Service Credit Union (SCU) Reviews

As a NH resident where they are from and military member, I thought I'd give them a try a few years ago. I also have USAA accounts and my only real complaint with them was the lack of local branches, hence the trial run. After starting a basic account I quickly found that their rates were always significantly worse than USAA (and my other accounts wit Citizens and TD bank). In one case they turned me down for a car loan when I have very good credit and every other bank not only approved me, but with excellent rates. So, experiment ended, I soon closed the account and moved on. Now, a few years later upon a PCS to Germany I decide to give them another try since they have branches in country. So far I have found that they nickel and dime you with fees for every service, consistently have the worse Euro conversion rates, even though they are staffed by Americans, take both German and US holidays off, have no where near the convenient hours that they have stateside, and on top of it all limit your access to money like you are in a 3rd world country. With weekly spending limits on their VPAY card (only 1k Euro per week!) taht they charge you for and per day branch limits of 3000Euro, which makes it pretty darn hard to do things like buy a car, furniture, or pay deposits on housing without the hassles, lead times, and additional fees of doing wire transfers, they are neither a bargain nor a convenience. By far the worst credit union - which supposedly at least nominally have they customers/owners best interests in mind.

Service Credit Union has great customer service, but their accounts are terrible. I signed up for an account that had no minimum balance and no monthly fees, yet here I am almost a year later and they are all of a sudden now taking $10 out of my account each month. No warning, no call, no email. Nothing. I contacted them and was informed that it was because I did not have a minimum balance of $1500 in my account. I am a college student and chose the no minimum account balance for a reason. My account will be closed as soon as possible and I will be opening an account with a different bank. They also do not have locations across the country. My account was opened in Germany, I moved to Florida, and there are no banks here.s

I have Navy Federal (Love it), USAA (Great), Community Bank (Neutral) accounts.  Service Credit Union (No thanks) by far has the worse rates, restrictions, and policies for customers.  The only reason I have it, its the only "easy" option while stationed overseas to bank on and off base (+1 star for that).  Never tried their customer service via phone or online, however the tellers at the bank are nice and helpful (+1 star).  They seem to be loaded to care for security (+1 star) but seems to get into the way of functionality sometimes.  Their online site feels old and they have fees that my other banks don't seem to have.  They charge you $1 everytime you want to transfer money to a German account (-1 Star).  $7.50 everytime you want to do a US to US bank transfer (NavyFederal and USAA are free) (-1 Star), I can use an inconvenient process that Service Credit Union has setup via PopMoney (-1 Star).  Their loans are very restrictive, luckly I had options to use Navyfed or USAA (-1 Star).  I can't wait until my time overseas here is done to dump all my Service Credit Union accounts.  I only bank with them because there are no other options, I feel like I'm being taken advantadge of compared to the services I get from NavyFederal and USAA (-1 Star).  With NavyFed and USAA, I never felt that I was being restricted in how I wanted to use my money, I guess if you do not have any bank to compare too, Service credit union is fine, but having experienced other banks out there, this is by far a bank that would rank at the bottom of my list.