Penfed Website

[smallfry]

Not much of an upgrade in my opinion. In addition they are incredibly slow to lower available credit after credit card usage. Like two days. Forget the fact they have fallen far behind NFCU in that they do not post pending charges at all. Not impressed.

[pattycake]

They took a couple of days to post my pending charges, but my first biling cycle was pretty long - 31 days! 

[Lyythine]

My thoughts on PenFed:

Online Banking - its a glorified version of a check register, like my grandmother used to do:  Enter transactions at the end of the week and hope for the best

ACH transfers - I could send my money BY STAGECOACH to another bank and it would get there faster

Online BillPay - haha... thats all i have for that

Customer Service - If you call, you will feel like you are sitting at Christmas dinner with your in-laws (as in... you are a bother)

Credit Limits / Increases - Check your magic 8-ball first, probably will have a better estimate on what you might ge

thats all I have for now, I might PenFed bash a bit more in awhile...

Love,

A disgruntled PenFed member

P.S. NFCU rocks! 

[Anonymous]

I don't have problems with the site or PenFed. The site works for me and PenFed has been good to me.

[haulingthescoreup]

lol at the stagecoach reference!

It works for me fine, but all I use them for is the CC and car loan. Oh, and the LOC, which is untouched. But I don't use the banking (checking and savings) end at all.

They are definitely one of the tougher cards to play the $0-reporting game, due to the slow posting of charges (and of payments,) but it usually works out because of the rebate credited back at statement time.

While the website is still kind of lame, it's light-years ahead of where it used to be. The former version didn't show the current balance on your CC when you went to pay, so I'd have to sit there chanting "$487.19, $487.19" over and over while navigating over to the transfer-in page, just so that I could remember how much I was paying.

I thought that when I'd get the card, I'd only use it for gas and grocs, but now that the rewards have plummeted on my other cards, that 1.25% for everything else is looking pretty good, too.

And I swear, consumers must be routed to different call centers depending on where we live! I've always have very friendly and helpful CSR's. This doesn't mean that this is true for all, obviously --look at all the posts to the contrary.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, the website is primitive - vintage 1997. Perhaps PenFed doesn't want to invest too much money until they're certain that the Web isn't just another passing fad, like CB radio in the 70s.

But I do like that PenFed supports downloads of current transactions into Quicken. BofA only offers statement downloads, while Alliant doesn't support Quicken at all for its card (although they do for their savings & checking accounts). Until they do, I won't use my Alliant Visa, which is a waste of a perfectly good $10K line of credit.

[Jazzzy]

---

@haulingthescoreup wrote:
lol at the stagecoach reference!

It works for me fine, but all I use them for is the CC and car loan. Oh, and the LOC, which is untouched. But I don't use the banking (checking and savings) end at all.

They are definitely one of the tougher cards to play the $0-reporting game, due to the slow posting of charges (and of payments,) but it usually works out because of the rebate credited back at statement time.

While the website is still kind of lame, it's light-years ahead of where it used to be. The former version didn't show the current balance on your CC when you went to pay, so I'd have to sit there chanting "$487.19, $487.19" over and over while navigating over to the transfer-in page, just so that I could remember how much I was paying.

I thought that when I'd get the card, I'd only use it for gas and grocs, but now that the rewards have plummeted on my other cards, that 1.25% for everything else is looking pretty good, too.

And I swear, consumers must be routed to different call centers depending on where we live! I've always have very friendly and helpful CSR's. This doesn't mean that this is true for all, obviously --look at all the posts to the contrary.

---

On payment crediting....I normally pay my cc's online 2 days before statement cut. (I'm still trying to learn how many cc companies handle weekend payments.) If my PenFed statement is due to cut on 9-24, how far out should I pay to try to zero it? This will be my first time around.

As for customer service, I've found them to be very friendly. One CSR was very chatty. My husband and I applied for a joint CC. When she asked me his birthday and saw that it was 12 years later than mine, she called me a "cougar." I had no idea what she meant...until I asked my daughter. What a heck of a thing for a CSR to say to someone.

[Anonymous]

I deposit my payments into my checking account and then transfer the payment from checking to credit card. Payments have been consistently posted to the CC by the next day for many months now when I go about it this way. I did this as recently as yesterday and will take care of the remaining $100 today, the last day of the billing cycle. It should zero the account w/o problem.

Since I have passed the six month account anniversary all checks I have deposited into my checking account have been instantly available. I deposited a $1,400 personal check into a CU24 ATM last Friday and when I got back home it was available in full and transferred to my MMA. I'm sure there are limits to this, but I haven't hit it yet.

[Anonymous]

Meanwhile I really don't understand the complaining. PenFed is a CU, not a national bank. The new website is vastly improved from its predecessor. PenFed is one of the most automated CU's out there - they render almost all credit decisions within 24 hours, many of them instantly. (It takes Chase weeks to act on many CC app's!) The website is decent, the service is great and the credit products very good to great. This is a high quality operation.

I you want to see a very mediocre website you should try EFFCU, my local CU in FL. At one time in the 80's they were the seventh largest CU in the US. You would never know it from the clunky website! Even so, I can still get done what I need to get done. CU's are member owned operations so I suppose I should be happy that they have not paid out millions of dollars for website development if there were better ways to return value to the members.

[Lyythine]

Im a member of oh... 6 or 7 credit unions (only 3 of which I really use)  and Penfed - to me, is worse than my local CU which has 3 branches...

I respect your opinion creditwherecreditisdue, however, in my humble opinion - they suck.

Love,

Your local disgruntled PenFed member