Anyone else a member of Alterna Savings?

Is anyone else a member of Alterna Savings?  (It's a credit union.)  It used to be Metro Credit Union and then they merged with other credit unions in Ontario and Quebec, and they decided that "Credit Union" was way too radical to include in the new name, so the name is now "Alterna Savings".  Hey look, I'm already ranting.  And there's more to come!

So, they just changed their whole online banking system.  Some of the lovely new conveniences include:

• All previous bill payments before the change have no payee information attached to them, just the amount paid.  So there's no way of knowing whether that $80 (or whatever) that I paid in October went to Bell Canada or Enbridge.  Awesome.  They may, or may not, get that information back someday.  But, they assure us brightly, all new payments we make will have the name of the biller included!  Pretty awesome.

 

• Some bill payees on our online banking list didn't make it to the new system.  But that's okay, we are told brightly, because for those that didn't make it to the new system (a couple of the biggies include Hydro Quebec, and the Ontario Family Responsibility Office), we can just call those places up directly and make "alternative arrangements" for payment.  Unfortunately for those who are making regular payments to the FRO (for those who don't know, that's where non-custodial parents pay their child support to the government, which in turn remits it to the custodial parent), the alternative arrangement to paying through online banking is for the FRO to garnish your pay, which is pretty swell!  And it's also just swell to discover your payee no longer on your list a day or two before your payment is due, thus making your payment late as you scramble to make other arrangements.

 

• Finally, and this is the most amazingly awesome improvement - if you have a regular scheduled payment to be taken from your account, you used to be able to either change or remove it in the old system.  But when they transfered to the new system, any bill payments you had scheduled previously have been brought forward to the new system, which is great.  What's even better is that when you try to cancel them - which I just tried to do with one today - you can't do it!  Apparently, it's a little glitch.  But that's okay, we're told brightly - all you have to do is call their call centre to get them to change it.

So when I called the call centre, I was thrilled to discover that I was the 8th person in queue.  That shouldn't take too long, right? Five minutes later, I was still the 8th person in queue.  Ten minutes later, I was still the 8th person in queue.  But that's okay, because we can leave a voicemail, which they'll return within two hours.  So all I have to do is wait around the house for two hours for someone to call me!

Pretty awesome.  Overall, I'd say I'm pretty thrilled with all the new improvements!

I'm in a trade union. We don't get much credit.

 

Metro Credit Union used to be a pleasure to deal with; but once they got taken over by Alterna they fell into the hands of a management that was mostly recruited from chartered bank dropouts.

 

At least you have a verifiable source of income. You should try dealing with that shit when you are self-employed (unless you have already. I don't want to presume anything).

THis is a timely discussion, because I am just preparing to approach the banks to get quotes on a line of credit for our business, and to refinance our mortgage with our co-signers removed. 

It galls me, because I have never done business anywhere else other than a credit union. And I am a staunch supporter of them in principle, but I know for a fact that that support is not reciprocal, and that credit unions are generally more conservative when it comes to risk - and that means me, even though we are making accellerated payments on our mortgage. 

On the mortgage they turned us down, and took $150 for the privilege, even though our house is worth over three times our debt to the CU.. I have another friend who is also self-employed, and made the mistake of paying off, and burning his mortgage, and is now faced with the prospect of having to sell his house because no one will offer him a mortgage. 

and on our business line of credit, they based it on our net income, if that makes any sense. All I saw was the $900  per year that is now going to credit card companies that I was offering as profit to them . 

I guess they don't want business that badly. In a way it's not hurting us too much , because we will survive. And I will go back to them for final option, and all things being equal, I will of course choose the credit union. But I am sad to say that from here on in it is just business, 

 

 

I've heard the same story from other self-employed people who should be qualified for a mortgage being denied at my credit union.  So, they have either wound up at a bank, or in one lucky case, at another credit union that was less conservative about lending to their members.

That's interesting, Smith - my understanding has always been that it is the credit rating agencies (e.g. Equifax, TransUnion) that lower your score the more credit checks you have done.  If the credit union requests the full report (which I can't imagine they wouldn't for something as important as a mortgage), then they get all the details of what you're paying and when, and how much debt you still have.  But if they're just going by the score itself, then I'm pretty sure it's the credit rating agency that comes up with that number based on whatever formula they have.

Here are the factors that go into determining your credit score.

You'll see that the number of recent credit inquiries affects it.

It is, of course, up to the company considering offering someone credit how low a score they will allow.  I used to work for a calling card company that offered accounts, and my job was to do credit checks using Equifax.  We only requested the score because it was way cheaper per look-up than it was to ask for the full credit report.  It's been so long that it's hard to remember what "good" scores and "bad" scores were.  I think maybe the 400's were very bad (e.g. undischarged bankruptcies and consumer proposals and such), and 800 was fabulous, unless my memory fails me.  Anyhow, we just used those.  But we didn't create those scores - Equifax did.

Our rule was that we we accepted anyone over a certain score (maybe 600 and over?), and we did a FULL credit check for anyone in the 500's so my boss could look it over and see what the issue was before deciding to accept them or not, and anyone who got in the 400's was just refused.  If I'm remembering the scores right.  It's been about 15 years!

@ Michelle

The info I got came from someone working for the Manitoba government who worked in banking. She may have been biased, and spinning me a line, but she said the CUs use a different system. 

In the early 90s, when I first became self-employed I was actually told by a loans officer at a major bank that "we consider self-employed to be equal to unemployed.". I had been with the same bank for over 20 years.

Well, the thing is, I remember in the late 90's, anyhow, that EI was pushing this whole neo-liberal "Me Incorporated" thing to everyone who lost their job and applied for Employment Insurance.  The idea being that you had to think of yourself as your own company, that you had to think outside the box, that you had to consider yourself "self-employed", that the days of secure jobs are over, and that gosh-darn-it, while it's a bit scary because it's a new experience, it's really a very exciting world we're living in, where we can stand on our own, no more selling our soul to the company store, etc. and so forth!

So I think that for a lot of people, when they lost their jobs, and had a lot of trouble finding new ones in that era of "downsizing", "rightsizing" or whatever stupid term of the week they called it, they were encouraged to think of themselves as "self-employed", and to tell people that in the meantime until they find something else.  Not to mention that a lot of employers were pushing people who should have been considered their employees to register as "self-employed" so they could pay them as private contractors instead of real employees.  (I had an employer do that to me when I was a RECEPTIONIST for a little while during the 1990's.)  Not to mention that EI was trying to encourage people who were having a hard time finding work to try "self-employment" through start up programs where you would come up with some idea for a self-employment business, and they help you with a bit of start up money.  So people gamely tried to consider themselves "self-employed" when what they really were was unemployed and/or underemployed and picking up some odd jobs here and there.

Therefore, it doesn't surprise me that banks were assuming that self-employed = unemployed at that point.  Because, unfortunately, I think that was often the case.  Which sucks for people who are actually legitimately self-employed by choice, because the rise of "self-employment" becoming a euphemism for "Between jobs and taking on any odd jobs and short contracts I can find until I get a permanent position somewhere" meant that they got lumped in together in the minds of people like loans officers.

That is certainly not excusing banks and credit unions for generalizing instead of taking a case-by-case approach.

Basically, the neo-liberal economics that ruled the day at that point (and still does now) was to preach to everyone that they must spend, they must buy financial products, they must go into debt.  Corporate society also preached at us that no one should have or expect to have "full-time permanent jobs" and it's each person for themselves, it's "Me Incorporated".  And then, when people are forced into becoming "Me Incorporated", the bankers and corporate hacks who have pushed this neoliberal line tell them, "Sorry, we can't give you a loan to buy a home, because you don't have one of those full-time permanent jobs we've been doing our best to rid the country of for the past several decades."

I used to be a happy customer with Desjardins. However, they were quite rude when I tried getting my wife added to my account as a joint user since she was not a permanent resident or citizen of Canada. The staff member (a woman of colour) even admitted that she had started here account there while on a work visa, but they had since changed or become more strict about their policy and the older white manager type basically acted like it was some kind of scam for a non-PR to try and open an account there.

Well, thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of that. Still, I certainly don't think it's a valid policy. Isn't it illegal to discriminate based on citizenship status?

Not at all. And the discrimination isn't necessarily just on citizenship or residency. Financial institutions have a lengthy list of criteria that flag potential high risk transactions. Citizenship and residency (for non-residents the country of residence is high on the list of things to consider) are on the list but they're hardly the only things that are there. Every single transaction that goes through most banks runs thru various filters and, if it generates a "suspicious activity report" it's singled out for further review. Even relatively small transactions are singled out if they meet certain criteria.

University of Toronto Employees' Credit Union.