Elizabeth Freudenthal was so upset with how PNC Bank handled her account during its takeover of FirstBank that the Denver resident decided to jump ship.
“I am super angry about it,” Freudenthal said of her experience on Friday. “PNC is still a mess, but I am closing out my account this afternoon and switching to a different bank.”
In September, FirstBank’s employee owners accepted a $4.1 billion buyout from PNC Bank, and the clock has been ticking on a final transition.
Last weekend, operating systems were switched over, and crews rebranded 95 FirstBank locations, bringing a 63-year Colorado legacy to an end.
The Pittsburgh bank’s motto is “Brilliantly Boring since 1865.” But social media is filled with customers describing an unexpected level of angst and agitation with the transition.
Sandra Jessen and her husband have been loyal customers of Lakewood-based FirstBank since 1979.
She was willing to give PNC Bank a chance, but people within her social circle can’t stop talking about the problems they are having.
“We have friends all over taking their money out of the bank. People are having a horrible time. It is a disaster,” Jessen said. Even her hairdresser was caught up in the chaos.
The couple’s credit cards were frozen, and customer service numbers didn’t work. Cashing a $10 check at their local branch took 20 minutes and required providing two forms of ID, an additional verification via phone, and navigating long lines.
PNC changed routing and account numbers, resulting in direct deposit and bill pay having to be redone. Jessen said she worries about an expected wire transfer from out-of-state getting through, not to mention regular Social Security and pension deposits.
Freudenthal said access to her FirstBank app was blocked for weeks until she agreed to add the PNC app, which she didn’t want to do.
“I’m super angry about it, felt very forced into it, and I didn’t have time to manage finding a new bank,” she said, adding that PNC Bank didn’t provide an easy path for those who wanted to exit.
When she went to draw cash, the ATM didn’t work. She spent half an hour at a branch getting the funds she needed.
The problem wasn’t limited to retail customers. Sharon Hwang, owner of The Wellness Center in Denver, said she followed the detailed protocols PNC Bank had sent her.
Despite that, her business savings account went missing. She could see her checking account, but about $50,000 in savings seemingly disappeared into the ether.
She spent 45 minutes getting passed around a call center where reps were unable to locate her account or explain why it wasn’t visible. The final insult was getting disconnected.
She and her employees also couldn’t activate new PNC business debit cards.
On Friday, she went into a branch, bypassing a line that was eight people long as a business customer. Her savings account was still there. Her access was restored.
“Things are resolved,” she said.
Nextdoor, X, Reddit and Facebook contain multiple posts detailing a litany of problems, from long lines at branches to blocked online access to cards being cut off.
PNC Bank reaffirmed that FirstBank debit cards will function until Sept. 24 and credit cards until Sept. 30. But several customers reported that their cards had stopped working.
Some former BBVA Compass customers said they were having flashbacks from their former bank’s bumpy takeover by PNC Bank in October 2021, which also happened over a weekend.
“PNC’s method is so rapid, crude, and defective that it almost seems intentionally malicious,”
In large bank takeovers, a “flash cut” or rip-off-the-band-aid approach is common. Systems and accounts are switched over during a long weekend.
Compared to going with a phased approach that tackles one group, like commercial accounts and then consumers, or going by geography, say the mountains and then Denver, PNC chose to do everything all at once.
The approach can save money, but the downside is that even small glitches can get amplified and generate thousands of complaints.
With 780,000 accounts, the FirstBank migration was going to be complicated — more so given that FirstBank was running on proprietary technology systems developed in-house.
PNC has spent weeks notifying customers that account numbers would change and detailing what steps they needed to take. Not everyone may have read or understood the messages.
“Our teams continue to assist customers in person, by phone, and online, with additional information available on the PNC FirstBank support page,” said Heidi Hurst, a vice president of regional communications with PNC Bank, in an email.
Many of the individual account questions received “are related to previously shared customer communications that may not yet have been reviewed,” she said.
“These inquiries do not reflect a broader, systemic issue,” Hurst emphasized.
Some former FirstBank customers noted online that their personal transitions went smoothly, and urged patience given the massive scale of the migration.
PNC Bank also prepared for branches getting slammed during the week. It brought in about 600 employees from around the country to provide in-person help.
Many customers of FirstBank chose it because it was local and independent. Its motto was “the Colorado bank for you” until 2017, when it switched to “Banking for good.”
Founded in 1963, it grew to become Colorado’s second-largest bank in deposits after Wells Fargo and the state’s largest independently owned institution.
Logically speaking, PNC has a vested interest in making sure that the transition goes smoothly and that FirstBank customers are happy. And the company has tried to put a positive spin on this week.
“Behind the scenes, it started last weekend when hundreds of folks worked around the clock at PNC headquarters to execute a seamless systems conversion,” Alexander Overstrom, head of retail banking at PNC, .
As that was happening in Pennsylvania, teams across Colorado and Arizona were busy swapping signage and converting the branches.
But PNC Bank, judging by comments made on social media, had already lost support among some customers when it announced in April that it would lay off 777 FirstBank employees.
Those reductions are still coming, and likely didn’t contribute to the problems that customers described.
But cutting so many jobs ahead of the transition may have fostered a perception that a large out-of-state bank focused on the bottom line was taking over a beloved local institution focused on customer service.
For some, the disappointment and frustration were too much. Multiple posts on social media mention finding another financial institution.
Bellco Credit Union, metro Denver’s largest credit union, has seen an increase in consumer account openings. But it is hard to know precisely how much of that is linked to the FirstBank transition, said CEO Doug Ferraro.
“We do know that anecdotally, the branch staff has indicated some activity is directly related,” Ferraro said.
Monica VanBuskirk, who is running for Colorado House District 9 as a Democrat, chose FirstBank because it was one of the few large, local financial institutions that handled campaign accounts.
She heeded the almost daily warnings to switch her account over to PNC Bank. When she tried to do so last week, she found herself trapped in a loop that she couldn’t escape.
“I kept getting stuck at the verification step,” she said. A call that was supposed to provide a verification code instead told her that her account couldn’t be verified.
She received different answers when trying to resolve the problem, including that she had to wait until the transition was complete on Monday.
She held a fundraiser on June 18, a Thursday, where she received paper checks from donors. State campaign rules require those checks to be deposited within five days or by Monday, June 22.
“I went to the FirstBank in Glendale on Monday and spent over an hour waiting in line with 100 of my closest friends,” she said. “I should be out talking to voters and not standing in line.”
With the primary election only days away, she was flying financially blind, uncertain about how much she still had in her campaign account.
The teller couldn’t tell her what transactions had cleared or provide a statement of activity. The best she could do was write her total account balance on a Post-It note.
Eventually, she got to the bottom of the problem. The verification system couldn’t get past the screener on her campaign line, which she used to deal with a high call volume.
Once she got the new account open and deposited the checks, she was told that she could get access to her funds immediately by paying $5.
Or she could wait 24 hours.
For VanBuskirk, the messaging signaled that PNC Bank, despite all the talk of aligned values with FirstBank, was going to foster a different kind of relationship.
“I am closing my account after the campaign,” she said.
VanBuskirk, who is a business owner, said PNC Bank has been actively acquiring banks for a decade. It should have mastered the art of providing smooth and “boring” transitions by now.
“They know what they are doing, and they are deciding to accept a certain amount of pain and customer complaints” to stay within their budget.
If she wins her race, a bill she wants to introduce would require banks to provide uninterrupted account access to customers through any acquisition.
“I think they are going to lose a lot,” she said.
