Update 3/3/24: Another round has gone out. Seems like they shut down some accounts every March.
Update 3/5/23: Another round of shut down letters has gone out. Seems unrelated to money order deposits this time but who knows for sure.
(Update 3/9/21: Another round of Alliant shutdowns came out over the past number of days. This time it might be for other reasons, unrelated to money order deposits which was the reason last time.)
Alliant has sent out a physical letter to some members letting them know their accounts will be terminated on 4/17/19. The full letter can be seen below:
The common thread of shut down reports seems to be people doing mobile deposits of money orders.
Hat tip to reader Kira
Customer of 15 years. My accounts were shut down today. The exact date it warned on the letter. What a piece of shit credit union. I did all of my banking with them for 15 years and as far as I know I didn’t do anything sketchy. Maybe I just linked a sole prop business account with them and that’s what caused it. Anyways fuck you Alliant. Seriously. What a piece of shit.
That begs the question.. for people who’s accounts were shutdown.. are we eligible for Alliant bonuses in the future? Now that this bank is on my bad side we should churn the fuck out of these accounts. But I dunno.. once we’re shut down that means we can no longer open accounts with Alliant in the future? I would never use them or trust them for banking again.. but only if a checking or savings bonus were to pop up.
TIA
Their signup bonus does not worth your effort. Just move on I regret not close my accounts early enough LOL
These fucking idiots got me too.
This was my primary financial institution for like 15 fucking years.
FUCK YOU ALLIANT.
I’d love to file complaints with regulators later.
For now I need help deciding which bank / credit union I should make my new primary hub? Any recommendations?
This is so upsetting.
What caused them to choose my account? I still don’t understand this or why they are shutting down customers who haven’t done anything wrong!
Did you make a lot of transfers to and from Alliant? If so, that is probably the reason per other comments. Someone suggested that those transfers cost them a lot of money but I don’t know if that is accurate.
You should study this article to find a new hub account to use that meets your needs: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/hub-accounts-ach-transfers-capabilities-fees-limits-across-financial-institutions/
I would call it just a normal amount.. I’ve been doing less transfers over the last few years too. I mean just occasionally sending money from Alliant to another bank or vice versa usually between the same 3 accounts
Was there anything in the past year that might have gotten human eyes on your account?
I wonder if whatever is triggering them passes under the radar for years, until the wrong person happens to examine your account(s) too closely.
If there’s something they don’t want us doing I’m surprised they don’t either say so or ban it.
Fidelity CMA and Ally are good alternatives.
The only thing I can think of is a letter I got from Alliant 3 months ago that warned me.. it said it “noticed business activity” on my account. which the only thing it could have been was a $60 sale on eBay (I hardly use eBay) where the $60 was automatically transferred from eBay to Alliant. Seriously though, they closed my account of 15 years over this??? What kind of bank / credit union does that.
That might be it!
Novacat05 got a similar letter back in May 2023 after a single ACH push to a biz account. Then stopped doing it. Then got shut down a few days ago anyway.
Anyone who banks with Alliant should probably delete all links to biz accounts as a precaution. I just did.
OTOH I’ve done an occasional one of those over the years too but never gotten a warning so go figure.
Why TF would they care about a single “business/commercial” transaction though? Sounds like an excuse, not a reason.
Maybe they use a monkeys-and-dartboards technique to generate a list of accounts to close, like PayPal. Then fish through those accounts to find a justification.
I also sold a couple of items during the Christmas holiday season on ebay and had the purchase amounts (net of ebay and USPS fees) directed to a checking account. The bank (Presidential) did not notify me about business activity on the checking account in December. I also do monthly ACH transfers from the bank to other accounts and also direct deposit into Presidential. The total ebay deposits were just around $60.
I don’t know if my warning letter was related to a transfer to a biz account or not. In retrospect I should have called them then and asked them to tell me which transaction(s) on my account(s) were considered “commercial activity”.
My account was shut down today, on the date specified on my letter. But not before I got $40 in ATM fees out of them and a couple returned deposits between getting the letter and today. The returned deposits actually were a helpful DP to me in getting an account at M&T bank set up for a bonus.
Cap1 checking is a good hub ime. High velocity of ACH transfers, some to/from biz accounts, not once had any problems. So I think good for general purpose money slinging… Not much use for fake DDs and they are super picky on the credit side. Best luck.
I had a similar thing at Chase. They didn’t close my account, they just stopped executing transfers. I’d schedule, they’d cancel. Refused to tell me why. I wasn’t making a lot, maybe a few per quarter, and generally to/from the same external accounts under my name. Nothing that should be suspicious..
Multiple complaints and contacts with corporate, no reason ever given other that ‘refer to the digital user agreement’, without even calling out a section.
As well as cutting fees, the Goobermint needs to crack down on this kind of thing and require banks to cite specific transactions that caused their decision and what part of their policy was violated.
In contrast to the secretive Alliant, I just received this email from BluPeak:
Subject:Save the Date for Our Annual Meeting of the Membership
The Annual Meeting of the Membership will be held at 5:00 p.m., Thursday, May 23, 2024 , at our corporate office.
Alliant used to be great and it’s still my primary hub. But their savings rates are no longer competitive and their 2.5% card has been neutered. It’s only good as a hub now.
I’ve added Ally and Fido as backups since the shutdowns in 2019.
BluPeak’s ACH limits are too low for a hub ($6k/day and just $15k/month).
Bask may be a contender once they implement their promised checking account.
Because they capped it at $10k and eliminated the 3% 1st year.
It’s still worth holding but it’s only a shadow of what it was.
Yikes!!! This does make me wanna move off Alliant for my primary banking. Are there any recommend big banks? I’ve had pretty good luck with USbank, but these days it isn’t like Alliants rates are that great in savings either and no local branches.
The reason I’ve kept them is juts in case i need a loan from a credit union, but now I’m not sure i even wanna bother holding onto them. Bit unfortunate to hear stuff like this.
if you want to keep a hub consider being a slightly more profitable customer. If they are making at least 5% on their cash via treasuries and they are paying out 0.25% is giving up $100-300 in spread worth not getting shut down? some might say yes. some might say no.
As far as I can tell, Alliant is shutting down people who abuse the system or they think are abusing the system with lots of transfers, which cost them money. In order to function, they need some deposits to stay in the system and not be rapidly moved.
I wonder if this is a reason they haven’t raised the savings rate to 5%, because of the costs of moving money around from depositors who do not keep funds there.
I’ve been with Alliant 16 years, first primarily for the interest rate (highest rate for checking when I joined) and now primarily for the 2.5% Visa card. I also have a CD at 5.4% for 12 months.
I keep most of my savings at Primis.
Alliant hasn’t raised savings rates because they have a lot of outstanding loans made at favorable (to the consumer) rates.
They did not foresee the rapid increase in interest rates, so now they can’t afford to raise deposit rates.
I don’t think it’s the transfers per se.
It’s likely transferring money in and out before the money has actually been received.
I am only a member of three credit unions (one that I joined back in the 1980s) and none of them are money transfer hub financial institutions for me since their rates are not competitive. To send large amounts of funds I stick with the major banks to do that. The letter that Alliant send sounds like what my union would send out to remove someone from membership, With unions, everyone has a voting right until a majority decides that you are no longer wanted.
P.S. I do not do mobile deposits nor depend on a cell phone.
Thank you Henry for your tips. Which major banks do you recommend to use to send large amounts? BoA or Cap1?
Henry
You can find a list of banks with their transfer limits on this website. Click on the Bank Accounts heading at the top and it will show a list of items under that category. Go down to Hub accounts and click on that. I have used Ally Bank, American Express Bank, CIT Bank, Discover Bank, Marcus (Goldman Sachs Bank). Bank of America has very low limits. Capital One limits are variable to each customer, so my limits are nothing to get excited about.
The three credit unions that I am a member of are 1) I am an employee of the agency affiliated with the credit union, 2) My HSA is with another credit union, 3) I had a Home Equity Loan with the other credit union. My last major deposit to the second credit union was to open a HSA CD last year. I shifted funds from the HSA checking over to the CD to lock in the 2 year CD rate.
Question.. if you have cash in your Alliant accounts and you get a closure notice.. do they mail you a paper check? Or do they tell you you have until X date to withdraw the funds? I travel a lot.. and I always worry my account will be shutdown and I won’t know and then a paper check will get mailed out but I’m traveling and won’t see or be able to cash it.
My notice says any money left in account after shutdown date will be mailed to me with a check. They will need to return my $5 share to me, so I’ll get a check no matter what. If they didn’t have the $5 share I’d have made them mail me a check for $.03 or something.
How much notice did they give you to withdraw? 1 month? Or more?
Letter was dated 2/23/24, got it in the mail on 3/2/24. So about 5ish weeks.
you have 5 from the time you receive the letter until they close the account?
Approximately, yes in my case.
A favor to ask those who Alliant has kicked out (or those not afraid to ask): You could really help others out. Would you be willing to contact the Illinois state regulator that regulates Alliant (since they are a state CU not a Federal CU) to ask them if indeed, Alliant’s yearly membership meeting is required to be open to its members that want to attend? Or, as a state-chartered CU, if it’s ok for Alliant to hold their membership meeting in secret? Alliant can always reply with an answer like they post the details in their bathroom or something, but it’s important to know if they actually ARE required to allow any member who wants to attend, to attend. If that is indeed the case, next January, someone can call Alliant to ask when the meeting is (it’s always in February), and when they refuse to give the information out, contact the regulator to get the information (they’re not going to stonewall the regulator, especially as it looks like the regular does indeed do enforcement actions).
I would do it myself, except we’ve all seen Alliant needs NO reason to kick someone out and I don’t want to be kicked out simply for contacting their regulator about them ignoring the rules. I’m sure some of you who have been kicked out might just want to move on, but doing so would help those of us out, and it would be a way to get back at them for their way they now do everything in secret. If anyone out there wouldn’t mind…. please….
It looks like the state agency who regulates them is the IDFPR
https://idfpr.illinois.gov/dfi/cud/cud-main.html
And they actually DO do enforcement actions against their state credit unions
who break the rules:
https://idfpr.illinois.gov/dfi/cud/cudadminactions.html
Contact info: (888) 473-4858
Chicago Office:
555 West Monroe Street, 5th Floor
Chicago, IL 60661
How about it? Will someone volunteer to contact them to see if it’s indeed a rule to allow any member who wants to attend, to attend? (as it is with Federal credit unions)? Then next Jan/Feb we can contact them to find out when the meeting is being held.
Why bother? Get the bonus(es) and move on.
Which bonuses are those?
https://www.swagbucks.com/?f=11&q=Alliant
Looks like that’s only for new members.
This Steevie fella is probably a big fan of Suzie Norman
Steevie, you may as well start a change dot org signature campaign and have everyone sign and to be under oath
Steevie