Conference 7.286::dcu

    How about NOT sending statements in most months with no activity? Use
    the following algorithm for determining which months to send a
    statement:

    1. Always send a statement at the beginning of January, April, July,
    and October.  Those are the statements when interest (if any) shows.

    2. Send a statement in other months ONLY if the account showed
    activity.

    Additionally, the January statement for everybody could double as the
    IRS 1099(?).  That would save one mailing every year.

    How about consolidating mailings within a family?
    
    For tax reasons initially I opened separate accounts for each of the 4
    members of my family (including myself). Each of these accounts has an
    account number which is clearly related to my badge number, which is my
    account number.
    
    It should be trivial to send all of the statements for this group of
    accounts in one envelope instead of the four that I now receive.
    
    Incidently the suggestion about not mailing statements for non-active
    accounts is already done. I only receive statements for the family
    members accounts once each quarter, since they're generally not active.
    But when I do get them they are all in separate envelopes!
    
    chris.

	There are a couple of problems with consolidating mailings. Primary
	is that not all member need to be living together. My mother in law
	has an account but she only lives at my house 4-5 months a year. I'd
	have to remail statements. Next is that members can still be members
	after a divorce, seperation, or as kids move out of the house. Privacy
	then becomes a big concern.

	Reducing mailings to inactive accounts seems to be pretty low risk 
	though.

			Alfred

    Re .3:
    
>   There are a couple of problems with consolidating mailings. Primary
>   is that not all member need to be living together. My mother in law
>   has an account but she only lives at my house 4-5 months a year. I'd
>   have to remail statements. Next is that members can still be members
>   after a divorce, seperation, or as kids move out of the house. Privacy
>   then becomes a big concern.
    
    You point is well-taken, but I think there's a workable solution. 
    First off, it only makes sense to consolidate statements that are sent
    to the same address.  That takes care of your mother-in-law, who should
    have her statements sent to her "permanent" address.
    
    As for privacy, it wouldn't be all THAT hard for the DCU to announce
    that they plan to consolidate mailings in this way and to give members
    the ability of opting for separate mailings.  (There is programming
    involved in doing consolidated mailings anyway, so adding an account
    flag or extending the street address to force uniqueness should be no
    large incremental burden.)

    
    	Re: .all of the above
    
    	For the "low activity" accounts, how about instead of just saying
    "no activity this month = no statement", allow the members to _also_
    ask for just a quarterly statement to override the rules?  Its very
    rare that I have a month with absolutely no activity, but yet I still
    could do without the monthly statement.  (Especially since nearly all
    of my transactions are done at teller stations where I get the new
    balance right away.)
    
    	And as for sending one envelope per household -- this is a good
    idea.  Its bad enough that I've received around 140 check
    reconciliation forms since joining Digital and never used a single one,
    but both my wife and I get one each month, we both get the inserts, etc.
    I'd love to be able to ask for a merged statement and a single
    envelope.  (While we're totally redesigning the statement distribution,
    can I also ask to not get any more of those reconciliation forms? :-)
    
    							-craig

RE: .5

Me too.  All of .5 is exactly the same for me.

K.

    re: .5
    
    I agree about requesting the statement, however, they always have the
    option of using EasyTouch to find out what their balance is. I would
    like to see an analysis posted of how many accounts have no activity
    other than interest being posted. Also, we need to do an analysis of
    how much is ACTUALLY costs to send out statements vs. how much revenue
    we realize from lending the money which is the account. Again, if we
    can cut costs, we realize more interest paid and this might entice
    people to invest money in DCU which is paying higher returns.

        Re: .5

>    but both my wife and I get one each month, we both get the inserts, etc.
>    I'd love to be able to ask for a merged statement and a single
>    envelope.

        It sounds like you want one account, not two.

        					B.J.

    
    	Re: .8
        
    	No, I don't want one account, I want the two that we've
    historically had.  (Both my wife and I had separate DCU accounts before
    we even met.)  The multiple checking and savings accounts have
    specific short- or long-term usages that I don't want to see
    intermingled. 
    
    							-craig

�    Additionally, the January statement for everybody could double as the
�    IRS 1099(?).  That would save one mailing every year.
    
    I thought it already did.

    I closed an account and I still get a statement for a balance of 5
    cents ! This has been going on for some time. Apparently 5 cents
    of interest crept into the account after I closed it and it never 
    got closed.
    
    
    Mike

At a bank I once used, a low balance fee crept in when I closed the
account, leaving me with a negative balance!  The bank told me to just
forget about it, but I said no way, I wanted them to fix it so their
computers didn't think I owed them anything.  

	Enjoy,
	Larry

PS -- As much as I'd like to get all four statements (me, my wife, and
two kids) in one envelope, it may be very costly to make such a change.
I speculate that it might be costly since it seems to be a fundamental
assumption in the DCU systems (and at all other banks/etc I've used)
that accounts with different numbers are entirely unrelated.  Changing
a fundamental assumption in a software system carries risk of introducing 
bugs -- imagine the nightmare of lots of statements being mailed to the 
wrong addresses while the new system is debugged!  Still, it's a nice idea,
and I hope that it can someday be implemented.  But if it's hard to do, I'd 
rather that DCU management kept its attention on other things right now.

It may be that the good will of members who are not charged any fees (no
matter what their loan/account status is) is worth what it costs DCU to
service their accounts. After all, satisfied members are more likely to
up their account balances, take out loans, open IRAs, etc. than are members
upset over being charged fees.

For example, Eddie Bauer's unlimited return policy operates on this principle --
lose money on the individual transaction (by accepting a return no matter
when or where purchased, with or without receipt) but retain a satisfied
customer who will buy again. In the short term, the store loses. But in the
long term, the store gains.

However, I can't form an opinion about DCU's situation because, once again,
I don't know any of the facts:

o How many of these accounts are there? What percentage of DCU accounts?

o For how long has the average account been unprofitable? Does the number
   of unprofitable accounts vary seasonally (More after Christmas and 
   in late summer?) or does an account, once unprofitable, tend to remain
   that way forever ($5 left forgotten in an account?)

o How much does DCU believe it costs overall to maintain these accounts? (And how 
  does this compare to DCU's loan losses?)

o How much per account?

o How is this figure arrived at? (How much for mailing, for producing
   statements, for sending flyers, for data storage, etc?)

Once I have some information about the costs, then I can decide whether or not 
DCU can afford to pay this price for satisfied members.

    This has been in-active for a while. What has been done to investigate
    controlling costs for inactive accounts?
    
    I am sure that there must be a way to do this. Even if we are forced to
    mail a statement, we don't need to mail a statement. We simply need to
    send a postcard saying:
    
    	There was no activity on your account for the month of Feb 1993.
    
    	If you wish to inquire as to your balance, please use the DCU
    	Easytouch system or call customer service at 1-800-DCU-TRYS to
    	speak to a customer service representative.
    
    A postcard only costs $.19 to mail and there is minimal paper, no
    envelope, etc. 
    
    This savings would mean extra income to those accounts (if they meet
    minimum balance requirements) an extra income to all those who active
    accounts.