Complaint Review: Coast Hills Federal Credit Union

I have no problem with financial institutions levying disclosed fees to make a profit.  Once upon a time, however, banks and credit unions used to compete for your business and pay the consumer to hold their accounts. Consumers should be held responsible for their spending and money-management habits.  We all hear about banks and credit unions who charge too many ISF fees, and ultimately the culpability lies with consumer irresponsibility, right?  But what if that consumer wants to pay fees for a particular service, that is routinely being denied them just to accrue those fees but save the company money and effort from ever having to approve those services?

Coast Hills Federal Credit Union of Lompoc, CA., Santa Barbara County, belongs to a great little group of reliable, honourable credit unions that I've enjoyed banking with, such as Kinecta and Pacific Marine.  Coast Hills, however, does something very sneaky: they allow you to opt-in for courtesy pay, which involves only check/ACH transactions - NOT credit card/debit purchases - up to $300 a month, at their discretion, and charges an additional $29 ISF fee for each approved transaction.  Sounds responsible so far.

The catch is, once you opt in - regardless whether you have a history of repaying all your transactions and fees in a timely manner - only the first two transactions are approved, within an entire year.  Beyond that, even in a following year, they decline each transaction while you're opted into courtesy pay, and continue charging ISF fees of $29 each time they just look at your check/ACH.  The transactions are never approved again, which saves Coast Hills massive amounts of money in declined services because they never have to cover your check (even one's as little as $10).  Meanwhile, the ISF fees accumulate as though you never opted into courtesy pay.

When I bank with Navy Federal Credit Union, they approve all transactions under the $300 monthly limit if you opt in, and an additional $25 per transaction for being insufficient.  Of course, you still need to be responsible enough to cover all your tranactions within 30 days, but this is a more realistic option, particularly for military families struggling between paychecks but who can eventually cover those fees on the 1st of 15th of each month.

I will never bank with Coast Hills Federal Credit Union again.  I was happy with them at first and delighted to pay any fees I incurred, because they lived up to the services they provided.  I will, however, continue to bank exclusively with USAA and Navy Federal, and pursue all loans and additional financial services/ investments through them.  Again, there are other reputable share branches within the Coast Hills union, such as (((competitors' names redacted))), and I would still recommend those to civilians.  CHFCU's practices are unique to their management, only.

Thank you.

sorry, allowing you to give a competitors name would instigate others to just file against their competition, to only come back later to suggest their company, ..plus, if you post a competitors name more than likely they will show up on search engines as a Rip-off! - - your comments on this policy are welcome. CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report. In this case we removed an alleged competitors name