I LOVE my credit union. Honestly, I can't understand why people use banks, they charge high fees, higher interest loans and generally have poor customer service. I can understand if you have a need for million dollar loans for large business, but for everyday people, cu's are the best.
The reason they are so good is they work for the people. Their money doesn't go to pay shareholders, the account holders are the shareholders! They aren't supporting big fancy corporate offices and they seem to use common sense. They pretty much offer everything a bank does and they are able to make decisions in short amounts of time.
I had our home loan with them and they called me a couple of years ago and pointed out that I could save money by refinancing. They refinanced my house, no points, no fees, no appraisal, oour closing costs were under $100 to have our title company run a new title report on the house. They didn't have to call me, but that's the difference. They care about their customers, not just the bottom line.
Incidentally, we have a local community the experienced a landslide problem. The local government (that approved the subdivision & ignored geological surveyor warnings) got sued by about 200 homeowners, the homeowners won. But they ended up with about 30 cents on the dollar for their home values. About 20 homeowners that had financed with our credit union were sent a letter telling them their mortgages had been forgiven, with only 1 string attached. They were to take the 30% money they had received, purchase a new home and seek financing thru the credit union. How's that for caring about customers?!
Most credit unions have cash machine cards or debit cards that work on the Pacific Access member system. You can use other credit union cash machines across the country with no charge. So it makes it comparable to using a large national bank.
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