Coast Capital agrees to cover some ATM fees during weekend shutdown

Carla Wilson / Times Colonist
February 8, 2013

Coast Capital Savings branches will be shut down this weekend to install new electronic banking systems

Coast Capital Savings Credit Union members can get ATM fees refunded after all - provided there’s no cost-free alternate branch nearby - during the financial institution’s temporary closure starting at 3 p.m. today.
A new banking system is being installed to serve the credit union’s 50 branches with 500,000 customers.
As a result, branches, ATMs, and online and telephone services will be closed from today at 3 p.m. until noon on Tuesday.
Coast Capital said members can avoid transaction fees by using ATMs at other credit unions or members of Exchange Network (www.the-exchange.ca).
Earlier this week, the credit union said that customers who use other financial institution ATMs (not owned by a credit union) would be charged fees by that financial institution and this charge would not be covered by Coast Capital. Locations of fee-free ATMs will be posted at Coast Capital’s ATMs.
But today, the credit union changed that decision to some degree, but only for customers in areas where another credit union ATM is not close by.
In these cases, “We will reimburse fees incurred from using an ATM machine that is not part of the credit union or Exchange Network. We want to help customers in this situation, but they will need to contact us afterwards to request a refund as this cannot be done automatically, said Divine Agodzo, Coast Capital spokesman.
“We want to be helpful to our customers, and as such, we don’t want to be prescriptive about distance. We will honour refunds if the customer says it was not easy for them to access a ding-free ATM,” he said.
“Customers do not need a receipt as we’d be able to verify the charge in the system. They just need to let us know the date of the transaction.”