I'd give it a zero stars but it is not an option. I have had my account with CFCU bank for 10 years. Over the last few years I have had numerous issues with the bank making mistakes. Recently needed to make some changes to my account - customer service was nonexistent. Waiting hours online - representatives do not know what they are doing, providing incorrect info continually, supposedly fixing mistakes but never do, - callbacks never come. Finally had to leave. Do not use this bank. read more

I have had CFCU at least 20 year. In the last 6 months the customer service has declined to a level of non-existence. My debit card had to be replaced due to fraud, called the office and they proceeded to issue a card. waited a week, no card showed up. called the office back to learn that it was never sent. The card then was sent via Fedex, activated the card then learned it was linked to the wrong account. Called the office again, said they would send another card via FedEx, never arrived. At this point I have decided to move all my money to a different bank. read more

I've used CFCU for over 30 years. Paid two mortgages with them and a few car loans. They've made A LOT of money with my money. I paid a higher interest fee over national banks because I wanted to keep the money local, and get decent service. And it WAS. But it ISN'T anymore. They've gone from "OK" to lousy. Here's why: 1) they attached hidden fees to my car loan that amounted to $15 a month/per payment (not including interest), 2) paying bills online was easy. Now that they've changed the online pay to an app (CFCU+), it's very difficult. The app isn't intuitive, nor easy, and includes zero pop-ups of what an icon means. Searching for a biller is now a scroll fest, because the search bar will let you find the biller -if you spell it fully, correctly, as entered. Once you find it, you can't select it. So now, you have to scroll to select it anyway, 3) want to send a message to them online for good service? Well that option is temporarily disabled. Temporarily means for weeks. Give them a call?, prepare for a LONG wait. Customer service was their middle name, now it's their middle finger. If you are searching for a good local bank/CU, look further. That's what I'm doing now. In frustration. read more

Disgusting customer service, 99% of the people there have no idea what they're doing. The worst online banking app I have ever had to deal with. Would not recommend this place. read more

i am shocked and confused by the reviews below. i began with this bank in 1970, when i started teaching. i have never had difficulty getting any help i needed and i am famously 'technology challenged'. most recently, i went to my ellis hollow branch seeking help setting up an online chase financial arrangement for the new car i had just leased. the chase 'support' online was useless and impossible to understand. the chase bank downtown said 'we don't do that'. one of the front desk cfcu reps took pity on my frustration and spent about 30 minutes online with chase and successfully set up the program i needed to arrange monthly payments. this was not cfcu's job, not her job. but cfcu is truly a 'community bank' and as always, the help i needed was generously provided. i'm sad to hear that others haven't found this to be true. read more

I've had CFCU for over 6 years and it has progressively gotten worse over the years. The atms at the branches are out of order more than they are in service. The app is constantly going through maintenance so I can not check my accounts. I've held on hope for this bank but it has come time for me to move on to a bank with the capability to provide working services. read more

I have a travel trailer loan through this credit union and have regretted doing business with them since the very beginning. I have had multiple instances of them sending me letters stating my camper is uninsured (mind you, it is fully insured)...just days later they will follow the letter with a second statement saying they have taken it upon themselves and added an incredibly inflated insurance plan to the end of my loan. This has happened twice in the last 8 months. The first time it took me over 6 months of emailing/calling/faxing paperwork for them to remove the charges from the loan. I find it incredibly unethical the manor they do business, its strategic the fact that you are unable to reach anything other than an automated system and seems a gross conflict of interest that a loan provider is able to slap on an insurance plan that they too sell, with less than 14 days time for a client to prove insurance coverage. Jennifer Matcham read more

I am not sure why the bank has two entries, but I'm reviewing "both" of them. I'm not in a habit of writing reviews, but CFCU's behavior lately has been so atrocious that I feel obliged. Five times in the last year and a half they have managed to fundamentally screw up written instructions for how to handle CDs at maturities, ranging from transferring the wrong amount out to closing the wrong CD to closing a CD that was intended to be renewed. Their response when I suggested they needed to put a better system in place was "we already fixed this particular transaction and we're sorry it happened." Their "improved" online banking system no longer makes it possible to organize the accounts in any way, they're just in an arbitrary order (even though the "unimproved" system did this just fine) which means for example that every time I want to see my checking balance I have to use the "Show More Accounts" button because it's off the bottom of the default screen. Their response indicated they have no plans to fix the problem. They replaced a perfectly functional ATM with a "VTM" which then rejected multiple cards, and they told me the only fix was to reissue the cards. The last two times I visited it, it indicated that it "could not dispense cash" which kind of defeats the original purpose of an ATM. read more

Easily the worst bank I have every dealt with. Their customer service is non-existent. If you call or email they will contact you once and then never do anything about their problem. Have filled out forms they provided and request I fill out and it has been almost 2 years since and they still cannot get them inputted in their system. They will flat out tell me they did "X" and you go and ask someone who works at the bank and they will tell you that you cannot do that as no one at the bank has done "X". I am doing everything I can to "encourage" the account holder I am helping to RUN from this mess of a bank. I (like many others on here) also would love to help strangers also not have to deal with the multitude of problems this bank is and avoid every dealing with them in the first place. Trust me you will thank me. read more

Ever since they took over for CORE things have gone downhill fast. Put in a new system before working out the bugs. Now every time you sign into your account you receive a email saying someone signed into your account. read more

This place is the worst. If you ever want something updated on your account or have to communicate with them using the secure messaging platform expect for nothing to happen. The online banking system is a joke, currently embroiled in a situation where their asset recovery team has placed a 900 dollar charge on my checking and can't tell me where it came from (nor are the original charges reflected anywhere in the account balance). Their security is really bad, I've had my account drained twice while overseas. Seems like a lot of IT issues but with real consequences- AVOID. read more

A nice clean friendly credit union...really nothing fancy or outstanding from what I could see but with several locations in the neighborhood, this credit union serves its members as well as any bank in town. read more

CFCU Community Credit Union - Banks & Credit Unions Near Me - Ithaca, New York

Worst bank I've ever dealt and given the international nature of the Ithaca/Cornell community, they are not ready for prime time. I've transferred all my banking to Chase which was not an option before. Some of the things they are terrible at include i) international debit from ATM, the standard method for getting local currency. I can't tell you how many times I had to wait in a different time zone till CFCU opens to get them to let me use my debit card ii) their default everyday withdrawal is way too low. Try spending a day in NYC (or any other city) with that limit is ridiculous. I raised it several times and I can't count how many times it was reset back to the default without me knowing. iii) It's the only bank which requires me to notify them of travel so that I can use my card. They've blocked my card many times when I travel abroad even though I have notified them thus requiring another international phone call. The most ridiculous excuse they are obviously fed to repeat was that is was for our protection. I used to work for the Fed and the banks are responsible for faulty debits after one reports a lost card so they are doing this to protect their ass and not the clients. Perhaps the worst recent interaction I have with them is that I tried financing a car with them. They seem to offer reasonable rates but what is in the loan document is a requirement of having no more than $1000 deductible in my auto insurance for both comprehensive and collision. if you don't keep it at t his level, they automatically slap on a $5000 insurance policy for the car. I call and said that given my large downpayment that even if I totaled the car, my insurance at $2000 deductible would more than cover the loan balance thus their loan is protected which i understand. There is a huge difference in my auto insurance between a $1000 deductible and $2000. They didn't understand this. I contacted M&T bank and transferred my loan over. I explicitly asked them if they have any insurance deductible requirements and they flat out say no. They said the borrower is responsible for the loan amount and if the insurance payout is less, we'll have to pay for the rest which is perfectly reasonable. I have also financed car loans with other lenders and have never had this requirement. Factoring in the higher insurance premium, CFCU is not a great deal for car financing. Just a terrible bank not ready for prime time. Don't use them if you can avoid it. read more

I've been a member of CFCU since 2014, when I moved to Ithaca. They have been terrific - and, I might say, especially so when compared with Alternatives, which I had to get involved with because of a specific solar energy loan. Alternatives has been consistently inept and it's taken up many, many days of my life to get their numerous mistakes straightened out. That has never happened with CFCU, and I would very strongly recommend the latter. read more

The worst bank ever if you are not an American citizen, don't even walk inside they will charge you for everything and don't give you any product, worse experience ever with a bank if you can call that a bank read more

I have been with CFCU for years and always found them to be friendly and helpful. But over the past 6-9 months things have really changed. The entire atmosphere - whether in a branch or on the phone - has become very standoffish. The employees no longer are as helpful and just want want you to move on. A recent computer upgrade was a disaster and they haven't recovered. Online banking now looks primitive with wasted space and account info squeezed in one little spot, you have to keeo entering your info and wait times on the phone have tripled. I just logged on to check my loan payment and once again they put my payment into my savings account and have charged me a late fee. Now I will have to spend hours getting it corrected - tomorrow because customer service closes at 5:00. I hope they recover but the credit union is seriously headed in the wrong direction. I'm closing my accounts. read more

We applied for a home equity loan. We had good credit but many outstanding balances. At signing the loan officer told us we had to have insurance in order to get this loan and they would provide it for a small fee. She told us we could not have the loan without the insurance. We signed the paperwork and after our first payment saw they were charging $100 a month. We went in to the same loan officer and she told us there was nothing we could do. We complained again to this same loan officer a few months later and again had no results. It turns out this insurance we had to have to get our loan was voluntary. We discovered this 4 years later. I tried to resolve this with the bank and they have decided to do nothing. This bank supports an officer who scammed us out of thousands of dollars. read more

lots of hidden fees, they are unapologetic about that so you need to always be diligent and watch out for fees.

It's a bank, not a hotel. 5 stars here means reliable, courteous service, good rates, good locations and hours.

Applied for and got a (ALLEGED) no closing cost mortgage. With a down payment loan, $5000 in sellers concessions (that they wouldn't let me use all of) and a representative telling me (3 times ) they would cut my lawyer a check at closing I figured it would go well. Wrong! Between cfcu, their lawyer, sellers lawyer and even my own, I got screwed out of $4312. A no closing cost loan made what should have been a $65k mortgage into a $68k mortgage, plus the fact that cfcu lied to me and never cut my lawyer a check except out of MY account! I was lied to and cheated out of over 4 grand and as far as I'm concerned, they owe it to me. They don't talk to me anymore since I called them on it, but they love taking my money. They're no better than any crooked bank. read more

I contacted them six times by phone and twice on line. They did absolutely nothing to resolve my serious issue. Their customer service is nonexistent, as far as I am concerned. Zero stars would be my rating. They were also very rude, very short, and very insulting to me. read more