Laurel RoadReviews of laurelroad.com

If I could give less stars, I would. Terrible customer service is the nicest way to put it. My account has been locked for a month because I made a transaction out of country. In most cases, a phone call would have cleared the air, but they have requested numerous documentation, which I have provided, but has taken them 30+ days to review. To top it all off, they requested a letter from my bank that I made the transaction from stating that the account is mine. Even after providing all of this, my account is still locked with all of my savings in it, with no way to access. If you value having access to your money, being treated with respect, and not having to provide hundreds of papers to prove you exist, then I suggest buying "parent control software" to block all Laurel Road sites, words, links, thoughts, even this review, from showing up on your computer.

I actually filed a report against them with consumer finance protection bureau, cause they charged an overdraft fee weekly of $20 until there was over $100 in charges there, and never notified me that I had a negative balance. It's not my main bank to park my money so I don't check it often, but to have the fee without notification (so I could just fund the negative account and fix it) is really questionable behavior.

Stay far away from these clowns. I had no problems for a while with laurel road but then randomly after my girlfriend tried to send a wire transfer to make a purchase (which they called twice to confirm it was legitimate), they froze ALL of our accounts with zero warning. The wire didn’t go through for whatever reason so we missed out on being able to make the purchase and it’s been over a week with all our accounts frozen, calling them every day to try and fix this and no one helps us at all they just keep saying sorry it’s with the fraud department there’s nothing we can do to expedite the resolution even though I am unable to make credit card payments, unable to get pay rent (already got a late fee). They said they sent a letter to me to let me know about the “account review”, still haven’t received this letter, they didn’t try and resolve this before freezing my accounts, and they didn’t call me to let me know what was going on, when I called they gave me different information as to what happened (different timeframes for how long to fix it, different reasons for why it was frozen / sometimes saying they don’t know why it was. Please do not waste your time with these clowns, don’t support them. It should be illegal to lock all of someone’s accounts with no good reason. They are telling me it could take up to 30 days to get my money back. I’ll never use Laurel road again.

The experience was great for a while. Then, in April 2024, they changed their terms for direct deposit. I have my employer direct deposit set up which uses ACH. So I never thought I would be affected. I called Laurel road when I did not get my 20$ monthly bonus. They asked me to submit my paystub, which I did. I heard NOTHING for weeks. I contacted them weekly. Annoyed that I sent so many people to them for their good customer service. Only to receive nothing in return. Now I just got a response saying my request was denied. No one called or emailed. This was over chat. Terrible. No reasoning. Nothing. Leaving asap.

A lot of companies try and build trust with their customers by doing what they say they are going to do. Laurel Road breaks from this tradition by doing the opposite. As a bonus, they have the slowest mobile app I have ever seen, it feels like I would get a faster response via carrier pigeon than using their app. This is secondary to their duplicity, but is still worth mentioning.

I opened a checking account and did direct deposit. Then Laurel locks my account and claim they are doing security review. I called their customer service and the guy kept telling me they need 30 days to conduct review. This is the worst banking experience I have had in my entire life. Could you not have conducted your review before you allow customers to start operating the account? How can you lock up my money and then start security review for 30 DAYS!!! This is terrible. Terrible awful service!!! Wish there was zero stars!

Their customer support is such a joke. I've been waiting over 3 weeks for help with their constantly bugged IT issues. I get some stupid reply when I reach out again asking me what is the issue as if I never reached out to them at all. Incompetent.

Randomly locks your account for weeks on end every time you try to withdraw money (to accounts you have already verified). They were able to reverse it relatively quickly the first time when they requested documents for verification, but it's been locked again for upwards of two weeks and the person on the phone just says "there's no information we need at the moment, the fraud department is conducting a security review and your account will be locked for up to 30 days." They even sent me a letter saying I had "confirmed fraud on my account", which I hadn't. The interest rate is good, but it's for a fundamentally different product than advertised since you won't have easy access to your money. EDIT: The day after I posted this, they unlocked it. so I guess, if you want access to your money, just leave a 1-star review! EDIT 2: Just to be clear, they never requested any information from me to "ensure my identity" during this, instead they tried to get the review taken down by submitting a clarification request on this platform, which would have auto-deleted my review after 3 days. Hey at least whoever monitors these is doing more work than their fraud department... EDIT 3: they just sent me a letter saying they're closing my account. Do your sanity a favor and avoid Laurel Road