I know a girl who recently had her car repossessed by her financial institution.  She got behind on the payments and because of extenuating circumstances mostly beyond her control she was never able to communicate with her credit union about the delinquent loan in order to keep it from being repossessed.  They took her truck and sent her a notice letting her know she had 10 days to pay the delinquent payment amount plus a repossession fee in order to get her truck back.

The problem?  The notice was sent to an address that she does not reside at.  She never got the notice and when she was able to get hold of her credit union it was 8 days into this 10 day period.  Naturally with this short of notice she had difficulties putting together the cash that was needed in order to try to save her car and by extension – her credit.

By day 10 she had pulled together about 1/4 of the cash that was needed, but nonetheless took it in to a sister credit union to pay towards the loan.  On day 11 she took the remainder of the cash that she needed back to this other credit union hoping that her credit union would make a one-day exception to the 10 day rule.  They didn’t.  They didn’t care that she had the cash, that her credit would be ruined, that she would not have a car and most of all they didn’t seem to care that they would be losing well over $10,000 dollars on the deal.  With an $18,000 payoff on a truck worth only about $6,000 that would go to auction and probably sell for around $4,000 they were putting salt in their wounds by not accepting the cash.

This poor girl, as I hear, went home absolutely devastated.  Of course rules are rules, right?  Sure.  I agree.  Also banks and credit unions aren’t in the business of charity.  They’re in the business of making money.  But when it comes to credit unions they stand behind a philosophy of member service and putting those members’ needs first.  Don’t believe me?  This is on her credit union’s about page.

…These reasons explain how we adopt the “people helping people” philosophy of credit unions. When making decisions, we put members’ needs first. It’s just the way we do business.

You won’t often find me badmouthing a credit union, but I may just do that today.  Here they profess to put members’ needs first and yet they refuse to bend a policy in order to help one of their members.  In fact not only would it be helping their member, but it would help their bottom line as well.  Writing off losses is not fun, no matter the amount.  They were downright rude to this girl and also the credit union representative who was calling them on her behalf.  Not a very good way to run a business, let alone a credit union.  The culprit?  Mountain America Credit Union which is based in Utah.  Check out the site, but don’t sign up to do business with them.  At least if I lived in Utah I wouldn’t.  Not after hearing about this horror story.