Wednesday, July 20, 2011

This is a bank?

Have you seen the TV spot where the dog starts "saying" to his owner and friend "We love our bank?"  Well, I am not going to buy flowers and candy but I am in the process of switching all my accounts (finally) away from the fee-monster Chase and to the local credit union (Bethpage Federal Credit Union on Long Island).

As part of the process, they needed to do some checking to give me overdraft protection on my checking account. It is essentially a loan and they go though the same vetting process. What is amazing is that within 24 hours of me sitting with the bank officer, they called me to verify the last piece of info and grant the "loan."

The same happened with the home equity department. I figured why not open the line of credit now before the economy seizes up again. Anyway, the nicest lady (judging by her voice and enthusiasm) called, also within 24 hours, to tell me I was approved. All that was needed was a few more documents to complete my file.

Let's recap - within 24 hours of sitting down at the bank, I had a personal saving, personal checking with overdraft, three custodian accounts for my kids, business savings, business checking and a home equity line of credit at a great rate. And they are all linked and available to me online.

Chase wanted twice the interest rate. Bank of America d*cked me around so long on documents that their original self imposed deadline for getting it done expired and I had to start over again - which I declined.

I will never look back and with any luck millions of fellow fee payers will wake up, too. Too big to fail? How about too big to serve?

2 comments:

Normand said...

Credit Unions are not to small to like.

Ashet Kikani said...

Maybe, just maybe, they did all this because they may have had a whiff that you would blog it and you have a lot of followers