I can’t see me loving nobody but you…
This is about Vancity.
Recap: I joined Vancity last August after RBC screwed me over, putting a 250 day lock on my account for no good reason and NOT TELLING ME or removing it until I screamed and yelled til I was blue in the face. (Recap-recap: The gov’t had deposited a bunch of money for no reason. Then when they went to take it out, there wasn’t enough cash in the account. Within a few days, I’d reshuffled and put everything back so they could withdraw it. It took me THREE MORE WEEKS and daily phonecalls before I had access to my bank account again. Granted, the gov’t was partially to blame for this, but RBC’s part annoyed me enough that I’m ditching them.)
Anyway, at the time, I posted an “I like Vancity” post. To my surprise, Phelan, the bank manager I’d met earlier that day posted a welcome to my blog. I was impressed, because hey, here’s a company that recognizes that social media is important. Good on them.
I was pleased this morning while digging through my referrer logs to find a blog post by William Azaroff, Vancity’s Online Banking & Engagement Director, about the importance of monitoring your brand health, using Phelan’s response to my post as one of his examples — that is, keeping an eye on the various social media routes that most people use (blogs, twitter, facebook, etc) and letting people know that they’re being heard.
We bloggers are a noisy bunch, after all.
But it really drove home a point: Vancity gets it. And I love that. I’m still proud to be a Vancity member, and haven’t had a lick of trouble with them so far. It’s great to know that if I DID have a problem, they’d listen. Maybe it wouldn’t necessarily get the result that I’m looking for — can’t please everybody all the time — but I can’t imagine spending nearly as much time trying to get Vancity to tell me what’s going on with my account as I did with RBC, and that sort of peace of mind is priceless when it comes to your cash.
I’m not their biggest customer by any stretch. Heck, I may well be one of their smallest. And who knows, I could be wrong, maybe they’d be horrible to deal with if I had any real problems. But I doubt it — and hey, if they were, I could always blog about it…
But yeah. Good job, Vancity.
Nice! I’m thinking about switching to Vancity too (ever since I saw they were a sponsor of Happy Tranny Day – organizations willing to promote LGBTQ groups make me happy, and that goes double when it’s trans groups who face a carpload of discrimination as is), but need to sit down with them and find out the whys and wherefores of switching my LOC as well – was your switch a relatively painfree experience?
Also, did you lose that handy-dandy internet money transfer capability? That’s the biggest reason for my hesitation.
Yep, biggest downside is the lack of email interac money transfer.
I’ve still got my RBC account, due to my overdraft there (need to pay it off before I switch, hah) and my immediate deposits. However, I’m coming up on 6 months with Vancity, so I’ll be getting in touch with them soon to say “Ok, do you trust me?” and getting them to give me cash back immediately without waiting for my cheques to clear.
They DO auto-approve my paycheques, but only if I deposit them at the teller. I’m not much of a teller person… so I usually just deposit my paycheques into my RBC account, withdraw cash and deposit cash. It’s accessible within a day or so, so that works fine for now.
Once I can have immediate deposits, I’ll get that pesky overdraft paid off, and then switch to Vancity completely. Interac money transfers will be missed, but whatever, I pay my rent in cash
and blowjobsanyway.I occasionally use e-mail Interac money transfers from my “bank” account, but from my credit union accounts, I have used their Hyperwallet system (which seems to effectively do the same) – have you looked at it yet?
https://www.vancity.com/MyMoney/OnlineBanking/HyperWallet/
Hyperwallet transfers take a few days anyway. That’s what I liked about interac money transfers — instant access. I’d rather just hit up the ATM, it’s more convenient — there’s a Royal Bank and a Vancity across the street from each other on my way home from work. I have the deposit my paycheque there anyway, so it’s no big deal to just cross the road and deposit some cash.
Like I said, I haven’t actually NEEDED interac money transfers since I switched, but I used to use them a lot.
Hi Donna,
I can’t agree more. I’ve been a long-time member and love Vancity so much, I’m actually running to serve on the Board of Directors.
You can see what I’ll do if I’m elected at http://www.voteaction.ca/maffin
Hi Donna. Great reading this post and the comments that followed.
Just so you know, I’m working on Interact Email Money Transfers. We need to get some systems in place – as you can imagine, it’s not a quick fix. In the meantime, as Ivan mentioned, we do have HyperWallet.
Have a great weekend!
Vancity might listen if they screw up, but then again, maybe not. I’ve been a Vancity customer since I was 13 or so, and there have been many good things about them over the years.
On the other hand, they annoyed me six different times in significant ways. You left RBC after one big annoyance. I stayed at Vancity, but gave up on being heard or getting changes there. I keep a few bucks in my Vancity account, but now I bank elsewhere. And when I bought a house, I didn’t even *think* of going to Vancity for a mortgage.
I hope Vancity will work well for you. I did love them back when they worked well for me.
Well, no. I left RBC after years of being mildly annoyed, but not so much that I’d be willing to cancel. Locking me out of my bank account for 3 weeks for something that wasn’t my fault was just the final straw.
So let’s understand this, the government deposited a large amount of funds in your account by mistake, so YOU gobbled it up as fast as you can. When the government tried to take back what is rightfully theirs, they noticed you took the cash. And somehow, RBC is to blame. So where did the money go? Did you pay down some debt? Take it out in cash to see if they notice? Oh, by the way, did you know that hold was probably put on by the government, and cannot be removed until they say so? As in, out of RBC’s hands.
However, there is no reason why they didn’t tell you what was going on until you had a fit. But nonetheless, you know what you did, and it was wrong.
Wow, old post. But what the hell.
cb: If you’d read any of the previous posts on this, you would know that the money was in my account for over 3 weeks. I tried everything I could to track it down, including getting a friend who works for Revenue Canada to try to find out where it came from. I had shuffled most of it to my savings account. I live paycheque to paycheque — having an extra $1500 in my chequing account is fucked up, and not something I’m used to. I wanted to make sure I *didn’t* accidentally spend it.
All I wanted was some notification. If the government had put the hold on it — and I’m sure they did — RBC still could have said “Hey, can you look at this?” instead of me finding unexpectedly that my bank account was frozen leaving me scrambling. And quite frankly, freezing my main chequing account for *eight months* without a single word from ANYONE without me having to spend hours on the phone trying to track it down EVERY DAY for over THREE WEEKS is a little excessive. I don’t care who’s at fault, the fact that my bank couldn’t help me get access to my account back means they’re not good enough for me.
Yes, I made a mistake by not having it in my main chequing amount — but seriously, after it had sat there for almost a month without being able to figure out where it came from, I was a bit nervous. No, I didn’t spend it, it was still in the same bank, just in a different account. As soon as I knew they were trying to get it back, the money was back in the account — and nobody could tell me how to get them to take it again.
Seriously, THREE WEEKS. You try living for 3 weeks without access to your chequing account and *no* assistance with how to get it fixed and tell me how happy you are to stay. I don’t blame them for the lock on my account, I blame them for being completely useless in helping me get it back.
For the record: I’ve been with VanCity for 2 years now, and I love them. :)