IH Mississippi Valley CU

IH Mississippi Valley Credit Union - In Short, I Love Them!
- zapeta - Sunday, July 11, 2010 - 8:48 AM

If you are lucky enough to be in an area served by IH Mississippi Valley Credit Union and are looking for a bank or CU, my advice is to look no further.  I've been banking with them since 1995 when my parents opened a savings account for me.  I've since had their free checking and more recently their reward checking (Checking Plus) accounts. The thing that I've been consistently impressed with, especially compared to other financial institutions I've used is their service.  It has always been a pleasure to visit a branch...they are efficient and friendly!  In the past few years I've moved several times and have dealt with some of their customer service staff on the phone since I was too far away to make a branch visit, and again they were friendly and efficient.  I am planning a cross-country move and I am planning on continuing to use my IH account because I just don't think they can be beat.

Opening an account is a fairly easy process.  You have to open a savings account with at least $5.00, and that $5.00 must remain in the account as long as you have any accounts with them.  Once you've done that you can take advantage of their other accounts such as rewards checking.  The rewards checking (Checking Plus) account was paying 5.01% for a while but has been 4.01% for maybe a year now and this higher rate applies to the first $25,000 in the account.  If you don't qualify or whatever you have over $25k earns 0.25%.  They haven't tried any gotcha tricks with me about qualifying for the high rate.  As long as you receive e-statements, make 12 debit card transactions (pin or signature based both count) and have one direct deposit or electronic transaction, you qualify for the rate.  The nice thing is that if you don't want to get your paycheck by direct deposit to this account, any other electronic payments do count towards the direct deposit requirement.  For example, if I pay my power bill or credit card online through their websites, IH views this as an electronic transaction and that counts towards that requirement.  They will also refund up to $25.00 of ATM fees a month and they tell you on your monthly statement how big your refund will be so you can figure that in.  In short, it's easy for me to qualify each month just doing the transactions I'd do anyway.

I hope this will help you with your account decisions, but I don't think you can go wrong with IHMVCU!