Read Casey B's review here, especially the part about his car loan. He's 100% on the money, they will take a tiny little issue and turn it into something way bigger, more hideous, and more painful to fix solely because they can. My wife and I got an auto loan through Columbia back in the summer, and only six months later, we were at our regular bank's office, asking them to take over our car loan because the customer service with Columbia is so horrible. Any sort of tiny little wrench in the process with them mushrooms into something much, much bigger and harder to fix. In the six months we were customers of Columbia, my wife and I experienced the following:
1) My not being able to access our account with them because they misspelled my (four letters long) first name on ALL our loan documents, so technically, to them I didn't exist, and I couldn't use my ID to access anything through them--my wife had to do all of it.
2) After Allstate was delayed in mailing us proof of insurance that listed Columbia as the lienholder, Columbia took out an exorbitant (we're talking about $150/month, just for collision/fire/etc. coverage) insurance policy on our car, then repeatedly failed to rescind that policy when we provided proof that the car had been insured the entire time it had been in our possession, with them listed as the lienholder. After we sent in our next payment for the original loan amount (as opposed to the original amount + insurance premium) after many time-consuming attempts on our part to get them to rescind their insurance policy, they sent us several letters saying we were delinquent and and they were threatening to put our loan into default. When I called the office of the person who signed those letters, I left multiple messages that were never returned. This mess took us over a month to fix.
3) Columbia sold our contact information to third-party credit card companies. How do I know they did this? See #1--they misspelled my name on the loan, and when credit card offers started arriving for my fictitious doppelganger, it wasn't too difficult to figure out where our contact information had come from. A Columbia staffer denied that they sell customers' contact information and said that the credit card company must have gotten my contact information from, say, a credit reporting bureau, but I have had loans and lines of credit open for several years now without this particular credit card company sending me a single piece of junk mail. It wasn't difficult to read between the lines.
All in all, our experience with Columbia was so negative that when presented the opportunity to refinance the loan with our home bank, we jumped at the chance, solely so that we could be rid of Columbia. Avoid Columbia Credit Union like the plague, they don't give a hoot about their customers. If you believe in supporting local credit unions, there are plenty of others in town that deserve your business more. read more
