Desert Schools Federal Credit Union changes
Are you poor? A student? A freelancer? A part-timer? Someone who moved to a credit union because you wanted an alternative to the banking industry?
Apparently they’d like you to know that you can go fuck yourself starting next month.
In August, Desert Schools will be enrolling everyone automatically in the new "relationship rewards" program, a one-size-fits-all program that effectively guarantees you’re tagged with a $7 monthly fee, you have to make $750 a month in direct deposit, 25 transactions a month, or have a $2500 minimum daily balance. Want to avoid the fee because you don’t buy that much, or have a suitable direct deposit account, or $2500 to spare? Don’t worry! All you’ll need is a minimum $26,000 worth of loans and/or investment assets with them - mortgages not included. Everything is set up so the people who need to worry most about $7 are also the ones who are most likely to have to pay it.
For comparison, to avoid the monthly fee on their previous lowest membership plan, Desert Fusion, you needed to meet “any combination of 2 or more of these simple requirements per statement period: enrollment in eStatements, Direct Deposit, and/or a minimum of three (3) non-PIN debit card purchases."
eStatements are free. Combine that with a direct deposit if you have a regular job, or just go to the store a few times and you're set. Or at least, you were.
Not so much, now.
Just to throw in a little bonus fun, the transactions and daily balance totals for the new plan are calculated by “Household” - i.e., people living at the same address who have accounts at Desert Schools. Direct deposit, for some reason is excluded, and I guess fuck you if you’re single, your spouse has an account elsewhere, or you just don’t have roommates using the same credit union as you. That’s totally not creepy or likely to cause strife among people living together at all by locking their finances together even more, right?
Fuck this shit.
