Ever Considered Moving your Banking Over to at the Credit Unions?
It's been happening in one household after another. Shortly after Thanksgiving, your bank sends you a notice that you have to pay about 20% on your credit card balances from now on. And people, sick of the abuse, wonder if there is a more democratic way to stay in touch with a modern financial life, than to sell your soul to the credit card companies. As it turns out, there is. It's a wonder more people aren't trying it out. They are called credit unions, and they will offer you a credit card at about 7%, with no balance transfer fee. If that's not enough for you, the feeling of going with the credit union is like a breath of fresh air to most people. They treat you better, they don't have those unfathomable and yet dependably unfair rules all over the place, and they are simple to deal with. People just figure - why the need to put yourself through the meat grinder that corporate banking is, when you can just go to one of the credit unions, and be a valued customer?
Take what happened to a good friend of mine in an Annapolis, Maryland. He had a couple of accounts with his bank, and they both had about $500 each. He thought he'd let them just lie there until he was ready to get a little work done around the house. But all of a sudden, without warning, the bank thought it was acceptable to just change its policies on how long they could wait before declaring an account inactive and start charging fees on it. It used to be that you could leave an account unused for several months before they would do that. When without warning they changed the waiting to one month, they just emptied both his accounts for fees, and then told him that he needed to bring in more money for what the $1000 did not cover. He managed to reason with the bank little bit and have them cut him some slack over the additional charges; but the $1000 was gone forever.
At the credit unions, sanity prevails. They charge a reasonable interest on credit cards, they don't charge you for use of the ATM, and you only pay any overdraft charges if you keep running into the red repeatedly.They have none of the double-dealing practice you see at many banks - the banks will only credit you for the check deposited, at the end of the day; on the other hand, they will charge your account for a withdrawal, as soon as it happens. That way, you stand a chance of running into the red for more often, and owing them penalties. They have none of this at the credit unions; and whatever you want, they just have to call the manager who sits in the next room. Typically, at these big corporate banks, they can't give you a paper clip without calling the head office.
All that is nice and comfy; but what is it that you lose when you move your allegiance to the credit unions? To begin with, they don't have that as many branches; and they don't stay open as long. And their websites don't really work well with accounting software. But all that is really insignificant, just because it gets you away from the fraudulent practices at the banks you have had to suffer for so long.