You’ve no doubt heard about the American sub-prime mortgage crisis, its impact on the American and global economies, and the dreary outlook for 2008. I’m certainly not the sharpest tack on the cork board when it comes to global finance, so I didn’t have a particularly cogent picture of the crisis.
I do now, thanks to an excellent BBC documentary that explains the situation using California’s hardest hit town as an example. From an accompanying article:
“People went to the bank and got a loan on the increase in the price of their home. They went out and spent all that money,” he explains. “Price of the home went up again, they went back to the bank and got another loan. They went out again and spent that money on cars and jewellery and furniture - whatever they wanted.”
With the help of the banks, Mr Carrigan says, people in Stockton “spent their house”.
It’s not the most fascinating subject in the world, but it’s having an impact on markets in every corner of the globe.
You know, Vancity does a lot of great things. ChangeEverything is cool, as is their new climate change mortgage, and they have a ton of admirable local initiatives.
It was because of that good reputation, both as a bank and a community member, that we switched our business accounts from the Royal Bank to Vancity last year. The Royal Bank had given us incompetent, impersonal service, so it was a pleasure to take our money elsewhere (they likewise continue to treat us poorly for our personal accounts).
You know what? Vancity is no better. They’re possibly even worse.
I already described the serious error they made last August, as well as their confusing mail piece (a trivial complaint, but reflective of their customer service).
Since then, Vancity has made two more mistakes on basic activities within our account. I’m not manufacturing imaginary missteps. I have emails from my account manager admitting they made errors in issuing incorrect cheques and cashing cheques from the wrong account.
I don’t care how frickin’ green or community-oriented this credit union is. I don’t pay banking fees for ineptitude.
I’m out of patience and goodwill. That’s three errors in six months, in our first year with a new bank. If we performed like this at Capulet, all of our clients would fire us.
If I wasn’t leaving the country in four weeks, I’d put the immediate boot to Vancity. Instead, I’ll leave that onerous task for our return.
On a related matter, why aren’t these community-minded people monitoring the Web? This is my third post dissing their organization, and nobody from Vancity has responded, publicly or privately.
UPDATE: Over on the nicely-designed Open Source Credit Union, Trey has written a post about my customer experience.
UPDATE #2: Another post about my Vancity angst over at Bankwatch.
