So I’ve been banking with Chase for a good number of years now, and I have no real complaints. However, I recently opened a second account with a credit union for the sole purpose of using with PayPal, since obviously there are minimum balance requirements to avoid fees with Chase. Since then, I’ve been sitting here wondering if I should be moving all of my money to the credit union. I’ve already made missteps with my money I didn’t even consider before (not putting extra into a CD or other short term investment, for example), and I want to “make up” for that.
Whaddya all think?
The one snag is that I have (IIRC) one automatic payment on my current account, my car insurance. Of course, I’ll initially keep my Chase accounts active with a small amount of money, enough for the automatic payment(s), and wait until I’m sure it’s been transferred before I close completely. How long does it take to clear, and how long should I wait to make absolutely sure I’m safe to close completely (assuming, of course, I don’t do something stupid like use the wrong debit card).
I’m a big fan of credit unions, so good for you! I would think it shouldn’t take more than one month to see that your car insurance payment has transferred successfully to the CU, especially if you can do it yourself online. Wish I could be more definite, but we’ve had the same CU account for 32 years and never had to deal with this sort of thing.
I am not a fan of credit unions. Some of them are run by people who are not very professional.
When I was a member of the State Employee’s Credit Union I refinanced my home through them. They ended up thoroughly screwing up the mortgage so bad after a few years that I refinance just to get away from them. On closing of escrow they screwed that up too. Ended up giving the wrong amount to the escrow company. The amount was too low. After the 15th of the month after closing I get a nasty letter from them telling me I did not make my payment that month. I call to tell them the loan has been paid off and was closed. I get another letter telling me that the pay off was short and I had better issue them a check for the balance by return mail. I called and set up an appointment with the manager. When we walked in she was very short with me and my wife demanding to know why the pay off was short. I explained her screw up and then told her we refinanced to get away from the credit union. We were at her desk in the middle of the open office area where everyone could hear us, including customers. I know how to project my voice without yelling. She threatened to sue us for the balance because after all it was the member’s money and they had a responsibility to them. After realizing they had a unsecured loan to us, and my telling her that I was not going to pay it off that day. And that we disagreed with the amount that was short and she needed to adjust to the proper amount first before any discussion would continue and she need to come up with a plan that we would except she calmed down. She asked if we could wait while called board members. The plan she came back with was it would be considered an interest free loan and we would make payments of $50 a month. (this was about 1981, when $50 was not a small amount). I refused and only agreed to pay $30 a month.
When my wife would stop at the end of the month and make the payment the clerk on checking the printout of the receipt would often ask How did you get an loan with 0%^ interest?
The only way I would join a credit union is my employer offered payroll deductions to the savings account.
My experiences with a credit union weren’t as extreme as yours, Snnipe, but I also found them to be unprofessional in many ways, not least of which was discussing private business in full earshot of other customers. There were plenty of private offices available but no one seemed to want to use them. Also, they messed up on a payment for me too, though not as egregious as the payoff of a mortgage! Anyway, I’ll stick with banks even though they have their issues, too.
I was looking for a new bank last year, and I considered several local credit unions, except I couldn’t figure out how to open an account at any of them. To be fair, it wasn’t just credit unions. The small local bank had no way to apply either. I’m sure you could get an account the old fashioned way, but a bank you have to go inside to use is not really what I want. So I went to a soulless megabank with a website that let me open an account at 3:00 AM Sunday morning, and to this day I’ve never even been inside!
Edit: I just checked again, and one now has an online application. I opened it just to see what would happen, and it has an expired security certificate. :rolleyes:
I love my credit union. I’ve been with the same one for more than 30 years. They handled my mortgage issues well and even let me sign papers via the internet when I moved out of the area and sold the house.
They have very low rates and zero fee visa accounts. I earn about $400.00 a year on my credit card and since I never carry a balance, I pay no interest.
I have nothing but good things to say about my experience.
I love my Credit Union, too. I switched many years ago when I got annoyed with my bank always finding new charges to add to may account. My credit union is a large and well run organization, so I have never experienced the bad service described above.
A credit union is a democratically run, member-owned financial cooperative. Mine (and I presume most or all) has all the normal services a bank offers- checking, savings, investments, loans, etc but with lower loan rates, lower fees, and higher dividend rates which is how profits are returned to members.
Mine also has and education function and offers all kind of classes either live or on-line such as how to buy a car, plan for retirement or college, develop a budget, shop for and use a credit card, and they also offer programs for kids (they let mine open accounts in elementary school as part of their financial literacy plan), opening a business, etc. I’ve been pleased with the retirement planning advice and products I have received from them.
My CU is careful with investments. They say “(Name of CU) does not engage in risky lending practices. We offer sensible loan products designed with our members’ well-being in mind.”
What few problems I have had over the years have been solved easily and professionally. Mine is also very fraud vigilant. I had an on-line purchase go sour and got caught between the place of purchase and the third-party vendor that required the CU to sort out (both vendors denied having my money). Another time and with another on-line purchase, the CU called within seconds of the purchase to check and see if I was using my account because the website was sketchy somehow. They also called me when I made an out-of-state purchase once while traveling just to check that it was me using my card.
So, I’m very pleased and will not return to a typical bank.
Over the past 40+ years, I’ve belonged to four different credit unions and have never had a problem with any of them. All the services of a bank, fully insured, few or no fees, and without the oppressive bank culture.
Love my credit union. There are some annoyances but overall a much better experience than BofA, where it seemed like every month they would charge me 15, 30, 45 dollars and for what I could never tell. I have two car loans with my CU and on both I talked them down on the interest rate!
I opened my CU account ≈ 20 years ago when we moved into the building where they were. Once that branch closed I’ve never been in another one of their branches but still have managed to do everything I need, including two car loans (overnighted paperwork/check). They have online banking/bill pay & used to do shared branch, which is a branch multiplier. I could go into any CU in the country that supports shared branch & do my transaction at the their teller. They did away with this function when they started mobile deposits. As for ATMs, the two biggest convenience store chains (one regional & the other being 7-Eleven) in the area have free ATMs. If I screw up overdraft my checking acct, they pull money from my savings acct for a whopping charge of $2.
Most small/ medium sized banks/CUs don’t have their own systems for processing, but use one of the handful of industry giants as a core-systems vendor; therefore, they’re not far behind on getting the latest & greatest innovation. The vendor does the programming & sells it to multiple clients, lowering the cost for all of those clients.
I am a strong fan of having accounts with multiple financial institutions–identity theft seems to be happening more and more often. If one account gets locked up I want to be able to use other accounts.
If you need to use ATM machines you should check as to the availability of the networks–since if you don’t belong to a network there could be a significant charge for using someone else’s network.
Jesus, I hate bloody Wells Fargo. I have one account there, and they have the most interesting method of posting debits…nothing for three days, then everything in twenty minutes. Their app is also terrible – not real-time at all. And then there was the time they wanted to hold a deposit for twelve days.
I really like my credit union! I have never had a problem with them at all. Several years ago I was buying a car from an private individual for cash and my credit union facilitated and assisted in that process, helping and guiding us with the forms and paperwork we needed, despite the fact they were making NO PROFIT from the transaction. I seriously appreciated the help as I had never bought a car before from someone who still had loan outstanding on the car I was buying.
I’ve been with my CU for nearly 18 years now and I primarily use them for the occasional vehicle loan. My wife and I went to WF nearly 13 years ago due to being out of town and not being able to find an ATM for our CU or having to pay ridiculous fees to use the ATM of other CUs. We use a Chase CC for our daily expenses and pay it off each month and have done that for several years now so I haven’t needed an ATM more than 10 times in the past few years. If it were up to me I would ditch WF and use my CU exclusively since I have no restrictions on how many transfers I can make from checking to savings and our checking would be free. My wife pretty much manages the WF account and has all of our bill pay automated so she is reluctant to make the change.
It wouldn’t cost you anything to try the CU exclusively. You’ll know pretty quickly if it is a good fit or not. Poor professionalism isn’t a CU problem, it is a business problem that can and usually does affect any business at some point or another.
I have an account with Wells Fargo and also hate them. It started out as an account with Flagler in Florida when my mother-in-law died and left all to my wife. Then it became Wachovia (pronounced walk-ovah-ya), then Core States, then WF. We are trying to close a CD, but it seems we can do it only in person or with a notarized form (Canadian notaries not allowed) and only in 30 days after it rolls over to a new one. Also they keep adding charges even though we have over $50,000 in CDs. There must be some way of closing it, but I am afraid any way will cost us $$.
The only thing I would question about a Credit Union is whether you are going to get dinged every time you use an ATM. I nearly always use an ATM run by the bank my account is in and then it is free.
Our main credit union is in Florida and we live in Maryland. But several local convenience stores have no-fee ATMs and our CU doesn’t charge fees, so getting money is easy-peasy. If it was an issue, I’d just deposit some money in the local CU and use their ATMs, which are fairly convenient.
I think the last time I paid an ATM fee was 7 years ago when I was out of town and had to get some cash. Definitely love my CUs.
Good question, I think it’s a bank culture that strives to take as much money as possible from you without giving you anything of value in return.
For example:
I had a small savings account with Commonwealth Bank in Australia some many years ago before I moved to Japan. After I moved to Japan, I thought I would just leave that account open with a thousand dollars so that I could use it any time I came back to Australia. They had a policy though that they could no longer send me any correspondence, because of postage costs (They have to monitor these costs because God knows they never made any record billion dollar profits during or after the 90s). I understand the profit motive, it’s cool. But a year after I moved to Japan they unilaterally decided that they would change the account contract we had made and that from then on there would be a 50 dollar “account keeping” fee per month. They didn’t tell me about the change in the way the bank fees worked, because, as stated earlier, they can’t send mail overseas. So they took out 50 dollars from my account every month until there was nothing left in my account and then their legal team tracked me down to threaten me that I owed them 50 dollars for account keeping fees on an account that no longer had any money in it because it was all taken out as account keeping fees.
I now bank at a credit union. Every month my balance increases with interest payments. I doesn’t decrease.
I would think it shouldn’t take more than one month to see that your car insurance payment has transferred successfully to the CU, especially if you can do it yourself online. Wish I could be more definite, but we’ve had the same CU account for 32 years and never had to deal with this sort of thing.