In contrast to most of the articles posted here, this is a personal story of all our credit unions merging.
Back in the old days, our company had a credit union, which was originally named for our abbreviated name, RTN (also our stock symbol). It eventually became dissociated with our company, whereupon some genius redefined the acronym as "Responsive to Needs". Pretty good, eh?
Along came Mrs. Scotch, who worked at the Merrimack Valley Credit Union, or MVCU.
We kept both accounts, and each of us had debit and credit cards from both RTN and MVCU. But a little less than 2 years ago, MVCU bought RTN. So our RTN checking and savings accounts got absorbed into the MVCU umbrella, but they continued to issue RTN cards. So we still had an RTN credit card and debit card, and each was linked to the same accounts with the same numbers, but now we would access them through the MVCU website, using our existing sign-in.
It was confusing to manage them; we had to note how they were ordered and displayed on the website, and we made sure to refer to the ending digits of each account number. And you might think it would be easier to just close one set of accounts. But we had all sorts of direct deposits, auto deductions, and other links to each account, it would be a hassle to merge them. Besides, we had a system where each of us would deposit our pay, and be responsible for certain bills.
Well, a year ago, they announced that MVCU was becoming BrightBridge Credit Union.
But since the announcement, nothing really happened, except about a month ago, they replaced my RTN credit card with an MVCU credit card, which seemed odd. And now, the MVCU website transfers to BrightBridge. And then the other day, my RTN debit card stopped working, because it had expired. I asked for a replacement, and they sent me a BrightBridge debit card. But it's still linked to the checking account I call "RTN". And the new MVCU credit card links to my "RTN" credit card account.
Today, I received another BrightBridge debit card in the mail, with a different number. Turns out, it replaces our MVCU debit card, and is linked to our "MVCU" checking account. They also sent us cards to replace the MVCU credit cards. Those now say "Elan". I just had to use permanent marker on my 2 BrightBridge debit cards, to label one "RTN", and the other "MVCU". I don't think this is going to end well.
