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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

> It is bonkers to me that anyone still banks at the large institutions (the ones famous for overdraft "protection") with local credit unions being as good as they are (and often very competitive on rates).

And whenever you ask someone why the hell they use UltraMegaBankOfAbuse, they always cite some far fetched scenario that makes Credit Unions slightly less convenient. “Well, if I ever found myself in the deserts of Morocco, and needed to use an ATM to pay my electric bill, there wouldn’t be a Credit Union branch there, so checkmate! I obviously need to bank with Chase!” It’s like they are looking for any excuse to abuse themselves.

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I used to bank with a local credit union, and now bank with one of the largest banks in the United States. The credit union was nice enough, but they signed up with that mobile banking provider that many credit unions seem to use, and the usability went down the drain. I tried to find a local credit union that was not using that platform, but couldn’t. The large bank’s app is great.

Also one time the credit union let someone sign my account up to pay for their car loan, because the clerk who set up the automatic payments accidentally typed in my account number, which was one off from the car loan holder’s. To their credit, the credit union was quick to resolve the issue, but it left a bad taste in my mouth that it was so easy for them to make that mistake and nothing on the back end to catch it.

i have a similar experience - CUs sometimes outsource too much. In mine, they outsource Statements, Transfer/Bill pay, etc to different vendors/companies. It all works seamlessly with some fancy single-sign-on...except when it doesn't. I don't know who all have my financial details.

> the clerk who set up the automatic payments accidentally typed in my account number, which was one off from the car loan holder’s.

Were you just extremely unlucky, or doesn't your bank account number have a proper checksum builtin to prevent this?

I realized after I posted this that account number is ambiguous in this context. It was my membership ID number at the credit union, not the bank account number itself. Their membership numbers were nine digits long and you would use them to identify yourself when you interacted with the a credit union representative over the phone. When I spoke to the support agent about that mystery car payment they said, “It looks like your member number is 649345121, and the real owner’s number is 649345122 so they must have mixed it up on the paperwork.” Which lead me to believe that the loan originated in house and the paperwork just asked for you membership number and which kind of account to use for the automatic payment. I guess the checksum was supposed to be the human who entered the number verifying that the account holder information matched the information on the form, but that didn’t happen in my case.

A significant part of the world - all of the EU, but also a lot outside it- uses the IBAN standard [0]. The checksum algorithm is mod97, two digits indeed. Very often, there are two checksums though!

Also, in my native Belgium, bank payments have had automated payment processing structured messages attached to almost all {b,c}2b payments. That one contains a similar mod97 check.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num...

Given that even credit card numbers have a security number, aka checksum, it's a little silly that they just enter any id number without one, esp for things like loans.

Credit card numbers, bank account numbers and suchlike often only dedicate a single decimal digit to the checksum which severely limits their ability to detect errors.

And if numbers are getting keyed in tens of thousands of times per day across a large business, and mistakes happen hundreds of times a week, a checksum that catches 95% of errors will still let tens of errors go undetected every week.

Thanks for sharing these examples, pretty understandable impetus to move.

What annoys me is that these are both problems with technical (mostly) solutions. The big banks don’t have magic humans that don’t make mistakes, they just have better systems that reduce error, and can fund development of better apps.

I personally use only the web client of my bank, and am very happy with it, but will admit that the mobile banking app is less than desirable. Wish they would all just make PWAs and call it a day.

I'm with a credit union. I'd never trust my phone with access to my bank account, but I use their web site. Does fine. I can check my balances, pay bills. What else do you need?

I've got a very concrete reason not to use a credit union. They wouldn't let me open an account.

Chase in the other hand, was happy to let me open one.

I may not need money in morroco, but I do in Seattle from time to time, whenever I lose/compromise my credit card

I'm sorry to hear that, but usually there is more than one credit union in an area -- did they all have this hang up?

I'm fine with Chase and other national banks existing, but I think a lot of their scale (and corresponding ability to perform misdeeds) is predicated on the fact that people (ex. college students) go there FIRST. The defaults need to change.

I had this happen to me as a new employee of a major company with its own private CU. I moved across states and needed a new local bank. Applied at the branch in my office and a few days later got my dollar application fee back. Their shortsightedness was astounding.

As a US expat living in Europe, credit unions are a non-starter from me. Even big banks are not very good. USAA has been the best so far because they are set up to support military folks living over seas. I'm not in the military but I benefit from what they do to support those people.

I don’t have a problem with USAA, I don’t think they’re getting up to the kind of bullshit the large banks are either.

My US credit union doesn't send international wire transfers. I have to send a lot of international wire transfers these days.

Neither does mine, but at this point a lot of services have popped up to fill the gap. Ten years ago western Union worked in a pinch, now there are lots more options

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