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Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

I will say it 1000 times. Everyone should have an account with a local community credit union as your primary daily expense account

If you are living paycheck to paycheck this is doubly true. Never trust your ability to buy food to a commercial bank

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Honestly I think these days credit unions are way overrated. The true small independent ones that look out for their members are a rarity, and non-existent in many areas. They've merged, or shifted strategies, and most of them are driving for higher profits the same way that the major banks are. But the difference is that they usually have way worse technology, and fewer branches, so you get the inconvenience of an old school credit union without the benefits. It's often the worst of both worlds. I do still have a credit union account, but I think people need to be really careful about just jumping to a CU and expecting it to be great. You have to do your research and try to find one that is actually still decent, if that even exists in your location.

I feel sorry for your community

Around here community credit unions are still plentiful.

I am still a member of a credit union not in my current community as a moved away, but I use the services of the local credit union like it was own, the credit union here services about just this metro area, and the credit union that holds my account services just the former metro area I used to live in

I did have a auto loan shortly with one of the large nationwide credit unions but I did not have the loan long so i can say if they were good or bad.

I also have accounts with banks like including those on the "technical edge" of financial system, I find the technology stack of my local credit union to be on par with those more "technical" banks for banking services. Now some of banks also have non-banking services like Wealth management, investing, crypto, etc that my credit union does not have but I dont expect that from a credit union, nor would i want them to expand into that.

I have experienced this in three states, so it's not limited to a single community, but I'm glad to hear that it can be better in some places.

Yeah, people are quick to recommend credit unions but they are not always the godsend commentors claim they are.

Most of the credit unions participate in shared branching, so you can usually do business anywhere with credit unions (which is most places). Pandemic banking was sketchy where I live though. When I needed a cashier's check during the pandemic, I was more or less forced into opening a local account, but the local credit unions and banks don't have competitive interest with the credit union from where I used to live (which is still behind internet banks)

It’s not that they are great, just that they aren’t actively awful. Regulatory changes make most of the “help a buddy out” stuff harder to do.

In my area for normal mortgages they are also consistently cheapest. If you travel internationally, are high net worth, or routinely need access to a lot of cash in different cities, you don’t need a big commercial bank.

People should extend this to tech; I don't understand why anyone would e.g. use Google for a business email account. Who do you call and yell at when something breaks?
Pay a smaller company for this.

Don't actually yell of course, in my case you beg for forgiveness and get pleasantly surprised, like the time when my dad accidentally deleted LITERALLY ALL OF HIS LAW FIRM EMAIL, and I had no idea what I could do. Provider was able to roll back the server a day for a whopping 15 bucks.

Is there some report that confirms the higher availability of local credit unions on average?

The smaller the credit union the more likely you can get it resolved during the next business day - mine is small enough that I'm often served by the bank manager just because she's the one on duty - and the main office is only a few miles away.

When you can personally talk to someone who has basically "full control" lots of issues can go away quickly.

Though I've personally never had an issue.

I’m not sure how this is better than WF. The article says they resolved the issue by noon that day, which is pretty fast I would think.

Sure, that's the impression. But does it actually hold up in practice for everyone, beyond anecdata?

I do this. The biggest drawback for me with this is that many online services are using plaid or equivalent for setting up payments and my local credit union isn’t on their radar. I can do it, eventually, but you have to find the screen that allows the small transfer verification method, which takes days to set up. A lesser drawback is that there are other virtual checking accounts that pay almost 5% interest and that means that the cost of having a credit union account can be bigger than expected. We have just $7000 in one of those virtual checking accounts and it paid over $20 last month. I say this as lesser because it’s always possible to move money from checking into investments, it’s just much easier when it happens without any friction.

I would trust a bigger bank more than I would a smaller bank, simply because the former has more money (or should, anyway...).

Really though, the moral here is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Keep another checking and/or savings account at another bank, big or small, with ample funds so your finances are redundant in the face of freak incidents.

And if you are really paranoid or just have bad luck with these things, keeping some physical cash at home for true emergencies certainly wouldn't hurt.

> I would trust a bigger bank more than I would a smaller bank

I never understood this concept. Would you trust Amazon and Google more than a smaller provider? I trust big companies to still exist for the foreseeable future, but I don’t trust them to serve me, personally; they are known for disabling individual accounts for little or no reason and providing no recourse.

The bigger the company, the less incentive they have to keep any individual customer.

That’s what I enjoy about a local credit union. In a worst case scenario there is a building local to me with folks personally invested in solving my problem.

Credit unions are not "a smaller bank"; they work differently, they are regulated and insured differently, they are closely connected to the local community, and these are more than superficial differences.

Credit unions are smaller businesses than some banks, so they may have fewer branches, less sophisticated mobile apps, etc. but it's nice to walk into your home branch where everybody knows your name, like in that TV show about a bar.

On the flip side, I've literally never walked into a branch of any bank I've ever actually banked at. The only times I've ever walked into a bank was to make large cash withdrawals that most ATMs wouldn't honor, but those were never at a bank I actually had an account with. And those times it was just a large debit card transaction, zero fees.

Going to an actual, physical bank location just seems archaic to me. It's about as dated as going to a Blockbuster to rent a movie. Outside of maybe some big business loan negotiations I can't imagine needing an actual person to really talk to for basic banking needs. What banking task would be better handled taking time to travel to the bank, wait in line, talk to a person who may or may not remember you, and have them do it as opposed to just doing it yourself on your computer anytime anywhere anyplace?

Note, I'm not talking about investing, as there can often be a lot of questions about how specific investment products actually work. I'm only talking basic banking like checking, savings, CDs, credit cards, and auto/home/personal loans. I don't do any real complex investing at places where I do my banking.

Banks offer Notary Public services. Sometimes I like to pick up a few rolls of quarters. Safe deposit boxes (are also being phased out.) Bottle of water when I'm in the neighborhood. Cashier's check or money order purchases. I believe it was necessary for them to see me in person to open a Certificate of Deposit. YMMV.

Yes, branches are becoming less important.

First and foremost never consider a credit union a "smaller bank" the rules and regulations around credit unions are very very different than commercial banks the biggest being they are coop's i.e member owned, and non-profit.

second yes a large bank like JP Morgan Chase has most assets, and is "to big a fail" so institutional collapse is impossible, however they also are soo big that your individual account means nothing to them and they have no incentive to provide any customer service at all, which results in a numbers of horror stories where accounts are locked, cancelled, frozen for months or even years with people unable to access funds or at the mercy of the large institution for when or if they will ever get their money back. Where the local branch you go to has zero power or authority to help you, or even access any real info about your account, and to get any info it is a exercise in calling 100's of different helpdesks...

Sorry I will take a Local Credit union 100x, secure knowing that even if the institution were to collapse and credit union have a very very small collapse rate compared to commercial banks, my deposits are fully insured anyway so my money is safe, and I get 1000000000% better customer service.

>First and foremost never consider a credit union a "smaller bank" the rules and regulations around credit unions are very very different than commercial banks the biggest being they are coop's i.e member owned, and non-profit.

My concern as a common man is whether I can trust a bank (or credit union) to keep my money more safe and accessible than I can myself. I don't care what their internals look like, they're all banks of varying sizes and reputations as far as I'm concerned.

>however they also are soo big that your individual account means nothing to them and they have no incentive to provide any customer service at all

I bank primarily with US Bank, and their customer support has been nothing short of exemplary both in-person at the local branch and over the phone. That exemplary service combined with their size means I will continue to bank with them for the forseeable future.

I will add, for context, that I live out in the countryside where all business matters become more personal as a matter of practical reality. Most of the bankers working at the branch all live locally, after all. This is irrelevant for the customer support folks on the phone, of course, which as I just said are exemplary nonetheless.

The people highlighted in this article are living paycheck to paycheck, they do not have enough eggs to necessitate multiple baskets.

The issue here is that once again a shitty mega-bank has prevented them from accessing the little money they do have at a time where they need it. The amounts here are literally a pittance to these institutions, and they _could_ make these people whole immediately with little to no impact on their bottom line, but their systems and bureaucracy are so bloated and inefficient that it takes days to weeks to fix it.

For people like you and me, that is frustrating and inconvenient and worthy of a twitter rant, but ultimately not a big deal. For the vulnerable in our society, this is potentially life altering, and it is mind boggling that these institutions can continue to get away with treating people like this with practically zero consequences.

Is there evidence that a CU is less likely to have technical issues?

They are a lot more likely to not fuck you over if they do. The big bank will have customer service stonewall you until you threaten to sue them enough times.

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