New Lows

 

I am pro-capitalist and pro-business but it seems that we are now a society with low morals in business affairs and declining further all the time.

We have never paid so much for car and household insurance, but they charge more and more, and agents provide no service, and underwriters nickel and dime us to cut down payouts, all the time when rates have doubled or tripled in the last three years.

We live in Bloomington, Minnesota and joined the Star-Tribune old employees credit union in our neighborhood about 12 years ago, and it was excellently run. Then another credit union conglomerate bought it up about 8 years ago, and the service and costs declined noticeably, right away, but we just lived with it because they are a mile from our house, and other banks are likely not much better.

Well, yes, it got worse when a 3^rd credit union conglomerate bought it out about 3 years ago, and their computer bookkeeping was a nightmare to transfer and services were reduced further. We survived that transition but will not this latest one.

About 6 weeks ago we members were told they were closing their safety deposit box accounts and we have a certain time to clean out our boxes or they would give our possessions to the state of Minnesota They offered safety deposit boxes at another credit union 10 miles away at a bank in St. Louis Park.

We had previously at our neighborhood credit union, a large generous, box which easily held our legal documents and property titles books 15 by 20 inches and a foot deep, all for $45/year and we were satisfied.

Today, 8/17/26 my wife and I took our documents to that other credit union. They trotted out a little box about 8 x 11-inch and 3 inches deep for $45 per year, free for the first year, but we would require two such boxes and to squish our 11 by 14-inch copies to fit into them and pay $90/year in 2027 with the privilege to drive 10 miles away to use the deposit box.

Once again pay more for less, much less. They likely are closing the unprofitable credit union by our house so they first got all the boxes emptied out now and now they are "temporarily closed."

We are looking for a new credit union now and one with a generous sized box for precious documents and titles, or to find private storage. Folks, it ain't getting better out there. Pay more, get less, much less.