Arizona State Credit Union (updated)

This may be a “news post” of some kind, but it’s of a specialized interest. I’d call it a caveat. In other words: Beware!

One of my sisters recently had a problem with Arizona State Credit Union. It was disappointing to hear about, especially considering my own good experience with University of Wisconsin Credit Union.

This is what happened, briefly. They charged her a total of between $200-300 dollars, claiming that she made some accounting mistake. It would be easy to do that, if you miss one deposit and have a whole raft of withdrawals that cut your balance close enough.

Anyway, she wasn’t convinced and checked their math. It was wrong. She went and explained it all, complete with paper documentation. Their explanation? The critical deposit in question, which made all the difference — they had put a “hold” on the deposit, so it wasn’t registered in the proper time frame. This, they said, wasn’t their fault.

Problem was, it was a cash deposit. As she told them, since when does anyone put a hold on a cash deposit? Something is rotten in the county of Maricopa. When asked what the next lame excuse would be, they simply said they didn’t really know what happened. And it still wasn’t their fault.

Now, an unjustified charge of $200-300 dollars would irritate me sorely. It’s what we call theft. Go ahead and look it up in your catechism. You’ll find it under the seventh commandment, unless you’re in a Reformed church. Then it’s probably the eighth. That’s not the sort of practice I look for in my financial institution. Even to contemplate doing this would be wrong — see the Ninth (aka Tenth) Commandment.

Will there be justice? I think we all begin to accept these situations after a while. Most of us are not really in a position to set things right. That’s why Solomon was appreciated: he was a just king. But for anyone in such a position to set things right, to turn a blind eye is to participate in the injustice. The Day is coming when those accounts will be settled forever.


Update on 5/13

The excuse about a hold on the critical deposit amounted to an uninformed guess from the customer service representative. That’s less than impressive by itself, but not necessarily malicious. I’ll take one of my “bad marks” away from ASCU. But they still keep a whole pile of other bad marks, since they have no explanation for their charges, and no willingness to acknowledge that their customer with supporting documentation could be right, after all.

One thought on “Arizona State Credit Union (updated)

  1. It is illegal to place holds on cash deposits! Have your sister call up the Credit Union and speak to someone in senior management. Let them know that they are in violation of Regulation CC and that you want them to reverse the charges immediately. If they complain, let them know that you’ll be submitting the documentation in a formal complaint to the CU’s regulator (who in this case is the Arizona Department of Financial Institutions) [http://azdfi.gov/].

    As soon as your sister get’s her money back, she should immediately close the account with these thieves!

    *[J.J.: Thanks greatly for the tip!]*

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