Fee Increase Attempt Inspires 'Dump Your Bank Day' 667
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNN Money: "Customers are dumping their banks in droves ahead of the nationwide 'Move Your Money' and 'Bank Transfer Day' movements this Saturday. Given the recent spotlight on attempts — and ultimate failures — by some of the nation's biggest banks to tack on new debit card fees, thousands of disgruntled consumers have already either left or pledged to leave their current bank for a community bank or credit union, which are known for having fewer and/or lower bank account fees. ... At least 650,000 consumers have already joined credit unions since Sept. 29, the day Bank of America announced plans to impose its controversial $5 debit card fee, according to a nationwide survey of credit unions by the Credit Union National Association."
I did (Score:4, Interesting)
I moved to a credit union 15 years ago and never looked back. Good service and no ridiculous fees.
I joined a Credit Union when I was 12 (Score:4, Interesting)
I joined a Credit Union when I was 12, and that was a long time ago, indeed. I have never looked at a bank account set of terms and conditions that was not absolutely offensive and repulsive when compared to the Credit Union.
Once, about 20 years ago, when I lived in Miami and the nearest branch of my Credit Union was in Tampa, I opened a local account to be able to deposit my paychecks locally. That lasted about 6 months, during which time they charged fee after fee, and posted a $20 "computer error" in their favor to my account. Computer error, in 1991, from a bank? The computer made a mistake adding a column of numbers? "Sorry sir, we'll fix that." Yeah, you do that, and give me all my cash, NOW.
Min-maxing one's credit score (Score:5, Interesting)
I've looked into Credit Unions (Score:2, Interesting)
...and community banks, and I've always found I'm getting a better deal at my large bank (currently called Wells Fargo, formerly Wachovia, First Union, and Corestates). I get interest-paying (nearly zero, but still interest paying) no-fee checking, savings, a couple of credit cards, free online bill pay and a large ATM network and two free out-of-network withdrawals a month.
Another good word about Credit Unions here! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd long heard the advice about Credit Unions being a better bet than a bank, but honestly, I felt switching might be more hassle than it was worth. I knew Credit Unions had membership restrictions, for starters. (For instance, Navy Federal Credit Union pretty much requires you're either in the armed forces, or a family member of someone who is. That doesn't help me.)
I always tried to bank with smaller, local banks though, instead of any of the "mega banks". That strategy worked pretty well for me when the bigger ones went through a phase of eliminating "totally free checking" accounts, some years ago.
However, I tried to get refinanced on my car loan a couple years ago and found none of the banks were willing to help me at all -- even the one I have direct deposit with from my work, and hold both a checking and a savings account with. My rate was WAY too high and I wasn't asking the world ... just an opportunity to get a sane interest rate. That's when I decided to take a closer look at Credit Unions. I discovered one of the bigger ones had 2 convenient branches near my house AND was partnered up with most of the others in town, so you could use ATM machines belonging to ANY of them free of charge. Their only rules for becoming a member seemed to be based on you living in a zip code somewhat geographically close to their branches. A day later (since they had to have the bank manager review my situation and he was out for the day), I had my loan refinanced at a rate a full 10 percentage points lower than I was paying!
I switched my checking account over to a second Credit Union not long after that, and was paid over $100 in bonuses just to switch!
customer service? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a currency collector and a WheresGeorge addict, so I visit banks very often, complete with unusual requests. So I suppose retail service is more relevant to me than others.
Do you have any problems with the folks at your credit union branch(es)? I honestly wouldn't know either way. CU's won't do even simple stuff for non-accountholders, so I don't have any experience with the personnel save for a negative impression. I have gotten accounts at some regular banks that I initially visited as a non-accountholder.
of all the issues with big banks, retail-location customer service doesn't seem to be one of them.
In general, the cheap version of something is sometimes satisfactory, sometimes not.
Re:I did (Score:5, Interesting)
That's baloney. I moved my family's accounts, my business accounts and the account for a micro non-profit I run out of Chase and into a credit union back in 2008 after the banks got bailed out. I travel all the time and there are tens of thousands of "cross-branched" institutions where you can cash a "check" (do people still use those things?). My business takes in a lot of wire transfers from Europe and Asia and my credit union not only does a great job, but they charge me less than Chase did.
Plus, I have a personal relationship with the local officers of my credit union and they're great. They've put me in touch with other customers of theirs that they thought would be interested in the work I do and they were a huge help when I made some significant changes to the non-profit. I doubt I'll be looking for a new mortgage any time soon, since I own my house and it's very unlikely I'll need anything bigger or more expensive once my daughter moves out, but if I needed to borrow money, they're ready to lend and I wouldn't have to jump through the hoops or kiss ass the way I would at Chase.
I so wish there would have been a referendum on the TARP bailouts in '08. We might have lost a bank or two, but the pain would have been long over by now and we'd be in a lot better shape without the $16trillion that the Fed has had to give the banks at 0% to keep up this charade.
I'm hoping there's some pain felt at Wells Fargo and Chase and BOA this coming week.
This campaign to move money out of the big banks is just the first of the real-world situations where the Occupy Wall Street movement and people like Elizabeth Warren are leading the way to forcing the economic elite to maybe think about learning to behave. Oh, and I figure I saved at least a few hundred bucks last year by moving out of Chase, so I'm sending it all to Warren's campaign and maybe $100 or so to the people from the occupy movement down the street in Grant Park.
Banks vs Credit Unions (Score:2, Interesting)
So where is the actual evidence the credit unions provide better cost/service than banks? I mean, banks want to maximize shareholder value, but maybe the best way to do that is to provide good service/low price. Where are the detailed comparisons which take into account all fees and all services?
Re:BoA backed out (Score:4, Interesting)
Others noted they will just roll it into other fees you won't notice as much. And instead of leaving this at 3, it gets up to +5.
This is why most of my moderation points are spent on '-1 overrated' these days. You're not wrong, you're just not adding anything past existing comments. I would allow +3 for those people who read at +3, and not mod you down for +4 if someone thought you deserved it, but +5 is, well, overrated.
Credit union vs. bank clearing issues. (Score:2, Interesting)
Last real credit union experience was with Nevada FCU in 2003. My payroll direct deposit would sometimes go at 1 or 2 pm. Any check presented before then would bounce out after I was charged $27. Yes, I shouldn't be writing checks until I had the money in my account. But, if you're broke sometimes you pay the rent on the 1st with a check knowing that it won't hit until the 2nd or 3rd when your pay check goes in.
So, $27 and a bounced check would cause me to get dinged by the apartment for another $50-75.
I wanted to switch TO BofA (my how times have changed) due to a previous experience with them, but thought it would be too hard. So, the next two times over the year where my paycheck would arrive a few days late, I would use a payday loan place that did daily interest. They were pretty good-$1/$100 per day. So, 600 for two days was $12-beats the hell out of $27+$75.
After some other nonsense where I got hit with a $27 fee for being exactly $0.15 overdrafted, I switched to BofA. A check could hit BofA at 2pm when there weren't funds, BUT as long as the account was positive by 6pm that day, nothing bounced and no fees were assessed. If I wrote a check to pay off a card and I saw it clear and realized that I put a different amount and would be overdrawn when it hit, I could go deposit cash before 6pm and avoid any fees.
Switching from a credit union to BofA potentially saved my broke ass several hundred dollars and a lot of stress. They also had no fee as long as I did 2 direct deposits a month vs. NV FCUs (small) $2/monthly fee.
For about 5 years my relationship with BofA was just fine. THEN, they raised my credit card interest rate from 10.9 to 18.99 without any real reason. I began paying it down and they raised the rate to 23.99. When I called for an explanation, they told me that the rate hike notice was in my statement and I missed the timeframe necessary to close the account and avoid the rate increase. The rate increase notice was on the last page of my PDF statement (I was paperless) and I didn't go that far in. Yes, my fault for not seeing.
So, I immediately switched to Citibank and began earning American Airline miles with my debit purchases and free checking with a direct deposit. I opened a second account and used it for BIllPay. They had the 6pm thing as BofA, so on the very rare occasion that I might be overdrawn, a deposit before 6pm kept me from getting dinged. They've been pretty good until about 6 months ago. My previously free checking was now $6/mo. unless I had >1500 in the account. The other account was now $9.50 unless I had >1500 in it as well. They are oh so nice enough to credit me 1.00 for direct deposit, another $1.00 for bill pay, etc.
Now they've cancelled the airline miles part of the debit card and turned one account into a flat, no exceptions $10/mo. fee. I've moved that account to ING Direct where I may earn some trivial amount of interest and pay no fess. I no longer live on the financial edge, I so I don't need the 6pm float and may move my main day-to-day debit card stuff to ING Direct as well, not sure yet. Either way, looking back, credit unions have cost me a lot more than banks in a lot less time.
Re:welcome the new bank (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never heard of that happening to a credit union. I doubt the members would stand for it in most cases. Why would they want their cost of banking going up?
On the other hand, I've seen a couple of cases where CUs got big enough and started acting like banks. CEFCU (formerly the Caterpillar Credit Union) in IL is one of the biggest in the country and nearly 20 years ago they started doing that crap where they charged extra fees to people who only had small balances. It pissed me off enough that I closed my account with them, despite being way beyond the minimum balance requirements.
A few years later when debit cards were just starting to become popular, TexIns (formerly the Texas Instruments Credit Union) started pushing debit cards on all of their members via the combo ATM/Debit card trick - unless you kicked up a fuss your ATM card was automatically enabled for debit usage too. My understanding is that such pushes were actually widespread in the CU community and usually accompanied with a bunch of evil PR to convince members it was actually a good thing. Anyone who was paying attention knew that debit cards were a bad deal for practically everyone -- a big fee generator with far less consumer protections than credit cards.
So it isn't easy, in fact it may even be illegal to formally co-opt a CU in the way the GP described, but sometimes they do end up being managed by execs with a bankster mindset.
Re:Thinking about "switching" (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been with credit unions for several years now; I keep around $5K in BoA for convenience sake, but keep most of my liquid cash in credit unions. My credit unions don't insist on treating me like a criminal by fingerprinting me if I dare cash a check, they don't dehumanize services by refusing to let me talk to decision makers, don't nickel-and-dime me for services like BoA does. The down side to a credit union is there are fewer branches and fewer ATMs, so if I am out of town and need cash to dine or shop somewhere that doesn't accept AmEx, I have my BoA account for convenience. However, I'm seriously considering punting BoA altogether and just carry more cash instead.
One huge, huge benefit of credit unions is the ability to talk to decision makers, and have them check business and personal references if you have limited credit history. About ten years ago when I started my business, I made a huge, huge mistake: I closed my personal credit accounts, and built up corporate credit. I did not have a single credit line for personal use, and I needed a loan. So, I went to the banks and was turned down for a loan by several banks (citing the lack of credit history - if you go without using credit for 7 years, your credit record is "scolled out"), and couldn't talk to a decision maker. So, I went to a credit union and they turned me down at first, so I worked my way up the food chain and talked to decision makers. They checked my personal and business references, and I was able to get financing. I ended up moving a decent chunk of funds to that credit union.
Now, interesting thing: one of the banks I went to has financed several cars for one of my friends. He has horrible, horrible credit; he has had a home forclosed on, three vehicles repossessed, and they granted him another car loan shortly before I went to speak with that same rep. His interest rate sucked, but he was able to get financing. I asked about it, mentioning my friend by name and asking why with his irresponsible history he was granted financing, but with my responsible history I couldn't. His response? "He has credit. You don't." So I asked "So, you are telling me a bad credit history is better than no credit history?" His response was yes. That just pissed me off - and that kind of thinking is exactly why so many banks have needed bailout courtesy of us taxpayers.
Fuck banks. We never should have bailed them out.
Re:I did (Score:5, Interesting)
Ya. Don't hold onto that dream too tight. I have a little story to tell you...
I was a Wells Fargo customer. I was moderately satisfied with them, except when they screwed with me..
I had to take a trip up to Boston.. Fly up, rent a car, drive an hour, and spend a week working. No problem. When I got there, I caught the shuttle bus to the rental car parking lot. When I got there, they said "Sure, we'd rent you a car, but your card has been declined." I had plenty of money *in* the account, so I figured a quick call to the bank would fix it... Business account, business traveler, they'll get it fixed right up, right?
I spent the following hour on the phone, where they explained to me that there was possible fraudulent activity relating to my card. They couldn't tell me *what* the activity was, just that they had cancelled my card.
They did kindly tell me that I could go to any Wells Fargo branch, and get a temporary credit card. I asked which one was walking distance from Boston's Logan airport, as I had $20 in my pocket, and no car to drive anywhere, because I *couldn't* rent a car, because they cancelled my card. They didn't answer.
A few more phone calls, and becoming gradually pissed off, I managed to arrange for a ride. A coworker drove the hour *to* the airport, so we could drive the hour *back* to work. (Sorry B'). He also spotted me some cash, so I'd have more than $20 to my name for the week while I was there.
I am one of the many who had financial problems for an extended period. As it turns out, credit card companies really don't like it if you don't pay them for over a year. That bank card, and the cash in my pocket, was all I had.
I finally did find out where the closest branch is. 106 miles, or 2 hours, each way [google.com].
For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept of flying across the country to work on site for a week, they kind of appreciate it if you are there to work. Telling them, "Sorry, I need to spend about 5 hours of the 8 hour work day, driving to a bank in *the next state*, to fix some mental deficiency they're having, just won't go over very well..
I managed on the borrowed cash, and finally made it home, late Friday night.
So, I had the opportunity to get more pissed off until bright and sunshiny Monday morning. I went straight down to the closest branch, and asked for details on the fraud. They told me, "Oh, there was no fraud. We mailed you a new bank card. Since you never activated the new one, we cancelled the old one."
I tried to explain the absolute failure of logic in that one. Did they not see airplane reservations, rental car reservations, hotel reservations? They finally told me where they mailed the card to. Not my residence, where I get my statements, and the only address they claim to have on file for me. Not my previous residence. They mailed it to a place I hadn't lived for years.
It then took them about an hour to figure out how to issue the temporary card. They issued it, but it didn't work. So they tried again. and again. They told me I would have my new card, with my name on it and all, in 7 to 14 days.
14 days later.
I opened a new account at a local credit union.
21 days later....
I got the bank card and checks for the credit union.
24 days later...
I got my new card from Wells Fargo. I couldn't activate it.