Credit unions are not all that for me. I’ve been member of two credit unions in two states for 20 years and 10 years. When I applied for a house loan 3 years ago at my local credit union, they wouldnt approve much more than an OLD 2 bedroom shack in a bad neighborhood and they wouldnt budge. My salary at the time was well over 35K. The loan I ended up getting was from a small broker for a new 2bdr in a new neighborhood for 15K more. The reason I qualified for more is because the broker took alot of time with me and found there were stupid things killing my score and in my interview determined I’m not a big risk. Compare that to countrywide on the other extreme who wanted to give me a loan for about 30K more (4bdr home) which I declined. My second credit union boosted my credit card interest rate to 23% after i missed one payment. It was the only payment I ever was late for for 6 years (i also had two NEW car loans with them paid off in total, never late). I’ve tried to negotiate with them to take it off, but to no avail, and its STILL killing my credit score. After several years of this, i finally managed to get the interest down on that remaining balance to 7.99% ($800) but my purchase interest is still 23%. I’ll never use that card again.

My new mantra is Credit Unions. I will be putting most of my banking back with them and see if I can get some card balances transfered.

Within one month of rejecting a blanket increase in interest rates and balance transfer front end fees, B of A advised that they are cutting the credit limit on the card to a couple of hundred over the balance outstanding. This is from a balance transfer done in February with promotional interest rate supposedly good until December 2009. B of A is the only bank I have dealt with which refuses to issue a letter confirming details verbally agreed to on a balance transfer!!!!!

Bank of America through its Investment Securities unit is the company which received the after-tax proceeds of a friend’s elderly mother sale of her long time home. She stated that she wanted the money to be invested in something safe that would be available in a few months when the condominium she had put a deposit on would be finished.

The BofA Investment Securities nice person put all of her money into auction rate securities of a Missouri student loan entity.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the commission on ARS’ is some five times that of treasury notes. This 75 year old woman is virtually without a clue on business or finance of any kind.
Her funds were not available to her for some seven months, while she spent sleepless nights worrying that B of A was just another Bernie Madoff, who was filling the papers from his not being able to return investors’ savings.

This $1.1 million represented a lifetime of savings for a widow.

If you deal with Bank of America, watch your back…