... service got worse over the years especially with standardisation and stoppage of dedicated manager for clients. Now a pool of agents serve you. Sometimes well and sometimes badly!
Still better service then most of standardised first level support only financial plattforms...

The fees are hefty!

We have our business account at Erste (Austrian GmbH) and overall experience in 3 years was horrible. Literally any possible service is flawed and doesn't work as supposed. Incoming transfers - delayed, compliance department doesn't exist according to CS agents, MT103 is not available at all, cards do randomly stop working, limits can barely be adjusted. Customer service and account managers are hopeless: they can never answer a question or resolve a problem answering with predefined scripted answers. The app and internet banking is arrange via George App which is developed and maintained by third party (!) and the bank has limited access to it (!!). Imagine this, Erste Group in Austria has no IT department capable of making their own banking app.

We spent 2 weeks trying to make our business debit card working again (to pay ongoing marketing campaigns) and failed miserably. We even even tried to contact their (gosh...) ombudsman! Needless to say it didn't help. Our card is still dead and works literally only at Billa.

Overall experience is horrible. Our business operations are disrupted by Erste's unprofessional service. You can't be growing business and succeed with Erste, they will fail you at any given moment.

Should one doubt my review, I will be happy to provide tons of evidence and correspondence.

Erste is a shame and clear indication of how rusty and disconnected from reality European banking has become.

The George application from the bank resulted in a loss of funds in euros from my personal account due to a conversion. This application is rather confusing and leaves traces of interpretations, which should not be the case when financial investments are involved. The transfer between two personal accounts was attempted, yet due to a flaw in the application system, the transfer was executed in the opposite direction. This resulted in a loss of approximately 100 euros. Upon further inspection, the desktop application revealed several indications that elucidate the specific nature of a non-cash payment, the associated account from which it is being drawn, and the intended account to which it is transferred.
However, these details are not accessible within the mobile application. The bank declined to cancel the transfer on the grounds that their IT team had reviewed the transfer and determined that it had been erroneously executed by me. During my interaction with the call center agent, I was advised to initiate a request to cancel the payment. I proceeded to do so; however, my complaint was ultimately rejected.

I am totally disappointed with BCR's way of stealing money from BCR customers. It is evident that BCR has engaged in unethical practices by misappropriating funds from its clients. This issue is particularly egregious when considering that the funds in question were initially deposited into the customer's personal account and the procedures implemented through the George mobile application appeared to be in accordance with established guidelines. It is regrettable that BCR has chosen to engage in such practices.

The bank application in question has proven to be a source of ambiguity and uncertainty within the banking process. The errors induced by the application during simple transfers between personal accounts have been a significant source of financial loss for myself. The banking institution in question, had no financial stake in this matter; instead, they derived a benefit from the losses sustained by me as a result of this application.

Shame BCR ERSTE GROUP!
It is regrettable that BCR opted not to address the concerns that had been expressed.

Despite the recognition of the inaccuracy of the app, there is no available recourse to rectify or invalidate the transaction. This is a particular problem because there were sufficient funds in the account, yet the bank did not compensate his client for the loss; instead, the bank benefited from the client's loss.

Ultimately, the benefit you derive from my loss will be detrimental to your own interests.

Despite your apparent satisfaction regarding my modest financial loss, it remains unclear whether this approach will indeed result in the acquisition of new customers. It is pertinent to consider whether this misstep, stemming from the ambiguity inherent in your application, will ultimately serve as a catalyst for the desired growth in your customer base.

A delay of more than four days was experienced in the processing of a transaction between personal accounts (with my money locked), which was subsequently identified as erroneous. Despite this, a response from a banking employee was received, and it was conveyed in an arrogant and superior manner that the transaction had been correctly identified and that the loss of the funds was to be accepted by myself.

I had 5 accounts and I was their client in Croatia for many years, but their service was getting worse and worse by the years. Now I have to travel 5 km to the nearest bank and I live in the largest city and I have to go to bank for everything. They are making everything difficult, not to mention that getting refund when being a victim of fraudulent activities is extremely hard. Finally I got rid of them, but closing my business account was also a huge pain and required three visits to bank. Awful, just awful!

They have locked my credit card because I didnt receive anymore salary deposit in the account... and I realized because of netflix failed charges not from the bank... extremly awesome customer service

I have got an experience with Montenegrin branche and it was absolutely awful. The team are unprofessional at all. They have lost our documents and didn't even try to solve our problem. We had to visit the office four times, spent hours staying in the lines. Our opinion: the Head office doesn't care about the quality of service. Please, avoid this organisation!

Invested quite a bit of money in their various investment funds which has been an utter disaster. Erste Bank creamed off fees and all the various funds performed badly. I am gradually crawling out from under and some have made huge losses. I don't know where the funds management is but they have certainly not managed these funds as far as I can see. With markets at an all time high I should have done well but no, only they have done well with the extravagant fees that they charge.
Stay away !

I've had a fairly simple case of a bad vendor that the chargeback department mishandled (the vendor didn't send the goods, then I cancelled and did the chargeback, then they allegedly sent the goods and challenged the chargeback, even though the order was already cancelled).

They will claim here that they've handled it correctly, I disagree that, I didn't get the impression they were putting enough effort into preventing damage from happening and were just accepting what the other bank was saying, the initial chargeback should have gone through since the active order was never received, which is perfect grounds for a chargeback.

This led to a loss on my side and a lot of back and forth with no outcome. There's a process to escalate issues, but they were only escalated to that department (at least they only gave me feedback from that department, I didn't get anyone comment on this from anyone outside of that department). Communication wasn't great either, they kept giving in to whatever the vendor's bank said without taking my feedback and arguing my side.

Closing the account as a consequence was equally painful. They didn't use the communication channel agreed to when I requested closure of the account, instead sending messages to the app, which I couldn't access after a while. They charged the credit card fees but didn't add a way to pay them (the bill said it will be debited off my account, which at that time didn't exist anymore) and didn't react to my messages, resulting in late fees which I had to resolve with - again - lot's of time invested in reaching out to fix their mistake and get them to cancel the late fees and tell me how to pay the amount I actually owed.

My impression is that there's a lack of oversight. I've seen better ways of handling chargebacks in the interest of the credit card's customer. It might be time to review the performance of that team working in the interest of the customer, rather than taking their word for it.

Additionally, organizational issues exist by having plenty of people involved in every process and no proper single point of contact, which is made worse by the basic process of off-boarding customers being broken.

They said the new app will be available on 3 April 2023. But that was not true, and the contact service was "overloaded" and now I have to go and pay payments physically, although I promised people that the app would work on the 3rd and I'll be able to continue my work then.

Bit pricey but the only bank in Austria that knows how to make a proper app. Kudos!

Worst bank I've ever done business with. Having lived in 6 countries, I've always chosen good banks but it came the time I chose wrong. It came along Erste, the WORST bank of the world. Keep distance from this bank

I had terrible experience with ERSTE Bank am Spitz branch. There are two advisors named Razi Aman and Gold Marvin and their Manager were really devils and as a whole this am spitz branch acted like bunch of illegal criminals who can go to any extent to damage me and my jobs. They have so much hate inside and discrimination and even ombudsstelle did not take any action and openly showed discrimination upon complain and even terminated my account with ERSTE.

They can violate any GDPR or DSG laws and can breach personal, private data and even the incomings details. I doubt this mafia inside ERSTE bank sales users data illegally to 3rd parties. In my case , These culprits shared my salary slips to my multiple employers to damage my reputation and job through anonymous emails. Razi , Marvin Gold along with their manager who even can not speak English, and did not issue me credit card even with 5k net income. Because according to them German speaking is must to have credit card. When I complain against them, they planned all this and breached my data. Later terminated my account.

This bank has staff highly unfriendly, incompetent, criminal minded, racist , on top of that poor customer service with zero action on complaints.

I sent an email for a commission that you took and 5 days have passed and you haven't replied. Bad service.

Under no circumstances should you find yourself at the erste Bank branch opposite the Oper in Vienna. The old lady denied me service because I was black. She was not even ashamed to show it. She told me if I wanted to claim racism I should write to the authorities. I was so glad that 15 minutes away there was another erste bank in the 1010 district and the guy on the front desk was so nice and served me without discrimination. I just wish there were less racists on the front dest of banks and just more professional people.

They refused to open a bank account because of my nationality! Some people and institutions don't learn lessons from the history... I have complained to the embassy of my state, so awful was my experience..