UDINK.ORG / Miscellaneous / Carbon Credit Union

Carbon Credit Union/Eastern Utah Community Credit Union - Price, Utah

This is a story about a very unpleasant experience I had with a certain individual who works at Carbon Credit Union, where I used to do my banking. On December 28, 2001, I received an email from the credit union detailing their new online banking services. The problem with the email, however, is that the email addresses of all 155 recipients were in the "To:" field, leaving them exposed to every other recipient. If a larger, more professional banking establishment had made such a mistake and revealed private information about that many of their customers, I'm certain that not only would they have realized their mistake, but they would also likely have notified their customers and at least offered an apology. Being as wary as I was about giving my email address to Carbon Credit Union, when I signed up for their online services, I used a junk email address that I didn't care about, though I still thought I'd at least point out the error to them, and replied to their original email with the following:

Next time you send out an email like the one below, you might think about using Outlook Express' "blind carbon copy" feature, which allows you to hide the email addresses of the recipients. It's considered quite a breach of internet privacy when 155 email addresses are sent out for all the recipients to see. If I were a dishonest person, I could easily target all these people with spam (unsolicited email), and I'm willing to bet that a local retailer would pay good money for the email addresses of this many people in the area.

I figured something like this would happen when I signed up for Techie Teller, so I created an email address just for unsolicited email and gave it to you, so I could care less what you do with it, but I'm sure many other recipients of this email would like their privacy protected a little better than this.

Dennis Udink
spam@udink.org

Though the credit union never did notify their customers of the breach of privacy, they certainly had something to tell me. I received the following email three days after sending my reply:

From: Cole Clarke
To: dennis@udink.org
Subject: Did your mommy by you a computer?

Dearest Dennis,

You are absolutely right...I made a gross error in sending out that email inappropriately and it is clearly against our policy to do so. It was, however, a simple error of oversight, not ignorance. Our efforts will be more carefully considered and no such errors will occur again. And, for your information, we have no intention of giving your or anyone else's email address to any other party, therefore your creation of an alternative address was a bit of paranoia only justified by the fact that we made a simple logistical error. Perhaps you could show the most minute amount of integrity now by removing the vulgar comments you have placed on your web site. And if I should ever be fortunate enough to receive email from you again make it more respectful, since, by the vulgar content and miscellaneous garbage contained on your site, it is clear that our coinciding levels of dignity, integrity and maturity indicate a great deficit on your part. Would you like it in simpler terms? Grow up little man.

Sincerely Yours, Cole Clarke

P.S. If you live in Price you should be more cautious when using small town hick in a derogatory manner--I would.

Ok, so not only is this guy upset with me for pointing out his "gross error," which he admits making, but he also gleaned my website address from my email address, and he has the gall to complain about what I've posted here.

This one person's unprofessionalism was enough to make me cancel my account, but I decided I'd send an email (including the exchange between Mr. Clarke and myself) to the CEO and vice presidents of Carbon Credit Union, just to let them know that they were losing business due to the behavior of one of their employees:

From: dennis@udink.org
To: mrm@ccunion.com
CC: paula@ccunion.com; terri@ccunion.com; rene@ccunion.com
Subject: Customer Courtesy

Mr. Milovich,

If you will please read the following exchange of emails between Mr. Cole Clarke and myself, beginning with the bottom email, you will see how I was treated when I indicated to Mr. Clarke that a mistake had been made and the email addresses of over 150 credit union members had been disclosed to each recipient.

Mr. Clarke took it upon himself, beyond his duty as a credit union employee, to seek out and read my personal website, after which he proceeded to respond and pass judgment upon me. I am dismayed that somebody would treat a customer in such a way when acting in a professional capacity as a credit union employee.

As much as I would rather support a local, "hometown financial institution," I regret that as soon as my company can transfer my direct deposit to a more professional banking institution, I will be closing my account with Carbon Credit Union. I am writing this simply to let you know about my experience with Carbon Credit Union--an experience I will share with anybody who will listen.

Sincerely,

Dennis Udink

I received no response to this email, so I can only assume that the management at Carbon Credit Union condones such behavior from their employees, and as such seems more inclined to serve themselves rather than their customers. Shortly afterwards, I cancelled my account and my son's account, and moved them to a much more friendly credit union.

Before canceling my account, however, I tried using their online banking services to check to see whether all my checks had cleared, and found my online banking account to be deactivated. I sent the following email after finding this out:

From: dennis@udink.org
To: rene@ccunion.com
Subject: Deactivated Account???

I tried accessing Techie Teller, and I received the following error message: "Access attempted on a deactivated account." I would appreciate it if you could reactivate my account.

I read on your website that Techie Teller accounts are deactivated after three consecutive failed login attempts. If this is the case in my situation, can you find out who attempted to login to my account (an IP address would be sufficient)? I'm positive it wasn't me, and surely you keep website access records of such activity.

Thanks,

Dennis Udink

I received the following response to my inquiry:

Your account was deactivated at the credit union after we received your email concerning Techie Teller and receiving email via Techie Teller. If you would like your account reactivated, please call me at 637-2443 and I will set up another initial password for you.

Have a Great Day!

Rene' Clarke
rene@ccunion.com

Not only will they get offended when you make a complaint about their privacy violations, but certain services that the credit union normally provides to all customers will no longer be available to you. If you bank with these guys, you had better not complain about their poor service! =)

I would encourage anybody who is considering opening an account at Carbon Credit Union to carefully consider the experience that I had with them before doing so. After all, at Carbon Credit Union, the customer is #2.