DCU, opinions?

[CashBackQueen]

Hi FICO fam! Is it worth joining DCU? I'm already a member of NFCU, but I hear DCU has the best savings rates and I'm looking for a secondary savings account like that. What do you like or dislike about this bank and it's products?

[AllZero]

6.17% APY on savings up to $1000.

Free EQ5 score.

I read they have good auto loans too.

Open membership. Anyone can join.

Soft pull inquiry for membership.

[CashBackQueen]

Thanks for the quick reply AllZero. Have you had any problems with them being an online only bank? They don't have branches, right?

[AllZero]

I haven't looked for any branches. I do not know. All my transactions have been online.

No problems besides figuring out where they placed the "external transfer" feature.

[Anonymous]

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@CashBackQueen wrote:
Thanks for the quick reply AllZero. Have you had any problems with them being an online only bank? They don't have branches, right?

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DCU absolutely has branches, but depending on where you live DCU might effectively be an online only bank for you.

Given its roots as the credit union for Digital Equipment, DCU has branches in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

As with most banks and credit unions, underwriting will be less lenient than Navy’s.

[toothgrind3r]

As far as I know, they participate in the co-op shared branches.

[iced]

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@CashBackQueen wrote:
Hi FICO fam! Is it worth joining DCU? I'm already a member of NFCU, but I hear DCU has the best savings rates and I'm looking for a secondary savings account like that. What do you like or dislike about this bank and it's products?

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Likes:

- There's a DCU branch about a 30 minute drive away from me, so for that rare, rare occasion when I need to do in-branch services like coin deposit, I can.

- ATM fee reimbursement on checking.

- Mortgage pre-approvals are among the simplest/fastest I've experienced among banks.

Dislikes:

- Their saving interest rates suck after the first $1,000, meaning I'm siphoning off any extra every 6 months or so and adding it to one of my other deposits into Barclays. They either need to raise their standard savings rates considerably or raise the $1,000 cap to something mildly useful, like $25,000.

- Interest rates on loans aren't great. Not bad, but not great.

- Their mobile app is mediocre. It's useful for monitoring account balances and transferring money between savings and checking, but it's pretty blah otherwise.

- They don't support 2FA other than text verifications. A lot of banks don't (and shame on them too), but this is 2020 and you're handling financial data for crying out loud.

[Anonymous]

DCU is quite hit or miss. And when you need to reach customer service, you're in for a long wait. It took 2 hours for them to call me back the other day and chat was 58 deep with no movement after a few minutes of waiting. 

I like that they treat their credit cards like a line of credit. You can actually use it as overdraft protection for their checking account and they don't charge fees or higher interest for cash advance transactions but the catch-22 is that because they allow the full amount of your card to be taken as cash, their UW is incredibly conservative. My $1K card was the smallest card I had when it got approved and it has not grown, even after taking a HP. 

They offer 0% for 6 months on BTs to their cards every January which is nice and they don't hold your direct deposit which means if you trust them to be your primary, you'll likely get paid early. 

[coldfusion]

Direct deposits are credited to your account up to 2 days early, as soon as they get the ACH notification.

They also have a program similar to PenFed's where members they deem credit-worthy get preapproved offers for loans and/or a CC each quarter.

Their credit card offerings are mediocre and they're fairly conservative with CL.

[iced]

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@coldfusion wrote:

Direct deposits are credited to your account up to 2 days early, as soon as they get the ACH notification.

They also have a program similar to PenFed's where members they deem credit-worthy get preapproved offers for loans and/or a CC each quarter.

Their credit card offerings are mediocre and they're fairly conservative with CL.

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I suspect the pre-approved credit card limits are capped at $10,000, unless someone has been able to verify that someone's received a higher offer. It is a little strange if so, given their other loan products tend to have rather high pre-approved amounts ($50,000 is pretty common).