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Originally Posted by AppleDiva
I think big banks are better, especially if there is a theft in account. I know people who used smaller banks and had to wait to get their money bank. The larger bank restored the funds to the account immediately. Overall, I have had positive experiences with Bank of America (Fleet/BankBoston). The fees are ok and have become quite reasonable over the past few years.
Now, I will say that Credit Unions have more favorable loan rates. My husband have always purchased cars with CU loans and we have been pleased with the relationship and service. Credit Unions tend to be fee happy, so you have to get the information upfront.
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This is *totally* dependent on the bank. We give immediate provisional credit (simply means if it turns out to not be a fraudulent transaction, we reserve the right to reverse the credit.) I work for an $850 million bank which is considered small in the banking industry. $1-$2 billion is where you start to be considered "medium" sized.
Also, as an example, in the northeast, there was recently a major card compromise at a regional supermarket. More than 4 million card numbers were compromised due to a security breach in the supermarkets system. We (the bank I work at) reissued over 6,000 cards at our own expense (over $35,000) to minimize customer risk, bank risk and increase customer confidence. The same day we received the compromised card file issued by our bank, letters were generated to affected customers informing them of the compromise and our intentions to automatically reissue them a new card. New cards were generated as quickly as possible through our 3rd party source. Customers who hadn't activated their new cards within a certain window of time were contacted individually to follow up.
I know many people that their bank never even notified them that their card was part of the compromised batches. Many of the larger banks took a "wait and see" approach to possible fraud and identitiy theft (which has been tied back to this compromise) versus taking steps to be pro-active.
I also know of other "large" banks in the region that would reissue your compromised if you called and asked and were willing to pay to have it reissued.
Many of the ID theft and security offered by banks are fee-based coverage.
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But again it can be very different from bank to bank, and a sweeping generalization can not be made about small vs. large vs. credit unions (which do not have to pay income tax BTW). You need to find a bank whose service and products fit your needs.
