Connect First Credit Union

I have been a member since the late '70s when I had my first little job. After 45 years, things deteriorated to the point it became untenable. Error upon error, horrendous service, a bank manager who needed me to inform her of how some things work, and a merger worthy of business school textbooks how NOT to do it. Only a few TFSAs left - everything now transferred over to Servus and I couldn't be happier.

This is by far the worst bank i have ever encountered. Applying for a line of credit should be easy, instead they will try and make you jump through hoops and do everything they can to not approve you. The person i dealt with even pulled my credit dinging my perfect credit score before he even received any of my paperwork and informing me they couldn't approve me because they consider me self employed since i own shares in a corporation. Your notice of assessments showing a good regular income isn't enough that they want to be nosey and look at other peoples business financials that is not any of there business.i pay taxes cpp and ei like everyone else, i am not self employed, if i was i wouldnt be on a payroll for the last 7 years. Anyways i called RBC and after an hour they not only approved me for the amount i wanted they also preapproved me for an equity line of credit against my home that i own 100% of giving me 60% of the assessed value.no jumping through hoops, my notice of assessments, good credit and assets i own was good enough for them. I will be closing my personal, business and credit card accounts at this bank and will make sure to tell everyone i know not to ever bank with this credit union. They do not care or value there customers what so ever. Stay far away from this place, unless of course you like jumping through hoops and being looked down on.

Nothing but issues with the mobile app, constantly logs me out and doesn’t let me back in. What a joke.

Will be switching banks. Phone application is buggy and shuts down at points with no warning. Needed to send money out but couldn’t cause online banking was down again. Do not recommend to anyone.

I have been a member since 1977 and have been through many transitions but have never ever experienced so many issues. I have tried to pay my bills and get the message to contact them, I try to log in and get the same message. I don’t get statements for all my accounts. I call just about every time I need to do anything because the app won’t let me do anything. It gets resolved for that day but the next time I try to do another transition I get the same message “to contact them”. What if I was traveling and needed to do something…. I would not be able to contact them from another country and I would be stuck with possible returns and bad credit as a result of the problem. Since this transition I have nothing good to say about this company. Very frustrating.

Absolutely horrible merger. They have systematically eliminated all interest paid on chequing accounts (used to pay 8 times the amount for exactly the same account and account balance as my former bank back in 2010). Prided themselves with their "NO FEES FOR ME" accounts only to grandfather existing accounts.
Marketing sent a questionairre out in April 2021 which I participated in. I provided a comment at the end of it in regard to one of the statements which I disagreed with. I received a message on my answering machine from my branch manager in regard to it. I purposely didn't call him back because I was disgusted with the cowardice from the marketing team to pass the buck. I have submitted 2 subsequent emails to marketing about this and not surprisingly no response.
Did they consult us as members (owners) of First Calgary Financial about a merger?
I will maintain a miniscule amount in an account (no fees) to be able to give them an earful at the (probably vitual) members meeting. Also I encourage others to do the same and call for the removal of the entire executive board.
Maybe a change of name to ConnectWorst might be more fitting. Bigger is not necessarily better and the merger sure bears that out in my opinion.

It states on the website the hours for telephone banking are 8am to 8pm. However, when I try to call them half the time I cannot get through to speak to a representative and it says, "Pleas call during normal business hours. " I don't know what is going on with that, but you need to fix this. It's really frustrating as a customer. When I need to speak to an agent I cannot get through in some cases on extremely pressing matters.

No ATM at all. Went inside and was informed by staff and security guard there is no ATM for customers on premises. Not sure what the response about ATM there was about.so don't waste your time looking to use ATM here.

Began arbitrarily putting holds on my deposits, no reason given, zero accountability at all levels. I'm dumping this bank.

Edit:
Despite the owner reaching out, I refuse to bank with them anymore. I've already switched to TD.

If I didn't have a mortgage, I'd NEVER bank with them AGAIN. I've been with this bank longer than I can stand. Now with the new changes, it's worse than ever! It literally takes days for an e-transfer to go through. They are terrible about loans, charge NSF whenever they get a chance. Shameful for a Calgary based business.

Employee Review > toxic work culture, outdated, obsolete or absent systems/workflows. My managers prior role was a clerk at Sears. Fake, delusional leadership, culture of fear, demoralized employees.

Member Review > please know that if you apply for any Loan all of your personal documents & identifiable information is being sent to MANY emails to action. There is no security in your PII data. No segregation of duties in regards to their systems. Your documents are manually produced vs software as they cannot afford a real ERP systems. My first day on the job I was asked to email HR rep my name, address, DOB & SIN to obtain access to the banking system. It’s 2021, they are 20 years behind on tech & 10 plus years behind on business processes. Choose a bank that manages your money with robust systems, not one that holds your money hostage due to poor migration deployments. If you are inclined to move your business & request a payout statement ask that it be reviewed & emailed to you from Paul K himself as these statements are produced in Excel & none of the staff completing them have Excel training, they use a pre-prepared template that a new employee advised Sheena K was producing inaccuracies & her reply was she knows & to continue on despite negatively impacting the members & business. The payouts do not match the legal calculations required to adhere to executed contract.

Leader Review > Top level staff need to be reviewed as they don’t have the innovation to make strides needed to survive. It’s evident based on reviews the forward thinking, innovative leadership is non-existent. A start up has more tech & human capital priorities in place before CFCU.

Horrible experience. Asked to change account payments pulling from, was given email to send PAC information to. Failed to pull from requested account and bounced payments. Spent 2 hours on hold through automated phone system, no one ever did answer have now called multiple branches and waiting on a call back.

If i could give 0 stars i would, i cant get through on the phone i cant get an email back i also can not access my account online as there website doesn't work app doesn't work so i cant transfer my funds to pay my car insurance

Was a lifetime member and am happy to leave this embarrassment of a business. I would leave the explanation but it seems to be well documented in the other reviews.

Terrible experience with refinancing but also everyday banking. They took perfectly fine app and completely ruined it. Online banking was not funcioning for weeks! Pre-set bill payment didn't go through. The app is the worst I've ever experienced. Looking to change the bank asap.

As with most people on here, I have banked with First Calgary for 12 years. But the transition was unacceptable. I have moved my banking to TD and am not looking back. Much better online and mobile platform. It's 2021, get with the times.

I have been a member since the early 2000s, but this recent transition from First Calgary to Connect First have been absolutely terrible. In a time when online banking has become the norm Connect First has made their online banking services impossible to access. I have had to fight to make regular bill payments and fund transfers. At the moment I am trying to accept an etransfer, however I've only just discovered that Connect First banking is down for the long weekend. I wasn't even notified in advance.

I had been considering a new mortgage with Connect First. But this continual series of fund inaccessibility has permanently soured me to this institution. I will be moving my funds and closing my accounts as soon as I can.

Absolutely done with the credit union after the merge. It has been almost 4 months, multiple contact with customer service, multiple app servicing and my app is still unusable. Not to mention the fact that you can no longer access transactions from before the merge or connect with mint (budgeting app).
Banking with such institutions should be simple, stress free and convenient. For the past few months it has been nothing of the sort and it has caused further stress to not have any control over my personal banking. When I've attempted to get "help" it got me nowhere, as the manager I was contacting was either on vacation, not responding or simply gave me no real answers or support. All my family members have also had issues with the app being completely unusable for months now, their bank cards not working and also not receiving any true help from the staff they have contacted. No thanks, I will take my business elsewhere.

It’s to bad that Connect First can’t have a lot of these reviews removed. I have been a First Calgary member for 23 years and they’ve been great over that period. I have never paid bank fees (Youth Account -> NoFees) and have had exceptional service in branch and through call centre.

RECENTLY

Yes, First Calgary did merge with Connect First and it was not as seamless as they would have hoped, but as far as I can tell have resolved all the issues. They HAVE sent out proper communication advising of the online banking going offline over the long weekend over email AND a pop-up in the app login screen (despite what every bad review on here is about, it’s 2021 people read your emails for important info it was loud and clear as day as well as many options to help avoid any disruptions). The only thing that annoyed me was eTransfers used to take a couple hours to send before First Calgary recently updated the system. After the merge it went back to a couple hours, but guess what, after the posted disruption to service it’s back to instant.

Anyways, my rant is more about how people are ridiculous and can bash a company just because they are ignorant and don’t read their emails.
Also, First Calgary has no fees, with the same or better features than most big banks. They’re kind of a no brainer for daily banking.

The website they rolled out in December 2020 for online banking is so glitchy it's like playing a slot machine at a casino. With your own money. But you can't win, you can only play again!

I have to agree with all the sentiments that I've read so far. Absolutely abysmal transition. When are corporations going to start caring about us, the little people? My experience (and it seems many others) have left a very sour taste on how YOU treated your customers, let alone, not doing your due diligence by pre-testing your hardware/software; and seemingly hiring the cheapest software engineers to formulate that horrifical transition. You dropped the ball even further with your (severe) lack of customer service, along with leaving people high and dry during a pandemic! I can only imagine how some poor customers whom are single parents, struggling individuals, and/or those who had just one account to rely on, must have felt and endured. YOU added some serious stress to people's lives during an already stressful time frame. And that is unacceptable in my opinion.

My banking experience has been nothing but horrible since the merger. The website is not user friendly. The new system in the branch is limited as many services and functions have made me feel less valued and it has made me look into switching banks.

A horrendous transition, virtually zero information provided. The mobile app crashes so often its virtually unusable, and the website is barley any better. Takes me half an hour to do the simplest of transactions. Its worse in every way conceivable.

This transition is a disaster so far. Their service centre can't handle the number of calls. After waiting 1/2 hour or more, I have been dropped because of a system problem 2 days running. They have invited us to book an appointment with our branches: mine has none availaible this month; next month. In the meantime, automatic payments to various services such as our health insurance have been dropped and I can't even enter them manually. Their Clickswitch service doesn't even come up in the search engine. Don't ask about receiving our pension cheques! I can't even call my branch.

My credit union recently joined with 3 other credit unions under Connect First. Since then I have been unable to access my bank account, view any of my account balances, and can't sign into their new app with my old credit union information. So far I have called them 5 times and spent over 4 hours on hold without successfully speaking to an agent. 4 hours of my life has been wasted listening to automated recordings starting with "your call will be answered by a representative within: 6 minutes" or the CEO apologizing and saying "We don't take lightly the prospect of inconveniencing their members and thank you for choosing Connect First as I am valued" and then the ever repetitive "Thank you for holding, we will connect you to a representative soon". Great start so far after 22 years of banking with my former credit union and having barely an issue.

Just downright unacceptable.

Haven't been able to get into my account for a week. I've entered the correct username and password on the website and it won't let me into my account. I call the 1800 number and I sit on hold then you hang up.

I'm in Fort McMurray and unable to come to your branch due to health issues.

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND I NEED HELP NOW.

Worst place to work at ever, I worked with FCF not even a year at one of the N. E branches (Northgate) and it was disaster.it appears good from outside but from inside is very gossipy and favoritism is highly practiced at that branch. In order for you to move up you have to work very hard to build a personal relationship with the managers not on your actual work! I have seen seniors staff who have been given and devoted their time to this place got terminated just because they weren't favorites to the managers. When you check the reviews on glassdoor about this company you'll noticed that almost all the reviewers comments the same thing A. Unprofessional and unacknowledged managers B. Promotions is based on favorites not knowledge or seniority. I have worked with FCF for less than a year and that teller was loved by almost all the members at that branch and she went above and beyond with the entire team. At the end the company appreciated her hard work by terminating her for no valid reason. Just because the BM and the ABM at that branch didn't like her and felt unsecured by keeping that long time teller at the branch. I thought I should leave this place and not waste my time here. Everybody has passion and goal and the most important is a job security. If I see people who served this company for years years and they have been thrown under the bus for NO REASON don't expect that much from it! My advise to the upper level leaders to pay close attention to the managers who run the branches, because they are NOT implementing the company's mission.

Security old man was very rode and never help I have no idea why he still there maybe not coming back because of him

The worst company to work at ever, I worked with First Calgary Financial at the Northgate Branch for almost eight years as a MSR that going above and beyond. Looking after the entire front line staff and admin duties as well as meeting and exceeding my sales targets almost yearly. Seven months of being without front line manager we got an audit during that time and the result end up an amazing while I was managing the front line, even though at that time we got new staff and it’s not easy to manage the admin jobs looking after the members needs and concerns and train new staff to follow the policy and the procedures of the company yet I was able to managed it all. I have built a very strong and trusted relationship with the members even some of them refused to be helped by someone else except by me and some of them take my schedule to make sure that I’m in the branch in order for them to come and do their banking. I have looked after many tasks in the branch that outside of my roles as an MSR for years and years without getting paid for or even acknowledged. At that branch they end up hiring two young managers who don't know the right from the left, who spend their day on their cellphones and leave the branch for hours to do personal stuff almost on daily bases or call their families and spend hours to chit chat with them, and yet they still get paid of that time. While small staff will be judged if they were late five min or call in sick. Don't expect that much from a company that hire ignorant managers who don't support you to achieve your goal that you have been working towards for years and years, and who's feedback to you was "I don't believe in senior staff" I strongly believe in juniors" just because he and his assistant are new to the company and they don’t know nothing they thought we should get rid of the senior staff and hire new people that we can control. The HR in this company is useless they don’t do their investigation or try to hear the story from both ends, because of course this will be an extra work for them. In that branch “Northgate” seven staff left in less than a year between, transferring to other branches seeking a healthier work environment, resigning (even though I know some of them loved that branch because they worked for a while there) termination, or people given write offs, yet no action was taken against those managers there. My advice to those who believe there is no job out there accept First Calgary Financial or connect first credit union, don’t’ do any extra job that you don’t’ get paid for or to impress your lazy managers, because any way they won’t acknowledge your hard work if you aren’t on their favorite list or if you’re not the one that they share the gossip with. I have been living in Canada for more than 22 years and worked in different places and kept hearing about the racist and discrimination but never experienced until I worked with those two managers. Every single day I will subject to their bullying and leave the work with pain in my stomach. Thank God I’m not in that toxic place anymore dealing with those racist and ignorant managers.