Harvard University Employees Credit Union

I am closing my accounts!
I’ve had a terrible experience with them previously regarding a mortgage application. They managed to lose all my confidential financial information in their office after I dropped them off with the mortgage rep’s name on. How was that even possible? The mortgage rep I spoke with did not answer and return my calls and just dodged like that. I wrote to the upper management about the incident. I got a simple sorry. I replied but never heard back with a single word or a follow-​up.
I’ve waited this long to close my accounts but I am finally doing it. Thought I could do it over the phone. Called their main number. The person who answered the phone fired off saying either fax them a letter or visit their branch with such an impersonal tone. A computer-​generated voice may sound more ‘human’. They might as well program this into their automated phone system. I didn’t bother to ask more and just thanked him and ended the call.
Best of luck to those who are still with them or are considering opening accounts with them.

Oh my goodness. worst bank ever. Staff not courteous. wait time is long — only 2 of their 4 counters are opened on a Friday afternoon (which is obviously a busy time).
Bad service. There are better credit unions out there. If you hv to use HUECU, you are better off going to one of the commercial banks, which have more ATMs around, more branches and are just way more convenient.
And. do they seriously consider themselves a ‘bank’ if they cannot even provide a customer with $ 50 worth of quarters? Seriously. $ 50 worth of quarters — just 5 rolls of quarters and you say no. Don’t expect too much from this credit union.
I have used UWCU, and I have had one of the best banking experience. I am still maintaining my account there even though we have moved.
STAY AWAY from HUECU.

I wrote their official «contact» over a week ago to find out the fee for purchasing euros and have yet to hear back and have checked my Spam… not great service from their electronic contact service!

Rarely do I have to endure such rude customer service reps.
I recently signed up for an alumni Mastercard. On two occasions, I called customer service, and on both occasions, the rep I spoke with was a total jerk. On neither occasion was I calling with a complaint — No. Rather, I was calling with a simple, basic question about my MasterCard, and by ‘simple’ I mean this: «Are there foreign transaction fees?» Quick-&-easy question, politely asked. Any professional rep would have fired off the right answer and then hustled me off the phone in a jiffy.
But not these people. Both conversations lasted twice as long as they needed to because I had to listen to the snide. Apparently, they’re doing me a big favor by taking my call. They’d be downright comical if they weren’t so downright grating. Eek
Lifehack: If you’re in a very good mood and wish to quickly transition into a very bad one — just call HUECU customer service! Works like a charm, every time.

I was given the opportunity to try out a credit union for the first time and was really excited about it. Now I’m angry that I wasted my time and will be leaving the credit union as soon as I can. When I joined, I opened a checking account and a savings account and was quickly able to start making mobile deposits with my cellphone into checking. The funds became available within a day or so no problem. I then made a slightly larger mobile deposit a few weeks later and was confused when the funds were being held for a few extra days. I asked the customer support what was going on and I was told I was on «probation» during my first 30 days so they could hold my funds for 9 business days. I have no idea why my first deposits weren’t held and now this one was. I had budgeted around getting access to the funds before the end of the month to pay my rent but because this is over a holiday I have been told that I will not be able to access my funds OR pull them out and close the account until the end of the «probation». In all by the time the funds become available they will have held the checks in limbo from ¹¹⁄₁₉ until ¹²⁄₃! A whole two weeks to get my money and I have no way to close the account in that time and my earlier deposits weren’t held at all. I’m going to have to shuffle around money until the end of the month to make this weirdness work.
EDIT: Still no clear idea what happened but the day after I left this review the funds became available, so one star back for not keeping my money in a holding pattern anymore. I’m not sure if I’m going to stick with the HUECU though because they never actually communicated to me why my funds were being held and now why they aren’t. It’s completely different from what I was told but at least I don’t have to move money around to pay my bills now.

I haven’t written a review in a long time, but I felt like this bank. excuse me credit union needed one. In one word: terrible. I didn’t think an establishment would be able to stress me out, but they did it.
I received the privilege to sign up for HUECU from being an employee of a Harvard company. The first thing I noticed were the terrible hours, hard to get to locations. Then their online presence is weak, customer service horrid AND you get charged for breathing. There are no benefits of joining this bank. Go elsewhere.

We are great believers in the philosophy of credit unions, but can no longer recommend the HUECU for mortgage financing, alas. Despite being longstanding customers who had never missed a payment, etc, we experienced very slow and sometimes even slovenly service, e.g., constant and repeated demands for (sometimes even the same) documents over the course of four months. Staff should ask for everything up front so as one can know precisely what one is getting into. In addition, we encountered quite poor communication skills such that it wasn’t always clear what one was supposed to do with documents being sent back to us or what they meant.
One reason for this sorry state of affairs seems to be management’s unthinking over-​reliance on computer-​generated data and algorithms that are generic, in the mistaken belief that it saves time and thus money. Instead, what it tells the customer loud and clear is that the HUECU can no longer be bothered customizing its service, i.e. actually dealing with each customer as a distinct individual with a distinct profile, even when hundreds of thousands of dollars are involved. In sum, a miserable experience, though we can’t say that the banks would have been any better.
Both management and staff seem to blame the credit union’s problems in this arena on the federal/​state governments’ imposition of all kinds of new rules and regulations for lending post-​2008 crash. It would be better if they quit complaining and figured out how to do a better job of adapting to the new regulatory environment, which, after all, is designed to protect low-​income people from predatory lending – a fundamental initiative that we should all appreciate as an important safeguard for our economy. Instead, the credit union is passive-​aggresively passing along its resentment (about having to do more substantial and detailed work) to its customers. HUECU can do much better than this, and will have to, if it is to remain a worthy alternative to the banks.