Terrible bill payer service/worse customer service I've been a customer/client/owner-member since I moved to Vt. I historically use my bank's bill pay service due to the convenience of the bank sending the payment to a creditor/service provider instead of me having to write a check or have the receiver debit my accounts directly. Attempting to pay off a loan at another bank, I set up a bill payer payment with VFCU to send the bank payment directly. VFCU flagged the payment for fraud. When I contacted the bank to resolve the issue, I was told that the payment was canceled, and that VFCU had a relationship with the other bank and could send the payment directly if I came into the branch. I went into the branch and confirmed with the teller that the bill payer payment was in fact canceled. She confirmed this and indicated that there were no pending bill payer payments in the system. I proceeded to have VFCU send the payoff through their system to the loan account with the other bank. The other bank received the payment and sent me a payoff notice. Approximately six months later, the VFCU contacted me stating that the bill payer sent a payment in excess of $10k and had been attempting to deduct it from my VFCU account. At first, I thought this was a scam. How could it take six months for this to become known to VFCU and to notify me about it? Ultimately, I realized it wasn't a scam, at least not your typical scam, and that VFCU was actually coming after me for the $10k. When I contacted the other bank, they informed me that they had no credits to my loan except the ones that actually came out of my account at VFCU. The bank provided me with these records. Since then, VFCU closed my checking account and stole my balance from it. They froze four of my children's accounts and claim they will not release the freeze until these funds that they claim to have sent are paid by me. I only discovered these freezes when two of my teenage daughters attempted to withdraw their funds to buy their first car. The bank said they could not access their accounts. This forced us to nearly miss out on the deal as we scrambled to come up with funds elsewhere. Six months later, my daughter started college. She had intended to use money in her account towards her tuition. Once again it was frozen. She instead had to take out an interest bearing student loan to cover the funds that the bank froze, money that had been saving her whole life. Despite this clearly being an issue that was caused by the poor communication between VFCU and their bill payer service, I offered to assist with tracking down this money if they released the freeze on my children's accounts. I offered to provide the financial records for my loan at the other bank, I offered to conduct a three way call with VFCU and the other bank, and other potential ways to resolve this issue. VFCU's only options for me to resolve their error is for me to either pay this $10k+, or to contact a third party (whom I am not familiar with) which will require me to provide all kinds of personally identifying information including name, address, dob, ssn and other information that I am extremely cautious about to whom I provide it to. With the significant rise of information being hacked from hospitals, banks, service providers, and even the federal government, I am extremely hesitant to give this information out, especially over the phone to an unknown/untrusted entity. Sadly, I feel the only options I have left are to contact the states attorneys office, the NCUA, and/or any other legal actions allowed by law.

Above and Beyond The Vermont Federal Credit Union always goes above and beyond to provide excellent customer service. The personal attention and assistance I have received with recent transactions deserves a 6-star rating.