CIBC Reviews 1,946

Extremely unprofessional customer service.

I received a fraud alert and immediately called the bank to clarify the situation. I waited on the line for 1 hour and 40 minutes. Despite the long wait, I remained calm and polite and asked a very simple question: whether I could transfer my money before or after my debit card was blocked.
The fraud department repeatedly assured me (very confidently: “Absolutely, yes ma’am”) that after blocking the card I would be able to transfer my money from the compromised debit card to my credit card through Telephone Banking. Based on this information, they blocked my debit card and transferred my call.
Telephone Banking then informed me they could not perform any transfer at all. As a result, my money became stuck on a blocked debit card, leaving me unable to access my own funds.
They apologized and said they would “speak to the employee who gave me the wrong information,” but at that point I needed access to my money immediately to pay my bills — not later, and not after an internal review.
After speaking with multiple supervisors and being transferred back and forth, I was sent back to the fraud department yet again. At this point, I felt like a ping-pong ball. Resolving the confusion took another full hour, bringing the total call time to almost three hours.

Finally, I was told I could either:
Wait 10 business days for a new card to arrive, or
Go to a branch in two days to pick one up — which was not possible for me due to illness.

It is also worth noting that this happened during Christmas time, when many people have bills, children, and responsibilities. Being unable to access my own money due to misinformation is unacceptable.
My concerns:
1. Keeping clients on the phone for nearly three hours is not acceptable. Your clients work hard to earn their money, and this is a significant waste of their time. Please improve your call-routing system or offer a callback option.
2. Transferring clients back and forth between departments shows poor organization and lack of ownership.
3. If an employee is unsure about a product or process, it is far more professional to say so. Giving incorrect information costs clients time and money — and costs you clients.
4. Clients should never be asked, “Why did that department transfer you to us?” Internal communication is your responsibility, not the client’s.
5. When one employee provides incorrect information, it seriously damages trust in future assurances. Better training is clearly needed.
Overall, this experience was extremely disappointing and stressful. I expected better professionalism and coordination from my bank.

Telephone customer service for CIBC credit cards is worse than Rogers Customer service, thereby establishing a new low in my experience. I phoned because my credit card was rejected while I was in the midst of donating online to many charities. It seems rather unlikely to me that a bad guy would steal my card and start donating to the United Appeal, The Daily Bread Foodbank etc. Also, credit card fraud agents could text or phone me to ask if I had made the donations rather than deactivating my card without warning. In any event, I tried phoning the customer service number on the back of the card. After tapping in my credit card number as requested, I received a message that they had too many phone calls and I should call back later. Then they hung up on me. I called back later and held on for a couple hours, repeatedly receiving the message that my call was important to them. Finally, I hung up because I had other things to do. The next time I called I received the message that I could put the call on hold; I would be alerted when a service agent was available. I did this. Several hours later, I connected with an agent who asked a series of questions and then reinstated my card. The next day, I resumed my online donations and, yes, my card was again rejected after a series of donations. I phoned and was told that I would have a seven-minute wait. After being on hold for almost 2 hours, I gave up. I tried again later and was on hold for another couple of hours before giving up. I called back a third time; this time I received a message that I could receive a call back in an hour if I wished. I chose to receive the call back. Several hours later, I received the call back and the card was reinstated. That day my total waiting time was almost 6 hours. Note that my problem is not with the service agents who were fine. My problem is with CIBC. According to news reports, this bank had a quite profitable year. If my call was truly important them, I would think that they would provide an adequate number of service agents. Also, they would perhaps require fewer agents if they would always attempt to communicate with the cardholder after a supposedly suspicious transaction, rather than summarily deactivating the card. Finally, they could make their phone messages more accurate and consistent. Why not always offer a call back?

I deposited a cheque that I wrote to myself from my personal line of credit at BMO into their ATM on Saturday December 6. As of today December 12 the funds are still on hold.

As a new customer I do expect some delay in accessibility to funds from cheques. This is beyond ridiculous!

I went into the Ladysmith branch two days ago to ask about what was going on. The teller checked into her system and told me that it was just being processed by their back office and that the anticipated date I would have access to my funds is December 17. I was also assured that the branch manager would call me by the end of the day. That did not happen.

For the most part, trying to open up an account online was a very buggy, error prone process. Like many banks, their system balked royally at trying to enter an address that is a P.O. box. Here in Ladysmith there are no civic addresses anywhere within the main town; everything is on P.O. boxes.

Their online system also balked at allowing me to enter my Canadian cellphone. I had to enter it as an international phone number in order for the system to function with it. I had a great deal of difficulty in getting their system to send me the SMS confirmation codes required.

I also had agonizing difficulties getting the system to recognize the password I'd chosen through Dashlane; I had to redo that several times.

When you are initially setting up, you see one screen in the web browser where it shows the particulars of the debit card that will be tied to the account. With all the errors that subsequently come up, that screen quickly disappears and you can't get it back. It didn't occur to me that I should have to take a screenshot of that. I had to drop into the branch the next day and they were able to generate for me the card number and the expiration date but not the CVV code. I thus was not able to finish setting everything up until I had that physical card in hand. Fortunately that did arrive within a very few days.

Another nice surprise when I tried to set the card up for paying subscriptions like Sirius XM. None of the systems I tried to input that card to would accept it. I now have to seek out a different way to set these things up.

The one positive I will say about their online capability is that I was able to immediately set up the tap on the card right from the android app. The only "plus".

The "service" from this bank is lackluster at best. There are far better alternatives out there.

I've been trying to call their credit card line unsuccessfully. Each time, I am put on hold for more than an hour, only to be hung up upon over and over and over again! I have wasted more than 4 hours trying to make a basic call. And I have one of their elite cards! This is disgraceful, and no wonder Reddit and other sites are full of complaints about CIBC's credit card service. I am with BMO for my everyday banking, thank goodness. Anyone thinking of going over to CIBC for anything, do yourself a favour and RUN.

“EST. TIME 30 MINUTES”
proceed to wait 1.5 hours 🤦‍♂️

I called to dispute one of the charges on my card. Made me wait for so long just to tell me to contact the merchant and dispute it myself. Also, asked for a waiver for a purchase interest, at first the staff offered a 50% waiver then suddenly took it back. I mean what the heck is wrong with your customer service? I’m considering of changing to another bank.

CIBC was decent as one of several online banks that offered competitive rates for YEARS. But today was the last straw...was assessed a $5 charge on a 1¢ balance leading to an overdraft. No longer the bellwether it used to be, best to avoid this modern-day version of nickel and diming (more like $5 and $10-ing) like the plague.

I called around 10 am and the waiting time is more than 1 hour. I left my number to call back. Now it's 2pm.
No call yet..
What kind of customer service.
Need to take day off to talk with CIBC Customer Service.

Waited on hold for 4 hours after they locked my credit card for no apparent reason. No option for call back, no option to unlock card online.

Worst bank of all! Garbage service , wait times and poor customer service . They can not do anything right . Will take all my accounts and clients else where

The absolute WORST customer service. Multiple times I have called in about a Visa/Debit card that continues to be blocked on their end not allowing me to use it and blocking all of my auto payments that have been setup for years! Every time, I’ve been on hold for well over 1 hour, they say they’ve fixed it but the same problem persists! Again, on hold. Guess what? Again, over an hour with no person yet. Absolutely atrocious wait times. How does my debit card just all of sudden, not work in only some situations? Ridiculous. Will be changing banks for sure after I get on a call with someone. Should be by tomorrow at this rate.

Worst Canadian Bank to deal with, no customer appreciation. Just to get a credit card agent to cancel my credit card with zero balance I was on hold for 2 hours but still could not get through. I went to the branch to cancel my credit card but they told me I have to call the credit card department. I don’t owe anything to CIBC, rather they owe me. Why such a lousy service? Why aren’t they being penalized by OFSI?

I have a car loan with them. It is my last loan with them. I had a worse experience I have ever had in my entire life. They are not professional at all. The information they give over the phone is the same as what they tell in person. They messed up things and asked me to fix it, I am glad that I refused to do that.I would not recommend this bank to anyone.

I have been a client of CIBC for 55 years and I am a former employee. I like to think I know the organization reasonably well.

This is the year that I had to commence taking payments from my RIF and LIF. The experience has been breathtakingly negative.

In December of last year, I converted RSPs / LIRAs to RIFs/LIFs. Concurrently I executed documents to unlock the LIFs and move 50% of their value to my RIF. It has not gone well. The unlocking of the LIFs and transfer to the RIF was not completed until February.

The consequence of this is that my annual minimum payments from these new products was impacted unbeknownst to me and I began taking too much money from 1 product and not enough form the others. CIBC maintains I must take more money out to meet CRA requirements. Simply put, I don’t want to do that.

CIBC has not resolved this issue. It has been going on for a month. A simple resolution would be to back dated the unlocking exercise to align this with my original intent. They can’t seem to get their heads wrapped around this.

Attempts to resolve this with their discount brokerage folks was not successful. I have written the executive in charge of “Investors Edge” who pushed the issue to the Executive Client Relations Group to no avail. I subsequently wrote the new CEO, Harry Culham, who also pushed to the same individual in the Executive Client Relations group and to this moment it remains unresolved.

This individual just doesn’t seem to get it. Doesn’t read or respond to emails on a timely basis and apparently has no authority to simply say fix it. Appeals to Harry Culham to point out that this is not going anywhere fast seem to fall on deaf ears.

Last comment, nobody owns the client at CIBC and when problems arise nobody steps up and takes ownership. Problem resolution skills are not strong.

Been on the phone waiting for an hour and a half and counting; and this to report fraud. Patently ridiculous!!! And for an annual membership of $150 - - for what, certainly not customer service.

Does not care at all about their customers. Called for support and was told opposite things by various employers, was sent from one line to another line for hours before they didn't even help and weren't at all compassionate to any degree. The employee I ended up talking to was very condescending. Never banking with them again.

Worst bank ever. Take your money elsewhere!!!!

2 hours to have a line, and once you explain to them. everyone try to rush to pass you to the next department so he doesnt deal with you.

large bank offering sub par service and taking advantage of their captive market

Predatory! Unacceptable. Unaccomadating. Uncompassionate.

I recently switched to CIBC from another bank for excessive fees with
Zero success with customer service. That last bank didn't resolve a single customer service request in the years I was banking with them, so I switched to CIBC because I had positive experience with customer service years ago when I was banking with them. BIG MISTAKE! CIBC had since become the most predatory institution in the years I haven't been with them. They now have fees for EVERYTHING! This banking is now so bad that I have gotten fees in the HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS for very simple things that I was unaware I could even be penalized for. Sent an etransfer for rent and gotten a service fee for over a hundred dollars garnishedfrom my savings account. After some time of not being able to pay that fee, they took that fee and without my authorization, they changed my savings account to a loan account to allow them to not just charge fees, but to now charge me interest. My wife was forced to use their stop payment service because a payday lender (lender that shehad dealt with using a different bank) somehow was able to obtain her new banking information, also without authorization, and attempt to take payment from CIBC. Remember, CIBC is the new bank. Since attempting stop payment, this lender has been able to change the name used on the statement, allowing them to maneuver around the stop payment several times, accumulating half a dozen NSF fees. She's attempted to have CIBC resolve the issue. They refuse to take accountability for the failing. We argued that, since the lender cannot change their identification number, CIBC should be able to reasonably enough, identify the lender and stop the payment. After some research, we've become aware that a judge would rule in favor if confronted with the same information.

There was another predatory action taken by the bank as there was just an etransfer, still not authorized, in her statement for $900 and the funds were not even in the account. An etransfer like that is not even supposed to be inatiated when the funds arenot available. If attempted, it wouldn't normally allow you to even press the send button. There are six or seven fees for overdraft (she doesn't have overdraft), NSF (these transactions were not authorized), and multiply all of that by half a dozen. We haven't even called customer service because they are clearly not here for the customer. I've opted to leave my complaints for the public.