Daniel G.
My beloved Credit Union is GONE!
I started with We Florida back in 1990, when you needed to be sponsored by another member to join. Back then they were called City County Credit Union of Ft. Lauderdale, made up of city and county employees here in Broward County along with its first responders. Being a first responder myself, I always felt welcomed there. I knew all the tellers, the managers, and everyone up the chain — back then they only had 55 employees and 20k members. Around 2013 they decided to expand and add more customers (no longer "members"), and that monster grew from there. The friendly, welcoming feeling was gone, and the fees came with it. The change was gradual — the tellers were still familiar faces at first, but as they added employees and grew, it turned from a friendly employee credit union into a regular old bank. I used to walk in, laugh with the tellers, ask for money — as long as I had my member number, things were fine, because they knew me personally, knew my name, even knew my immediate family when they came in with me. Now the tellers are cold and all business. I have to give them my number, dig through my wallet for my driver's license, pull it out, show it to them, then put it all away again. They let anyone in now, so I can't tell who the members are there. Prior members that were only City employees, needed to go through background checks and had to maintain a certain work ethic to keep their jobs — that standard doesn't exist anymore, I don’t know the characters that bank there now are. If I ever had an issue, I could call Polly Griss and she'd bend over backwards to fix it for me. She made it up to VP before she was pushed out and retired. She was awesome. So it went from a friendly credit union to a cold financial institution. My wife left for Space Coast Credit Union and keeps telling me I should switch too. I'm hesitant because of my 36 years as a member, but she says they still have that warm, friendly feeling we used to have at CCU. Looks like my time there is sunsetting. I hope the shareholders who made these decisions lose out on their gamble!