Harris County Federal Credit Union

Gross Mismanagement & Possible Fraud

Without my knowledge or consent, the Harris County Federal Credit Union has put some kind of hold on my account. I currently have a little over $1700.00 in the account I use to pay bills & make general purchases.

On 4/23/2022 I received an email from Affordable Renter'sInsurance that my scheduled payment of $14.20 had been declined. I tried to make an online purchase at Walmart for canned food & other necessities; the total was approximately $106.00 which was also declined by Harris County Federal Credit Union, despite my account having more than enough to cover the charges.

There is no way to reach Harris County Federal Credit Union outside of their scheduled business hours. I have gone online to try to resolve this but have not seen where they put the hold on my account, or why. They did not notify me of any such hold, and my family needs groceries I can't buy due to this hold.

There have been other issues before this; they've had phone service problems where the main number apparently quit working off & on for several days a couple weeks ago. During this time it was not possible to find out what was going on with our accounts, so if there were issues customers just had to wait until HCFCU got around to resolving their phone issues. Since there was no other way to contact them, I went online to the review section of their Facebook account and posted about it. Their response was that I was the only one who was complaining so it was not a big deal. It is if my money's involved. Anyway, now the review section of their Facebook seems to have been deleted or I have been blocked from it - not sure.

When I went to buy a money order to pay our rent last month their money order machine was not working, nor was their bus card machine when I needed to put money on our cards. Their president stated she did not know when they'd be fixed, and it took weeks before they were repaired.

Another time after I'd put money on our Metro cards & left, HCFCU called to say they'd made an error of putting too much on one of my cards and that I needed to come in so they could fix their own error.

There was also the incident when the lobby was filled with customers but only one teller available; I tried to find someone in charge but their vice president ignored me to chat with someone about her new furniture; apparently something called "elephant ears" is all the rage & more important than dealing with customers during working hours.

There have also been several incidents where they've shut down early without notice to customers, so if any of us needed to come into the lobby we were just out of luck until they decided to resume normal hours - whenever that might be.

I have inquired about speaking to their Board-only to be told by their president that board meetings are not open to customers. She was unwilling to provide any contact for them either.

Look, I totally get that the amounts of money I've listed would not be considered significant by some, but for those of us who are surviving on the lower income level they mean a lot. Right now due to the pandemic I work from home; lately I've been swamped & had put off grocery shopping to take care of work-related matters.

This unauthorized hold someone at HCFCU put on my account is currently preventing me from buying food & other things my family needs - to me there's nothing in this life as important as taking care of those I love, and of course I am not the only one who sees it that way. So if you're a worker with a family, please be careful dealing with HCFCU!