Do you trust your credit union?
Written: Dec 11 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: good rates ... over all decent credit union
Cons: my personal experience
|
|
|
| scully3249's Full Review: JAX Navy Credit Union |
I guess as far as banks and credit unions go they are all pretty similar. At least this is true for the banks and credit unions I have used. Longs lines on Fridays, ATM machines down from time to time, and those little changes they sometimes implement but we never seem to find out until we are at the bank window. However it is how the financial institutions deal with the “big” problems that can occur that really define what kind of business they are.
My husband and I have been banking with Jax Navy Federal Credit Union since 1995. This credit union is located in the Jacksonville Florida area. Their every day service has been good it is how they dealt with the “big problems” that has made us less than happy with their service.
In May of 1999 my husband and I moved to Pensacola Florida and we decided that we wanted to keep our account with Jax Navy Federal Credit Union. We had direct deposit with them, we had a loan, and we just felt that since we would be moving within 10 months of arriving in Pensacola it would be more of a hassle to open up a new account with a new bank. Everything was running smoothly until one day I noticed a charge on my account that I didn’t recognize.
I called up the bank and spent at least 15 minutes on the phone with them trying to figure out where this charge came from. They were finally able to give me a phone number to the Internet company that collected this amount. After contacting this company I knew that my account had been accessed without my authorization. The number on my Debit/VISA card had been used to make this purchase. So I called back the bank and they told me to talk to my husband to make sure he did not make this purchase. After talking to my husband I was able to determine that he did not make this purchase. So we called back the bank and proceeded to cancel our Debit/VISA card. Now Jax Navy could not do this so we had to call VISA and do it through VISA.
Once we had canceled everything we began proceedings to challenge this charge on our account. We were told that it would take seven days to have this challenge reviewed and that within 10 days we would have our money back. We thought that everything was getting back to normal that our account was secure again. We were wrong.
Four days later another charge was on our account and it came from the very card that we had canceled. Horrified we called the bank. We then learned that this was not an Internet purchase; this was a purchase in London England in an actual store.
How could the credit union let a charge go through on a canceled card? Again we challenged the purchase and were told that it would take seven days for the challenge to go through and ten days for us to get our money back. So we waited.
About 8 days after we filed our initial challenge we called the bank to check the status of the challenge. The account representative we spoke too pulled up our account and had no record of the challenge we wanted to file. So we filled a challenge again on both charges. This time we were told that the credit union would have to have us sign an affidavit stating that we had not made those purchases. Since we did not live in the Jacksonville area and there were no branches in the Pensacola area they would have to mail us the affidavit and we would have to send it back before they could start any proceedings. Irritated by this point, we agreed and we had hoped that this ordeal would soon be over.
About a week passed and we still hadn’t received the affidavit so we called back the credit union only to find out that the affidavit was never mailed to us. By this point we were at our wits end. So my husband demanded to speak to the bank manager. After speaking to the bank manager we felt a little better because we felt that she would help us out and that things would start to work out. We finally got the affidavit and we sent it back. We waited about a week and then called them. After getting conformation that they had received the affidavit we decided that we would call once a day to find out the status of our challenge.
After about two weeks of daily phone calls we finally told them that we were going to look into legal action. Less than a minute after we told them we were going to seek legal advise we finally were able to get the money back that had been taken wrongly out of our account. It took us about three months to get what had been taken out of our account.
Up until this ordeal with Jax Navy we were very happy with their service. They were always extremely helpful and competent. It has now been over a year and we still bank with them and we have not had any more problems. However next month after making our final loan payment to them, we will be carefully considering taking our business elsewhere. It isn’t that we are unhappy with them but we don’t have the security we once had with them. I can’t offer you advise whether or not to bank with them because they have been a wonderful credit union to many people. Just take my experience and make your own judgment. Every company has its downfalls and they all make mistakes from time to time but when their business is your money you have to always make sure that they are doing their job correctly.
We never did find out how our debit card number was stolen. We don’t buy things over the net or the phone so it is something that we will always wonder about.
Over all Jax Navy Federal Credit Union is a good credit union.
If you decide to bank with them, as with any bank or credit union, always stay up to date with your account. If we hadn’t been so watchful over our account, we never would have noticed the unauthorized charges.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
scully3249
|
|
Location: Virginia Beach, Va
Reviews written: 22
Trusted by: 12 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.