Bank of the West in Irvine, CA

I've been a BOTW customer since 2001. My experiences in the early 2000's with them were very good. Around 2007 or so, the teller that we knew for years switched jobs, and then the service went downhill from that point on. I also discovered there were virtually no branches in Central California, which was a big problem when driving to the Bay Area. This month, I went in to use the bank, and all of the familiar tellers except one were gone. Customer service was a joke - the people spent 20 minutes figuring out why there were POS (point of sale/service) one dollar charges on my account without any explanation (something that's been happening for the past few years), and finally decided to call the head office. Turns out my account was the older free checking type and needed to be switched over to a newer account. Only one employee was wearing a name tag at the time, and the two other employees there had no interest in solving the problem or helping me - one of them even suggested that dollar charges were the way to go, since "it only happens a few times a month" and a new checking account would have fees. I'm not a teller or banker, but I'm pretty sure this is not the way banking or customer service should work. I closed my account shortly after the employee said that, and switched banks.