Sound Credit Union

Like a few others here, I’m really surprised at the poor reviews many are giving here, though I expect every customer has their own unique issues and expectations with their bank (tellers, hours, locations, interest rates, etc). I began with Watermark in Burien around 2009, moving both my business and personal accounts from (in my opinion, the most awful bank on Earth) Bank of America.
About a year later my business started the downward turn everyone seemed to be facing as the recession took hold, and even through a subsequent bankruptcy and short sale on my home, Sound has stood by me with a car loan and new credit cards. Honestly, I couldn’t ask for better service and support, and now I live in another county that isn’t even served by a Sound branch! – yet everything I need can be done remotely, online, by phone, or with mobile deposits. And trust me, I’m not a big fish at all, so they have no extraordinary incentive other than to keep this customer happy.
For those with pressing issues, by the way, it might help if you write a clear and concise letter to management, by name, asking for assistance. I did that on several occasions, and now I have two high-​level people I can call personally if I ever have a problem. And I get immediate and highly satisfactory service when I do. I happily recommend Sound CU to my friends and business colleagues.

NEVER have enough tellers to wait on people! Friday– one teller working inside and one at the drive through. Unacceptable! The line is out the door. Please tell me why you cannot not staff your business properly? Customer service means nothing anymore!

I opened my account with the Credit union when I received my car loan. I applied for a credit card with a $ 5000 limit and a year later it was raised to $ 10,000. My card was lost and stolen twice and some charges were made on both occasions.
Late April 2015, I opened a new checking account and the card and pin were stolen from my mailbox and charges cleaned out my account. I filed a dispute over the phone and they promised me to send me a affidavit in the mail. Two weeks later, I swing by the branch to pick up my card and informed them I never received the affidavit. The mail in our area has been hit from mail thieves and I’m heading to the post office to speak to the postmaster general. I’m getting a locked mailbox this weekend.
I filled out the necessary paperwork and go file a police report, then I call the bank today 5÷29÷2015 and asked about my provisional credit and I get transferred to a guy in the claims department and this person blamed me and insinuated I had committed the fraud. That my claim is DENIED!!! I said excuse me, what are you talking about and the gentlemen belittled me on the phone. Of course it’s Friday evening and I can’t speak to a supervisor.
To be continued…

I joined Watermark CU a few years ago. I got tired of the big banks and all their BS. Watermark was great! Now that they’ve become Sound CU, I haven’t noticed much of a difference. They seem solid enough for me to write about. I’m not sure why all the bad reviews? Sound always answers the phone when I call. My mobile deposits always work. The only thing stooping me from giving a 5 star rating is that I had to finance my auto loan through Wells Fargo. One of the big banks that I HATE! I have a credit score of 751. How Sound CU offered me a 3.6% rate is beyond me. Do I need to have 800 plus here? Anyway, Wells Fargo gave me 2.25%. Saving me money. I would have preferred to be able to make my payments through the Sound CU mobile App. But 3.36 vs 2.25 is a big deal to me. Other than that, Sounds is alright by me.

I joined this credit union in 1998 when it was Seattle Telco. I had been struggling with getting my finances and credit rating repaired and while, Telco could only initially offer me a Savings account, eventually it became instrumental in getting my financial situation fixed. I didn’t think of anything with the rebranding to Watermark. in 2010 after enough nickle and dime-​ing from Bank of America I move all my finances to Watermark and was incredibly happy with their website, the range of services, and the friendliness/​willingness of the staff to work for me.
Then came the Sound merger and while I was nervous, I decided I’d give it a chance, which was just the beginning of my disappointments.
Like most people, I am busy. I have a lot to remember, and sometimes my credit card payment doesn’t make the list. Not for a lack of willingness or funds. Just because life’s busy. It was weeks before I might hear from Watermark, if I hadn’t remembered, and there were almost never an fees associated. Sound would start calling with in a few days and I could be guaranteed some sort of late fee.
I rarely got mail from Watermark. My statements, the periodic newsletter, and yearly advance opportunities around Christmas. I was pleased with the lack of marketing. They allowed me to come to them with my needs, unless they had something spectacular to offer. Sound sends a constant stream of «get into debt with us» messages.
Finally, Watermark’s website was, as far as banking sites go, a joy to go to. I took pleasure in tracking and organizing my finances. It went a long way towards helping me plan how I was using my money. Sound’s site, by comparison has virtually none of the functionality and in the case of it’s email, it is barely functional at all. I sent 3 messages questioning charges on my account that went without response, and when I finally decided I’d had enough and I wanted resolution, I was informed they had not received any messages.
End of the day, I only keep my account due for the length of history it gives my credit rating, but I no longer see Sound as a Credit Union, but as a bank in sheep’s clothing.

Its my opinion that this awful company hates it’s customers and wants to punish you for banking with them. If you unfortunately have a loan through them they’ll refuse to send a bill, and refuse to give you a coupon book to know to send your payment. If you demand a coupon book they send you a printed copy for only 4 months at a time. Their difficult online service is the only contact you get, which they have set up for you to always assume there is something wrong with your account and expect you to constantly log in to protect yourself since they are so hand off until they get an opportunity to screw you. I wouldn’t wish this horrible company on my worst enemy.

40 years. I’ve had an account starting with Seattle Telco in 1974 and through the Watermark name change and then the merger with Sound. My bank account number was 5 digits. The Sound merger is the worst possible thing that could’ve happened. Sound behaves like a big bank with fees and impersonal behavior.
Once Sound took over my checks deposited in ATMs in Seattle that used to be cleared in a day now took almost a week to clear because I was told that they had to be sent to Tacoma before they could be verified. So checks deposited after hours on a Friday wouldn’t clear until almost the next Friday.
There have been other little tweaks that have put me off also. Most recently this happened… The way I bank is if my debit card doesn’t work I stop spending money and go check my balance. I’m not someone that balances a check book or constantly checks my balance. I have a general idea of how much is in my checking and know when I could possibly be rejected while spending money with my debit card. So I adjust my spending to smaller purchases when I think my balance is low.
I checked my balance one day and noticed I was somehow over $ 200 in the red. I went into the Burien branch to inquire. What was happening was every purchase I made no matter how small was being charged a $ 29 «courtesy pay fee». I pointed out that a lot of the transactions were pending and that I had put money in to cover them before they were processed. The employee spoke to me like a child. I asked at what point would Sound have called me since this was abnormal activity for my account. She told me that it is not their responsibility to monitor individual accounts and that they would’ve let me go $ 1500 in the red. I told her I wanted to close my account and she said that I could not close my account since I had a credit card balance with them. With those two things in mind, I received a statement from them a few weeks later saying I had a negative balance and that I needed to bring my account back into the black… so I guess they do keep track of individual accounts. A week or so after that they sent another letter saying they were closing my account because of the negative balance… so they could’ve closed it the day I came in too.
She also told me that I had signed up for courtesy pay, which I hadn’t. I then received a letter the next week saying that the day I came in to inquire about my account I signed up for courtesy pay, which I hadn’t.
Essentially all of the courtesy pay fees they have taken from me were done illegally, which is in the hundreds of dollars.

I had an account since the Seattle Telco days. Prior to Sound taking over, Telco and Watermark were the best financial institutions I’ve done business with.
After the Sound takeover, I had two deposits lost, and they NEVER mailed statements, in spite of me asking for them. If they had sent me statements, I would have seen they were charging me for not meeting their minimum balance, which was surprising, because I was «feeding» the account, but apparently not enough. Eventually, when I discovered what was going on with the mounting fees, I closed my account with Sound and went to another Credit Union. They took a really great thing and ruined it. PLEASE SAVE YOUR MONEY. DO NOT BANK WITH SOUND CREDIT UNION.

As a Watermark CU member tracing back 25 years through Telco CU and originally Pan AM (yes, the airline) CU I can unequivocally state that Sound Credit Union is absolutely the worst organization I have ever dealt with. They make the IRS look friendly, helpful, and competent. I hated giving them one star but thought people might think I just forgot if I gave them a zero. Actually a negative number would be better.
Their assimilation of Watermark was so poorly done as to be laughable, and their service since then has been non existent. Where to start…
Their online product is still error prone and of little use.
Their employees seem to know it’s a sinking ship and do everything possible to just deal with you as quickly as possible and run away. They are poorly trained and have no authority to do anything. I actually feel sorry for them.
They unexpectedly closed a line of credit on me which was fine as I wanted to pay it off anyway, but it took months just to get a regular payment amount. I called repeatedly and was told they would gat back to me which they did not. Then I got a letter chastising me for not making a payment. I went into a branch and waited for 15 minutes while the teller called the same moron I had called many times and finally got a figure which I paid on the spot. I now see on my credit that I have been charged with a «missed payment.» Of course no one there wants to do anything about that.
I am now dealing with another problem I won’t even go into. They seem to realize that it is very difficult to change financial institutions given automatic payments, deposits, and other online business. Even though I am not looking forward to the next few months getting this done I am absolutely relieved to move on from this horrific institution especially after seeing the issues others have dealt with.
I generally hear very good things about BECU, they have many more branches and I use their ATMs all the time anyway.

Sound Credit Union took over a perfectly wonderful organization (Watermark CU) and just absolutely ruined it. The transition was awful: the hold time for calls to customer service jumped from mere seconds to over 30 minutes. My bill pay accounts, which were supposed to be converted from the old system, were «lost». I had to spend literally six hours on the phone over three consecutive days to get it resolved. Sound referred me to their bill pay vendor, which referred me to Sound, repeatedly until I demanded that a supervisor initiate a 3-​way conference call.
Most recently, a few weeks ago, Sound canceled my debit card without warning. The next day I received a voice mail asking me to call them, with no other details. When I was finally able to get a hold of someone (two days later), they said there had been fraudulent activity on other accounts and they caceled my card «out of an abundance of caution.» Since they didn’t cancel the card of the other cardholder on my account, I asked what merchant caused the breach. They said they couldn’t say, but that I would find out «if it becomes public knowledge» (you mean, if I read about it in the newspaper?!). I never received any written communication at all — let alone an explanation or apology.
Sound has also eliminated the perks that Watermark used to offer, such as the high interest rate paid on the first $ 500 in deposit accounts. They are even charging a fee to use the coin-​counting machine if you go over a certain dollar threshold, which Watermark never did.
It’s sad and shameful what a poor operation Sound is running, and is made worse by the fact that Watermark was so good to begin with. Do yourself a favor and take your money elsewhere. Even a gigantic corporate bank couldn’t be THIS bad.

First off, let me say I’m surprised to see how many negative reviews have crept up about Sound after the merger. I haven’t experienced many of these troubles (thankfully!) but am going to post my personal pros and cons here. I am a basic customer with Sound, holding a checking and savings account but no loan products currently.
I opened my account in 2007 after moving to the Puget Sound. I saw Watermark’s teaser rates for their «First 500» checking and savings accounts, which had an even higher rate on the first $ 500 than BECU. I have generally held credit union accounts since being introduced to banking and went in with my roommate to a branch to open accounts. At the time, this went smoothly and I mostly ended up doing follow up banking at Stewart St. both before and after the new building. If you’re going to this branch, you get free parking in the garage (unless something has changed in the past few years).
I was disappointed that shortly before Sound and Watermark merged, the credit union completely cancelled the «First 500» program. My account converted to a normal savings account and a normal checking account. I now earn less than a dollar annually in dividends. I am pretty sure this is not the fault of Sound, but instead a result of changing banking regulations and increasing pressures on credit unions to pay into the NCUA/​ASI insurance funds.
Unfortunately, as part of 2008’s big banking collapse, the industrial credit unions (credit unions handling transactions for normal person credit unions) collapsed and made a huge strain on the insurance system. Alongside this, customers quit mortgaging houses and buying more expensive cars. So… credit unions started breaking even or even becoming insolvent. Branches closed. ATMs disappeared.
However, now that times have started to get better, BECU maintains its version of the program and still pays a dividend on deposits. I’m not sure why Sound doesn’t offer a product like this since many other institutions (smaller banks and credit unions) do. Watermark also dropped the CU24 [Credit Union 24] ATM network before the merger, which slightly reduced access to ATMs for deposits and withdrawals. US Bank either owns the network or has a good relationship with it, so previously a US Bank ATM was also a (free!) full service Watermark ATM.
My account hasn’t given me any troubles, and I felt that there were multiple mailings before the name change on branches (the actual merger was already going on in the back as I understand it) about electronic transactions, ATMs, debit cards and checks. I ordered Sound checks before the rush and have encountered no difficulties. I rarely make deposits, but my withdrawals at Co-​op ATMs in Portland have been fine.
Now for the negatives:
– Online banking — I find Sound’s vendor to be inferior and quite clunky to navigate. I rarely do much besides looking at my balance and getting out. Watermark’s previously had a quick access link to look at holds on my account, which is buried in Sound’s system and you cannot access this area via smartphone.
– The bill pay portion of the system also is more difficult to use and withdraws money later than the previous vendor. In the past, I could pay a bill and the money was removed shortly afterwards. While this might seem like a con to some, for me it was a pro.
– No more Finance Works or similar view in the online banking system is also disappointing. I had started to import all my financial data and had a really good picture of where all my spending was going. Then about a year later, the merger took place and I guess I would need to use
or some other external tool for this kind of information.
– No Saturday hours in the central city. When I lived in Seattle, it was frustrating to know that suburban customers could visit the credit union but we were locked out. I am glad that Watermark did answer (and Sound can) phones on Saturdays at least.

These guys suck. I joined Watermark/​Telco in 1977. Read the recent reviews. I agree.
I’ll be more specific. Watermark and US Bank had an agreement where I could use their ATM to deposit checks out here on Vashon. Sound quit that agreement so to deposit a check I’d have to board a ferry, drive to West Seattle, deposit a check at the BECU machine near the WS Thriftway, then pay $ 20 for the trip home. They never told me. Oh, and because I was trying to make a deposit at an unauthorized machine, the thing ate my card.
Two days before a five week trip to Europe. I had to drive to their branch in White Center to get a new one.
Do a smartphone deposit?
Not with these guys. I’m in the Florida Keys with mail getting forwarded. I get a check I’ve been getting for years, I do a mobile deposit, it is accepted then get an email the next day saying that that I need to bring the check into a branch to get it deposited.
I am more than 3000 miles from a branch. I’ll just pop in this afternoon!
So I deposit the same check to my US Bank account. They seem to know if the deposit is acceptable BEFORE they OK it.
The ONLY reason I still have a account with these bozos is that I’d have to redo a bunch of auto pays. Not worth the hassle. I just keep the amount to cover those auto pays here, not a penny more.
JUST TERRIBLE!

I have been with Telco/​Watermark/​Sound Credit Union since 1994. I am extremely unimpressed with Sound cu. I sent a deposit to the regular Watermark address (which I’ve been using since time began) Thursday before the merger. It was returned with no forwarding address. How is that the result of a professional bank? All the checks in the envelop were signed by me. That’s like cash just floating out there!
I loved Watermark. It was so convenient and I never had any problems. Yes, the website wasn’t the most updated, but everything worked.
I am not very happy with Sound at all. I am afraid to trust them. And these reviews only confirm those fears.

I loved Watermark, and never had problems with them. And now, there’s an ongoing issue with Sound’s online banking. The site is so consistently down on weekends that I’m starting to wonder if their IT department all got laid off for the switch from Watermark. It’s incredibly discouraging from a modern bank, and the only response from them is «Thanks for your feedback, we’re working on it.»
Well, Sound, and Lynnette H from Sound who replies to all the reviews; I also am working on something. It’s GETTING A NEW BANK.

Who knew the day would come that you could get better service and cheaper service at a big Bank than at a local Credit Union!
I am part of a ‘Shared’ Credit Union, as my credit union is not located in Seattle. I found WaterMark, now Sound Credit Union, blocks from my downtown apartment. Sound Credit Union charges me to get a, that is 1, one roll of quarters! I have been to Chase and Bank of America to purchase a roll of quarters, which I do not have an account, and they gladly exchanged my $ 10 dollar bill for a roll of quarters, for FREE!
DON’T GO TO SOUND CREDIT UNION, THERE ARE OTHER BRANCH LOCATIONS TO GO TO.

The changeover from Watermark to Sound has been amazingly bad for me. First, in the transition period, several charges went through and dragged my account down several hundred dollars. Since it was the transition period I was just directly paying bills instead of depositing. In that period I thought I didn’t have overdraft but apparently for that period I did and as a result autopay just waltzed through several times with its friend, $ 29 fee. When I explained the situation — that these charges wouldn’t have gone through otherwise, I haven’t been able to draw against a negative balance in the past — the Tacoma branch teller rolled her eyes and lectured me. When I asked for a return on my overdrafts from that period she said I only get one for the year and when I balked she almost refused. So I got soaked on that.
I’ve also had a couple of charges against a positive balance with no trace whatsoever of an attempted charge beyond my limit. I called all my services and utilities, none of them had any idea what I was talking about — there was no charge that was set to go through, so here I was with a solid positive balance and a $ 29 fee that I had to eat.
Finally, today, the last straw, I attempted to deposit a modest paycheck of $ 567 and I was handed a slip that said I have a hold until late next week. When I asked why I was told «I’m not sure, you must have gone under recently». The slip I was given with my hold said «code: ZZ reason: No reason given». What the? The nice teller decided to stop the deposit and said I should take it to Bank of America. I did. Bank of America decided that since I wasn’t a customer I would need to pay a $ 6 fee for the check so it ended up costing me money to just deposit my week’s meager paycheck.
The fact that Sound Credit Union is actually *costing* me money is staggering to me. To have a strong positive balance (strong for an overburdened honor student, anyway) be considered grounds for a burdensome hold is just distasteful to me, especially when the teller isn’t presented with adequate information to explain why. Then to have to eat fees just to conduct normal daily business?
Be very aware of Sound Credit Union’s practices and the experiences of others when you are considering your next financial institution. And be doubly aware if you’re reconsidering your current financial institution, like I am.

I would not recommend Sound Credit Union. I used to bank with Watermark Credit Union and when the two credit unions integrated/​migrated end of may, nothing but problems.
First, they kept sending my debit card to the wrong apartment unit. After I had asked them twice to update their records with the new address/​unit #. Then after 4 weeks of not receiving my debit card, they finally had it sent to one of their branches for pickup. I tried to call the branch directly, but they do not even have a direct # for their branches. You have to call their main line, and even then, they won’t direct you to the branches. I finally just went to the branch and it took them 20 mins to find the piece of mail with my debit card — talk about being unorganized.
Secondly, their customer service is so poor. I’ve dealt with two new tellers at the downtown branch and they both had poor customer service. No «hello», no smiles — just very unwelcoming. I was so used to the Watermark CU staff and every time I go in the branch I don’t see any of the old tellers.
I’m in the midst of switching credit unions, which is unfortunate. I definitely miss Watermark CU.

This is actually a Bank that calls itself a Credit Union but clearly hides behind the non-​profit status line. I’ve belongs to many Credit Unions but I cannot figure out how this outfit distinguishes itself any different than a profitable bank.
The fees they charge are sometime over-​inflated more so than let’s say… Chase.
I have both a Chase account and a Watermark account and believe it or not; I get way better rates/​fees from Chase.
I’ll be leaving these gangsters soon.

Had $ 26 in savings account. They took it all in fees. When I called, they said they sent several notices. I didn’t see them. Asked for them to send me a check, they said no, your account is closed.
Sounds like an ad for a credit union complaining about a national bank, but in fact it’s the credit union who confiscated the account.
If anyone at Watermark would care to research this, my account was 105 866. If you are willing to do the right thing and send me a check, I’ll delete or change this review.

Stopped into this branch to break a large bill into smaller ones The teller asked if I had an account, I said no, she said «we only make change for customers!». No sorry or anything.
Note to Watermark marketing: this is how you get new customers! As an added note, Wells Fargo, around the corner, made change for me without an issue.