Ameris Bank

Horrible customer service, used for healthcare, recommended by the medical provider. Will never use again. Consumers be warned, use at your own risk. Very regrettable decision. Have already recommended to the provider to drop them from their options.

We had a withdrawal on our checking account that neither of us made. We had to freeze the account and did not have access to our money for four days. I took Monday off to go to Ameris on Reid Street in Palatka, Florida to open a new account. When I arrived, the 'personal banker' who assisted me said it was just a mistake, and someone with the last name Smith had made a withdrawal, but it accidentally came out of the wrong account. This woman was so dismissive, it was unbelievable. I am looking into new banks because this situation is so unacceptable.

But I do want to thank Katelyn at the other branch for her help, she is amazing!

I can't say enough about this bank and the young ladies that are employed there. My sister was recently traveling in Panama City, Florida, and was having some issues with her account. She banks in North Carolina and was stressing about some checks that were not clearing. I directed her to the 23rd St branch. I must say, the staff there did a magnificent job! They looked into her account, explained what was going on, and assured her she was in good hands, and indeed she was! Kudos to 23rd Street Panama City Ameris Bank! Best staff ever!

I went to Ameris after Vystar kicked me out of their bank. Ameris treated me like family! I have a Chapter 13 bankruptcy; most banks I called said no, but Ameris took me in. I had been with Vystar for 50 years.

NEVER EVER EVER USE AMERIS BANK IF YOU HAVE A BUSINESS ACCOUNT: On December 4, 2024, my business account was impacted by one unauthorized transaction, along with several others that were declined. The bank contacted me to confirm whether I had authorized these transactions, which I had not. They immediately deactivated my debit card and instructed me to contact the bank directly.

When I did, I was informed that they had until January 4, 2025, to complete their investigation and determine if Walmart would return the funds. This raised immediate concerns for me, as I know my debit card is protected under Visa's Zero Liability Policy. According to this policy, cardholders are not held responsible for unauthorized charges made with their account or account information, except in specific cases such as certain commercial cards, anonymous prepaid cards, or transactions not processed by Visa. Why in the world would Walmart be the one to decide whether my funds are returned, especially when this was a Visa card, and Visa guarantees my protection against unauthorized charges?

As of today, January 23, 2025, my funds have still not been returned. I have repeatedly expressed to the bank that this delay is unacceptable. Most recently, they informed me that they now have until March 4, 2025, to resolve the issue and return my funds.

Their phone service is trash. They don't know what they're doing. Leave information off your card. If you have any problems—and you will have problems—they can't help you. You have to go to the bank for everything. The list goes on. Don't ever get an account with them.

A request for a balance transfer was approved by this bank (as per a letter I received from Elan Financial Services - Ameris Bank is somehow affiliated with a corporation named "Elan Services"). The approved balance transfer never occurred even after six (6) weeks following the receipt of the approval letter.
I have never seen anything like this, and I have lived for 71 years on this planet called Earth.
Consequently, I closed my Ameris Bank credit card account after having it open for just two (2) months.

What? Who is Elan Financial Services? They need to consider another line of business, as banking is not suitable for them.

This bank is enacting a policy that seems like a scam to all their customers!
1. I have both a checking and savings account with this bank.
2. I conduct most of my banking online.
3. As a disabled person, it's difficult for me to visit the bank to cash checks.
4. I have a caretaker who assists me.
5. I wrote her a personal check for $50 for the work she did for me.
6. She went to the bank to cash the check.
7. They gave her $42 instead of $50 because she doesn’t have an account with them.
8. The reason was a charge to cash the check—they deducted $50 from my account but only gave her $42, keeping $8 as a fee because she's not a customer.
9. Effectively, they're incentivizing her to open an account by withholding $8 of her payment.
10. I questioned why they took $8 from me to enforce this policy, but they had no explanation.
11. It seems this bank is coercing individuals who don't have an account with them to open one by instituting these fees.
12. I consider this an underhanded tactic to profit from their policy, which is ultimately withdrawing funds from my account without proper justification.
13. In simple terms, the bank is engaging in a scam under the guise of making money by taking from their customers. Considering the state of the economy, and how most people live paycheck to paycheck without the ability to maintain minimum balances, this feels especially egregious.
14. It appears that many banks have adopted this policy. It is a disservice to customers and a practice that needs immediate revision.

Ameris Bank is the best bank I have ever used in Atlanta! They rectified a situation that was not their fault and truly saved the day for me as I was heading out of town. Thanks for being on my side, Ameris Bank!

They are pathetic. Nobody knows anything about customer service. They think everything is a scam. Be very careful. Carrie and the manager are not competent.

First, let me start by saying stay far away from Ameris Bank when purchasing your home, especially if you are a minority, have a lower income, or are anyone that this bank can easily take advantage of. We lost so much time, energy, and thousands of dollars with Ameris Bank in Winston Salem, NC. My story begins a few months ago (March 2024) when I started the search for my first home with my husband. After a positive first conversation with the mortgage banker, she said she could get me a pre-approval after sending in a few documents, such as pay stubs.
We were then pre-approved with down payment assistance. On March 28th, I have messages with the banker stating that we qualified for down payment assistance of $15,000. We then began our search for a home. The home search process was not easy! The market is very saturated. After looking and putting offers on many homes, it took about a month to get an accepted offer from a seller.
On April 24th, AFTER I notified our mortgage banker about our accepted offer, she then notified us on the same day that we were no longer eligible for down payment assistance because of something on my husband’s tax returns. Please keep in mind that they had the W-2s since the very beginning, prior to us being pre-approved. So after almost backing out, my husband and I put all of our resources together and pulled some strings to come up with the entire down payment. Again, this was not easy for us and was very stressful. So we continued with the buying process.
We went on to pay our due diligence fee of $1,000, our appraisal fee of $500, and our $350 inspection fee. Everything seemed to be going smoothly by this point. We had our closing set for May 24th. Due to the mishap I mentioned earlier with being no longer approved for down payment assistance, the bank forced us to also push back closing to June 4th. Now here we are, the week before closing, excited, anxious, a little stressed—all of the emotions are streaming at this point until… the lenders began pestering my husband's and my employers. We are both remote/hybrid employees who have very flexible schedules. It started with a few emails back and forth with both of our employers. Any answer they received wasn't good enough, and they needed more.
Hotel rooms were booked; we both took time off of work, took our two babies (we had two under two at this point), and headed 4 hours away to our new home, closer to family. On June 3rd, they said there was a problem with my husband's employment, and they needed to speak with his HR team. They were able to get the answers they needed pretty quickly, and again, everything seemed to be okay. A day passes, and now, on the day of closing, there is a problem with MY employment, and they need more info.
My employer has a policy that to verify employees of our company, you must use a work verification site called "The Work Number". I work in a corporate company that has multiple offices in almost all 50 states. Our HR team does not keep each individual employee's schedules. My HR team explained this to the lenders the week before closing because this is when the lender waited to reach out. Yet they insisted that they needed more info about my hybrid work schedule because my corporate office is located in Georgia. They sent emails over and over to my HR, even after they explained our policies and explained that they do not know individual employees' schedules because they all differ. My employer could not give them the answers they were desperately seeking, all the way up until the day of closing, when they finally said they could not approve us for the loan.
Imagine 5, 4, 3, 2 days before, and even THE DAY OF closing, and the lender is still needing information on employment that they have had for almost 3 months at this point. Still pretending as if we are going to proceed with closing. The lenders had our job information, bank information, tax information, credit information, and everything else they asked for at the drop of a dime. We were fully transparent with the lenders from day one. This process was very discouraging, and I have not yet had the courage to start back or even think about the home buying process. It seems as though this may be Ameris Bank's intentions, to keep people like myself and my husband from owning anything. It took me months to write this review because the process actually took a toll on us financially and mentally. These people failed at their jobs but more importantly, failed to be decent human beings.

I am disheartened that I am even writing this review, but I currently have no other way to express my frustrations. I was in the process of looking for a home to purchase when my realtor suggested that I look into the Ameris Choice Lending program. Initially skeptical because I already had pre-approval and was in the process of searching, my lender still encouraged me to call just to gather information. I spoke with a lender whose name I will not mention and explained my situation. I indicated uncertainty about proceeding with the application, as I did not want my credit pulled and was aware of the challenges of obtaining approval as a self-employed person. She assured me that my situation should not be an issue and even suggested I would likely get pre-approved for the amount I was currently approved for with my existing lender. She also mentioned that I could qualify for down payment assistance and possibly buy down my rate.

Against my better judgment, I submitted my application along with all my documentation (W-2s, tax returns, pay stubs) on June 11. However, after submission, I heard nothing back. Despite multiple calls and messages, there was no response. In a final attempt, I contacted one of her colleagues. With a home in mind, I was still awaiting a response when the original lender finally called me back on June 14. I was pre-approved for $230,000 during our call, received the approval letter immediately afterward, saw the home I wanted, and made an offer soon after. After paying for the inspection, setting up homeowners' insurance, getting the roof repaired, and paying my earnest money deposit, I was shocked to learn today from underwriting that my debt-to-income ratio was too high. I was informed that underwriting found my income, based on my last two tax returns, insufficient for the home I was under contract for. My realtor explained that the lender qualified me based on my current monthly income, which I reported on the application, hence the pre-qualification.

I believe that, had the lender thoroughly reviewed my information, I would have been qualified for a more accurate amount or possibly not qualified at all. Because of this major oversight, I am now out $2,600. The Ameris Choice program, intended to correct historical injustices like alleged redlining, seems to have put the same disenfranchised individuals through unnecessary financial hardship. I am mentally exhausted from this ordeal and feel that my dreams of home ownership have evaporated because of one very careless but preventable error.

Wish I could give negative stars. This bank and their mortgage servicer are the absolute worst I've ever dealt with. They failed to pay property taxes on time twice. Then, I had to pay penalties, which was like pulling teeth to get them to reimburse. Finally, when I said enough and paid off the loan, they assured me over the phone that my automatic payment was canceled. Nope. They then debited another mortgage payment. Now it's going to take three weeks to get my $4,800 back, and I'm supposed to be closing on a new home in a week. I have never seen such a terrible financial institution. I'm closing all my accounts this week.

I had an amazing experience with Miguel helping me with my checking account. He was so sweet and patient because I didn't understand lots of things about my account. I recommend everyone to go to this bank; the service was wonderful!

I've banked with Ameris Bank for about 11 years or more. At this very moment, my account is frozen for over $30,000. I don’t even have 30,000 dollars. I've spoken to the representatives and sent the necessary documents to have it released. It's been 5-6 days since the legal paper, which confirmed the error in freezing my account, was sent. The paper was re-faxed again yesterday. I can never get through to my local branch on the phone. I keep getting the runaround that the paper hasn't been received. Do these people not realize it takes money to buy gas and food? I will be looking for another bank as soon as possible.