We visited the Sisters branch of the Mid Oregon Credit Union today to open an account and I found our reception most interesting. From the moment a friendly teller turned us over to an associate the entire experience was amazingly adversarial; it was as though this person deemed themselves a gatekeeper of some sort and had been deemed unworthy. What we thought would be a simple process of opening an account never got that far. Rather for 10 minutes we were quizzed, rather bluntly, about our reasons for wanting to open an account with Mid Oregon and our responses challenged. Rather than welcoming our business we were asked about any other banking relationships, why we were changing banks, whether we would use their credit card, our expected account balance and generally just how much business we would be doing with Mid Oregon. When I explained that we were changing banks because Mid Oregon offered superior service in an area that was important to us we were greeted additional questions about our finances and for some reason told about Mid Oregon's fee schedule associated with dormant accounts. When we explained that our current bank did not offer the service we needed our interrogator actually called our bank, while we were sitting there, to see if we were correct! When we were asked to defend our use of national financial institutions to address part of our financial services needs we gave up and left. By the way, for a credit union Mid Oregon has quite the fee schedule; they charge for everything. Take a look; here is even $10 fee to be a member. Their interest rates are dismal as well; less than 1% for a checking account with a minimum $2500 balance. read more
