Lafayette Federal Credit Union

For me, it was a waste of time and money.
After moving to DC, I decided to go here because the bank I had previously used does not have many DC locations. I also wanted to get a competitive rate on a credit card or loan to consolidate some credit card date.
I could not get approved, despite the fact that I have very good credit. There was an outstanding item on my credit report that had been resolved, but they needed to see evidence, which would take a while for me to get. I just figured «screw it,» and I got instant approval for a Capital One card that has 0% APR for 18 months — that’s better than anything I could get at Lafayette.
I also still had not received my bank card after several weeks. This is not an isolated incident — when I was signing up, I overheard a customer talking with the bank about not receiving his card.
This place lacks the technology and efficiency that makes modern banking convenient, so I decided to just close my account. Of course, because I didn’t have my bank card, I couldn’t just grab my money from an ATM, and I didn’t have time to go to the location, so they sent me a check of my balance, minus a $ 25 «early closure» fee. You’d think that they would give me some consideration for my disappointing experience.
Just awful — I would not recommend this bank to anyone. Stick with a decent credit union or one of the larger, well-​known banks.

These are extremely nice people at a shockingly disorganized financial institution.
— Their website is not user-​friendly. It may have been designed in 1998.
— Their Mastercard website is worse.
— If the customer service number is the number listed at the bottom of the page, they need to know how to answer your questions. I had a question about ordering foreign currency, with the help line listed at the bottom, and was told that that service was operated by an outside firm and that Lafayette would be unable to answer my questions.
— If I send a message that says I am in a foreign country and my ATM card has been eaten by a machine and I need a response, and you call my OFFICE in Washington, that is not helpful. It took a week for someone to write back. By then I had already called multiple times and gotten my question answered.
— If you advertise a card has having no foreign transaction fees, don’t charge a foreign transaction fee.
— If you advertise a card as charging no interest for the first 12 months, don’t charge interest before then.
— If it takes more than a week for a check to clear (from a known account: my employer), you might get an inquisitive phone call from me.

Although Lafayette may be small. I feel that they do a decent job at taking care of their customers. The only complaint that I have is they have a high turnover of their employees and sometimes that is a little disheartning. For instance, the SBA Branch and the Jack Welty branch has not had the same set of employees in the last 10 years with a new set every other year.

Awful customer service. They wanted to charge me for electronic statements. Their online banking is a mess, and for log-​in assistance you have to wait one business day for someone to call you back! Unacceptable in this day and age, and it gives credit unions a bad name.

This is to review the credit union, not a particular branch. I bank remotely, mainly through online banking/​email. You could receive better customer service from a dead fish! I had to interact with them on four occasions and there was a problem with a basic task each time!
1) It took them around 3 weeks to process my credit card application. My wait time on such request with other banks was 5 days maximum. After I submitted a credit card application online and I asked for its status a week later, they emailed me asking to complete a paper application (basically duplicating all the information I had already submitted). Probably they lost the first one.
2) They failed to process my request to update my credit card address. They confirmed that they updated it and kept mailing statements to old address. When I asked why this happened, they were quite nasty and blamed it on me not updating my address until I stuck their address update confirmation email in their faces.
3) I noticed they haven’t been reporting my credit history to Transunion. I asked if they report to Transunion, and two separate people responded to my email confirming that they do (I never understood why two people responded to me saying the same thing, I guess they respond multiple times to one email, that would explain why they are so slow with processing times). So I email and ask them to please fix their mess up with not reporting my payment history. It’s been 2 weeks and I sent two emails, NO RESPONSE. AT ALL.
4) I got locked out of online banking due to too many incorrect attempts to login. I email them asking to unlock my access and specifically NOT to change my password because I remember what it is (I got locked out due to funky keyboard I was using, not because I forgot my password). What do they do? They do not unlock my access which I asked them to do and they change my password when I specifically asked them not to. So I continue to be stuck and have to waste more time with them.
I’m so done with them. Find another credit union if you can, or you’ll have to deal with VERY incompetent people.

I like this Credit Union since it is very convenient to get to from my job. The people working here are always friendly and helpful. Because this is a credit union, their hours are not like a regular bank. They also charge some fees that the commercial banks don’t charge because they are small. Other than that, I think that this branch is solid.