Hacker News Reader

Comment by navyrain | Hacker News Reader

I fail to see why anyone selects a big bank like BofA/WellsFargo/Chase for their personal accounts, when they are known to have a plethora of fees and dubious ethics, and there are almost always better options in regional credit unions. What am I missing?

View on HN

Inertia. 20 years ago, at the start of college, I got a free checking account at a smallish local bank. Which got bought by a bigger regional bank, which got bought by another bank, which merged into BofA. I had no particular reason to switch until BofA started charging ridiculous fees.

ATM locations, mostly. Chase has an ATM on every street corner in NYC (OK, an exaggeration, but only just). I know plenty of credit unions refund a certain number of ATM fees, but you can't do thinks like check deposits at them any more.

Some banks and credit unions are adding "online checking depositing": you upload a photo of the check to their website. They OCR the photo and process the check. No signature endorsement necessary.

Also, a good way to avoid ATM fees is to get "cash back" when using a debit card at the grocery store.

Might not be the case anymore, but I remember hearing in the late 90's that some banks would charge you fees for getting "cash back" with your debit card at a merchant. This is probably bank-dependent though.

There's nothing special about getting "cash back" from a grocery store, there aren't any special fees associated with it. You're just buying cash from the store, it would be no different than if it had a stack of individually barcoded $20 bills on the shelf that they charged $20 each for.

They put cash limits on the checks usually, which neuters the functionality. And you still can't deposit cash.

I have a credit union account (First Tech CU), and I regularly deposit checks at a different CU's ATM (BECU has fancy ATMs that scan checks, so I prefer them).

In fact, any CO-OP Network ATM works just as well as my own CU's ATM (no fees, deposits, etc). They have locations nationwide, as most credit unions are members.

Edit: also included in that list: most ATMs at 7-Eleven.

Check whether your credit union participates in this: http://www.co-opfs.org/public/locators/ATMlocator/index.cfm

You can look for the logo on your ATM card.

I don't guarantee anything but you might be surprised. In fact if you already belong to a credit union you might be very surprised. Check for the logo on your card. I belong to a credit union tied to a university that I've since moved about 2 hours away from, and except for loans (which I do so infrequently I don't mind driving for that, there's a full branch about an hour away) I've got plenty of ATM coverage everywhere I go.

It turns out that basically every grocery store in the country is a no-fee ATM for withdrawals.

People choose them because the big banks have historically offered a much larger range of financial services.

Additionally, there are many people who still need to (or like) going to a bank in-person. The big banks offer many more branches than a smaller outfit will.

Also, the flexibility they offer when traveling both nationally and internationally is typically much better compared to a regional bank or credit union.

     Some of us choose smaller banks, like Washington Mutual, but then they get bought out by bigger banks, like Chase.  Chase has not been as bad as Bank of America for me, so I've decided to stick with them.  It's cool to have your bank in lots of places while traveling. 
     I thought about a couple credit unions in my area, but they both close at 5pm on Fridays and are not open on weekends.  They are also far from where I work, so it would be hard to get there during lunch hour.  If one of them were open just a few hours on Saturday, I would probably go for a credit union.  But it's just too inconvenient.  Chase stays open until 6pm, so it's easy to drop by after work, and they are open on Saturdays.
     The thing I hate about Chase is that my Savings was free until it dropped below $500 (I think), now there is a monthly fee, even though I've had over $500 for a long time now.  When I ask how to get back to free savings, they try to steer me to automatic transfers to activate fee-less savings.  I can't get a straight yes or no out of them if there is any other way.  They are like stepford wives, programmed to only talk about automatic transfers.  Do they get fired if they say a simple "yes" or "no"?  Is that really so difficult?

I'm with BofA simply because they have branches everywhere. I was in a situation where I needed to deposit checks in six wildly separated cities.

Clearly you have never had to deposit a check with them while in Colorado ... they don't have a single branch in Colorado.

And, in theory, credit unions let you "think global, bank local" to keep your money circulating in the local economy from the credit unions' auto and home loans.

Advertising, brand recognition, mind share, whatever you want to call it. People buy what they know.

I switched to a credit union after the recent banking scandals, and I couldn't be happier.

They tend to buy local banks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com