First Farmers and Merchants Bank S Garden St, Columbia

This 5* rating is for the staff at First Farmers and Merchants Bank. You will not find better people anywhere. They are always kind, personable, knowledgeable, helpful, considerate, timely and professional. They worked late and took care of the problems I was having with my online banking. Thank you so much....to all of you that work at First Farmers dealing directly with the public...you're awesome! I I'm going to leave the script of my original 1* review, because it still stands... management did not do a good job preparing for the digital transition....see below if interested. (Original Post/1* Review) This one star review is strictly for those First Farmers decision makers that did not make adequate preparations for the digital changes now ongoing... My wife and I have only used First Farmers since moving to Columbia years ago...for business and personal banking,...checking and savings...as well as their credit cards....and they have consistently excelled in customer service. I almost regret leaving this review because I do not want it to reflect on the wonderful staff that deal with customers every day...they are always personable, professional, knowledgeable and timely...I can't ask for anything else from banking employees. Now? Management is costing people money, time and stress because we cannot access our funds. Online access? My accounts won't open once I'm logged in. Customer service and tech support? All numbers lead to the same voicemail...and we can't get a callback. What kind of bank, in this day and age, goes an entire week without allowing its customers to access their funds online? It is absolutely ridiculous. My wife can't transfer money to make our house payment and my business account won't load details so I can verify if customers have paid. It won't take more than another day or two of this and my wife and I will close our accounts and take our money elsewhere. I can appreciate the difficulty of transferring so many customers to a new digital experience, but I cannot comprehend why First Farmers management did not prepare for extra customer service until they made sure everything would run smoothly.

I have been waiting since December for the money from my profit sharing. I was told it would be sent out mid March. I have been calling for the past month. Every time I call I am told it will be next week. I had plans for the money, so I had things scheduled for the first part of April. Now I have to reschedule everything. Customer service is poor. I wouldn't recommend this bank to anyone.

We have loved having First Farmers as our bank. They are always friendly at any location. They make things so easy. I can’t say enough about this bank. They really do care for the customer. Their customer service is top notch in my opinion. I would highly recommend them to anyone.

Being out of state without a debit card. Call in to transfer money because some genius decided to have the website down at the same time. Was told that they could not assist. This is a sorry excuse for a bank. Keeping people from their funds.

I enjoy the I person customer service but when they close there is NO ONE! TO ASSIST YOU! The debit card is declined ALL THE TIME! I have had to walk away from several deals because it declined the debit and credit card side.I have had fraud alerts that I acknowledged was me and it still declined payment. I have spoken with bank reps who have assured me this was corrected butI still have the issue.

Love First Farmers! Tammy Vann did an awesome job setting our child up with an account. Excellent customer service. She explained everything so a child could understand adulting.

I don't bank here (not that I'm opposed, I just have another bank I've used forever), but someone recommended this place to do my loan for my house I'm buying. I just closed on my house I purchased today, and I cannot say enough nice things about Michelle Williams who worked on getting me the FHA loan. It was lots of paper-work and forms, but she handled filling out everything as well as getting me a 3.25% interest rate, which is insanely great! I know this is a really good time to purchase and lots of things worked out well, but I wouldn't have been able to do it without her help. She even attended my closing session to answer any questions that arose about finances, which was just above and beyond what I expected! I highly suggest working with her if you are thinking about taking out a mortgage or re-financing your current loan. She is very accessible and responsive when you have questions or need to submit documents.

This has been the he very first place I have banked with right when I turned 16, and have been a customer with them for 5 years now like any other person alive I’m not perfect so every now and then I’d overdraft and get charged a fee, I’m okay with that because it’s my fault for using more than I had in my account. Today I went into my account and say that yesterday I made 5 different transactions ranging from 3 dollars to 15 dollars and on top of that I got 5 different overdraft fees all at the same time, each for 33 dollars so I lost over 160 bucks within a blink of an eye, I called and was told there’s nothing they could do about it cause I signed a overdraft contract, I asked for a record of the document and they don’t have one on hand for me to acquire and I was pleading for them to lower it to just 1 or 2 overdrafts cause as a 21 year old the last thing I have is money to just throw out the window, and Rachael in overdrafts was no help, just kept reciting the same line like a robot and pretty said there is nothing they will do about it. So I’ve banked with this company 5 years now and they aren’t willing to assist someone who has been loyal to their bank for this long, very unprofessional and unimpressive service, no attempt in keeping me with their company so I am now going to bank somewhere else, thank you for the unneeded stress this has caused

Loan department= Run away. Well to be fair I have had 20+ years of good service. I had a new construction home loan from them that was really bad. Closed and moved in my new home and still suffering from the loan because they forgot to setup escrow. Start bad and still bad. Wish my loan was with some else and I my refinance to get out from First Farmers. That bad.

I give zero stars. ATM took my cash. Customer service is terrible. Basically the bank is stealing from me and charging me for them to do it. If I stole from them I would be arrested. What is wrong with this picture? This is no way to run a business. Will be closing my acct asap.