SDCCU Reviews

When doing online backing, a browser on a desktop is really the way to go. The this app online portal works very well and is the best way to go. If you need to use your phone and it’s small screen, simple tasks like viewing your balance, recent transactions, or transferring money between account are the meat and potatoes of the tasks you want to accomplish. SDCCU performs those functions just fine.

The problem is check deposits. This is really what you need the phone app for because it is not something you can do on your desktop. When it work, it works. And it works just fine. The problem is, more often than not, it doesn’t work. The best outcome is that SDCCU crashes. This happens quickly and I know to move on to some other task. Sometimes, however, it pauses, or thinks for a while. Sometime the deposit goes through and sometimes it comes back with an error to try again. I try and try because there is the chance it *will* work and I do the happy dance because my check has been deposited. Or doesn’t quite work and I finally give up because I’ve been wasting too much time with SDCCU . And I wait until tomorrow to give it another try.

To end on a positive note, the Touch ID works fine and is an amazing convenience. I hate typing in passwords on the small screen and my banking password is long and complex because of the importance of that account.

I’ve been with this app for the past 4 years and I thought SDCCU would be much better than the last one that they had...I was wrong! SDCCU is very slow and crashes way too many times. I have to continuously close SDCCU and try again. That’s if it hasn’t crashed on me already! For a newer app, this looks outdated and it should have way more features. I shouldn’t have to call this app and be on hold for 20 minutes just to try and make any sudden or small changes to my account. I love this bank but mobile banking is the biggest downside to being a member with them. Mobile banking is important especially in this day in age where we use our technology for practically almost everything. I will say though, I do appreciate being able to use Face ID. This is one of the more updated features about SDCCU. I would suggest other features such as being able to put in a travel notice through SDCCU , notifications for everything, being able to put a hold on your card, changing your pin, etc. Please consider a new update which doesn’t have as many bugs and allows members more features!

I’d grant on faith it must work on some phones, but they have not tested even a “normal” variety. I have an iPhone 8 running iOS 13.3. It’s not that old and I keep it updated. SDCCU funnels me immediately to a “Terms and Conditions” page before I can do anything. That sounds normal, but without an “I accept” button they’ve trapped me. After 5 minutes of reading painful legalese, it finally gave me a box to click, to accept the terms. Still no escape. No submit button. I try clicking a link to move along, and the page resets. Same terms and conditions, but the accept box is gone. Another 5 minutes, no box. Maybe it will work on my home WiFi.

SOLVED! Sit on Terms and Conditions for 10 minutes. Receive pop up you are about to be logged out for inactivity. Click to stay connected. Check box returns! Check the box, then swipe the box up. The continue button appears, and you escape.

Theory - this may be them not handling Apple display-zoomed and bold text. But I don’t want to spend another half hour debugging their app for free.

Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an app on my iPhone the crashes as much as the this app app crashes. I have been with them for five or six years now and I’ve had their app loaded. There isn’t one day, and I mean that not one day that will go by that when you try to log onto SDCCU it gives you an error message to call the 800 number SDCCU is simply not working, and forget logging on with the face recognition, that is even worse. I can log onto my iPhone in the middle of the night in a dark bedroom and logon, but try logging onto the this app app and bright sunlight in the middle of the day and you’ll get an error message. I have complained about this through Facebook, and I’ve complained about it in the bank, and virtually every teller I speak to says oh yeah we hear about SDCCU all the time. Don’t even try to logon after midnight before 6 AM you will always get an error message.

(25 Oct. 2019) I just updated my account online to use the new Internet Branch technology. As far as I can tell, there's a lot more security, with the addition of sms and email alerts for certain events (transactions, balance thresholds, et c.) added.

BUT BEWARE: If you want to be able to use your iOS 9 device to do your this app banking, you must NOT transition to the new Internet Branch! Why? SDCCU will not function properly under iOS 9. It fails in a number of ways:
a. It doesn't show the security verification menu when the user logs in (options to send a text or to call the phone number associated with the account)
b. It doesn't show the Accounts or Transfers tabs within SDCCU at all. The little "loading" animation just sits there spinning and spinning and spinning and nothing happens.
If you are still using iOS 9, DO NOT TRANSITION TO THE NEW INTERNET BANKING, AND DO NOT DELETE YOUR "OLD" this app BANKING APP. Once you transition your account to the new Internet Banking technology, the old this app mobile banking app WILL NOT WORK.

If, on the other hand, you're using a newer version of iOS, SDCCU is just very very slow to transition between the different views within SDCCU . So, it's a nice start, and it looks good, and it has much more capability than the old app, but it needs a lot of improvement under the hood in order to function at a reasonable speed.

I never write reviews but in this case I will make an exception. This new program needs serious review by the this app Supervisory Committee. In a nod to security (which is fine) the developers completely forgot about service to the members. The system interface with the user is terrible. When you get on (if you do), the loading is very slow and normally freezes while it is ???working??? I find that I am often stuck and the only way out is to close the program and try to re establish connection. The developers need to go back and figure out who the audience is that they need to satisfy, the members, and we are not all tekkies. This feels like a program that was pushed out to meet an set deadline rather than a completed product. I have Apple products (iMac, iPhone, iPad). They all are relatively new, and all have the latest updates. From reading the reviews,I suspect the problems are the same Windows users.

SDCCU is ALWAYS crashing. It’s excruciatingly slow. And it’s been like this for the last 4 years that I’ve had it. If an issue is fixed, 10 others appear. This is by far the worst banking app I’ve ever used. I was out of town for a little over a week and had a check I needed to put into my account, and I’d look multiple times a day every day trying to enter it, but SDCCU would either not let me log in or the mobile deposit screen wasn’t working or it would just freeze and crash. I wasn’t able to enter my check until I got back and ended up just going to the physical ATM. Unfortunately, this was not the first time this has happened either. I couldn’t even log in to activate my new card, so I ended up calling to activate it, but what’s the point of having SDCCU that does nothing but take up space on my phone?

SDCCU is as awful as the old app.

The developers should be given $100 each to open accounts at Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo so they understand what basic use-cases and functionality are required for modern “online banking”.

For example, between the mobile app and online banking there is *no* (not a single) way to pay an auto loan from an external account. You can deposit a check electronically—and wait 3 days, interact with this app at least twice (most banks have cleared this hurdle since Check21 some two decades ago)—or you can call and talk to some person in San Diego trying to be helpful and “add value”. The real helpfulness and value-add would be letting me pay my loan online in less than a minute. It turns out the wait times are quite long today so I’m waiting now 20 minutes to get a call back... probably there’s a flu epidemic in San Diego that’s knocked out the 20 kids manning the call center.

For the most part, SDCCU does what it is supposed to. You can check balances, etc. but I can do that through the website, either on my phone or desktop. What I can’t do through the website is make a mobile deposit. And SDCCU makes it virtually impossible to do that. Every time I try, it takes me 40 or 50 attempts to get SDCCU to accept my photos of checks. I know some folks might think the numbers are an exaggeration, but they’re not. I have tried taking pictures of the checks in different lights, on different surfaces, using the flash on the camera, etc., and NOTHING works! I have used mobile deposit apps from other financial institutions and never have a problem. But not here! I ALWAYS have trouble with this. I love this app, but they have to fix this! Please!!!!

A new update occurred allowing for biometric authentication. Then it states that my phone does not appear to support it. It completely supports it, along with facial and voice authentication. Sometimes when logging in it states my information is incorrect, but then it allows me to log in if I input it again (I have my information saved as an auto input). Sometimes it doesn’t show my pending payments till almost a week later, which has affected me before by giving me an overdraft for I bought something then transferred money from my savings to my checking a couple days before the pending payment popped up and processed. Not sure if that’s an error through SDCCU or the bank itself, but they didn’t care about the issue when I notified them over the phone.

I had the same kind of trouble as all the 1-star reviews until I read the developer’s note in SDCCU Store: SDCCU won’t work until you “enroll” in the new online banking. All I did was log into my account online and apparently that enables this new app. I then logged into SDCCU and successfully and quite easily made a deposit. All account balances were also accurate. If anything changes, I’ll be updating this review but it seems fine after you jump over the hurdle. So if you’re having trouble RTFM 🙃 iPhone 7 current iOS as of this review Cheers

Absolute hot garbage. The online/app experience is leading me to getting another bank. Imagine SDCCU only working half the time. You’re out on the town, about to do something, and need to check your balance or move some money around. You go to log on, and get that incredibly annoying error message. So you go on safari and try to log on. Still not working. this app makes it impossible to look at my own money half the time, SDCCU is an upgraded version of the last one, too, and its just as bad as the old one. It feels like they have one person running the whole app for all their customers or something. The headaches caused by this bank are severe and honestly in todays day an age, a seamless online experience is a MUST and a necessity. Do yourself a favor and find a different bank

I never write reviews, but this update is so horrendous that i had to write one, and i see that I’m not alone. This new app no longer supports facial recognition which made it super easy to log in, fast balances do not appear on the login page even though i have activated them multiple times, SDCCU is incredibly slow to load Taking about 5 seconds to load anything you click on once you are logged in.

The old app was easy to use, convenient, and speedy. This new app is clunky, difficult to use and hardly cooperates. About half the times i log in I’m presented with a loading screen that won’t go away and I’ll have to force close SDCCU to reset it and try again. Please fix fast balances, bring facial recognition back and PLEASE fix the loading times/freezing

New app doesn’t give any advantage but a lots slow or freezes when you use it on mobile . this app leadership should know the problem with new app and should find better contractors to work on it
as business owner with Business accounts with this app, the worst part is the new version does not allow to choose the Dates range to download account information to QuickBooks software for business bookings. As business, it needs every quarter to download account information to bookkeeping for generating Business quarterly balance sheet and quarterly financial statement. The older version give all the choice and function.
Very hard to work with this app now if you are a business owner. Because when you try to explain to their employees, they don’t understand what do you talking about!!!

The aesthetic of the new app seems pleasing and welcoming but looks can be deceiving; the entire system is flawed. First of all, it crashes more than any app I’ve seen, always saying “error occurred, try again later” nearly every time I need to check my account. The biometrics system takes multiple tries to actually work and even then sometimes requires you to type in your information. The display of transactions is confusing and the entire app seems more inefficient than the old one ever was. Checking my account used to be easy and simple, now it has become a chore. If you haven’t downloaded SDCCU yet, don’t bother, unless this app-NEW decides to update and fix its system issues.

We just switched over to this app a couple of weeks ago. Out of the 8-9 times I have tried to use SDCCU or website to bank, it wouldn’t let me log on or the website was down for 4 of them. Today was especially frustrating, and I waited on hold with their 877 number for a long time (received call back over an hour later) to find out their website was down and there’s nothing they could do. “It’s not big bank banking; it’s better”?—in this case, I don’t think so. I absolutely rely on being able to do our accounts several times a week, but so far this app and its app have been extremely unreliable.

At the moment, SDCCU seems to lag and clicks seem to delay; at least it takes a noticeable split second of pause before moving to the next screw.

I do not like this uses a browser interface at some pages. The point of developing an app (I would hope) is that it is suppose to simplify and streamline the processes. It’s supposed to be a pleasant experience. You are supposed to enjoy using it and it supposed to be pleasing to the eye (design, aesthetic, etc). Unfortunately, it just seems like I’m on the website. The font was just as small when checking the activity.

I dunno, like I said, I hope this is a tough draft. If so, I wonder why launch so prematurely. I love this app and since I’ve been banking with them for a awhile. But I convinced my fiancé to switch because I live them. But this is definitely making me look bad. She’s not having the greatest first impression.

I’m not writing this because I don’t like this app. I’m writing this because I love this app. I just need them to invest a little bit more to enhance the experience. :)

iPad version will no longer switch from the default startup portrait view to landscape view. Cuts off all of right hand column. No way to resize. Old version worked fine. Tech support said it was my iPad and to adjust zoom and font size. Did both and have exact same results.
One of the worst app updates ever. Bill pay redesign is mostly useless on iPhone and iPad. I’ve been in the software design business for 25 years and this interface must have been done by someone who never uses or understands how others use the program. this app should be assumed of itself. Old version worked extremely well for many years. I used it on a regularly weekly basis. Now it’s only functional on the PC or Mac.

When SDCCU works it’s fine, but when it doesn’t it of course happens at the worst times and it makes it so frustrating. I recently started having issues with it a couple months ago, issues logging in when I know my info is correctly entered, issues getting it to load properly even on wi-fi, and issues transferring monies between accounts, it just says unable try again and it takes forever, with an infant it’s way more difficult to walk into a branch otherwise I would. Would love SDCCU if it worked like it was meant to.

This bank is not transparent. If you don’t question, you will have hidden charges. I had been seeing a $2.00 charge every month which I don’t know why. When I enquired, i was told that it’s because I don’t have SDCCU in my mobile, and I am being sent a paper statement every month. I have never experience that in my other bank. I also open an account for my son. After sometime I went to check and I was told that it’s dormant and the state will take it. I told the male receptionist that I never got a notification. He insisted I was mailed one. Only to check that they have my old address, which I updated my address when I moved. I am disappointed.

I will start off by saying the new app seems to add better security, which I appreciate, but other than that there are no other benefits.
It is slow with loading between pages, the user interface is ugly and outdated looking, pending transactions show up the same as pending deposits until you actually click on them, and even then deposits still have a negative next to the amount- it just says deposit rather than transaction in the details. It is not very user friendly with convoluted pathways to getting to where you need to go.

I miss the old app.

I upgraded to the new this app internet branch which required downloading the new mobile banking up. I wish I could go back. I don’t like the interface using the desktop browser and I hate this painfully slow app. I need to login tomorrow to see if the payment I sent actually went through. I’m not new at this. I have been using online banking services for over 28 years (at one of those bad big banks). So that’s probably more years than some of SDCCU developers been alive.

“Made the switch” only because I was concerned that if I didn’t, eventually the old systems would be dropped and I’d have to start from scratch in the new one, having to input all my biller information all over again.

I was happy with the old system; worked great (and fast) on both my iPhone and Mac.

Though the transition was surprisingly easy, moving between pages in the new system is extremely slow; I’m certain I spend more time on SDCCU staring at the “spinning wheel” than any actual screen.

As for the layout of the pages and information, initially it seems a bit jumbled and not so easy to navigate visually. I like it simple.

But, unless this app listens to the complaints and improves it, I imagine I’ll get used to it.

“Spinning Wheel” wait time after:

Thumbprint login: 16 seconds

Opening “checking” category: 47 seconds

“Back button” from a viewing transaction: 14 seconds

Opening “primary savings”: 9 seconds

Sheesh!

I work on my new iPad and portrait mode is irredeemably frustrating. And while just trying to accept the conditions the program froze. Not my iPad’s fault or the wifi, the old program worked fantastically.

Also, when setting up with the new banking, no matter how many times I tried or how long I waited no text ever came. No, I do not have special blocks on my sms. Finally had to just take a call.

Increasingly more frustrated ever time I try to do my banking. They should have finished preparations before making us go through this mess.

I expected switching to a “new” app would mean improvements but so far it’s way clunkier. Slower, and just overall worse. I hope they improve it, I wish I would have looked at other reviews before making the switch.

The functionality of this new version of SDCCU is MUCH improved. I get to see extended history, pay bills, etc.... BUT it’s terribly slow. I have several different financial apps that I use (including a really good one from Cal Coast CU. None of those apps spin nearly as long as this one. I’m giving this 3 stars for the improved functionality. Great work there. Speed needs to improve to rsrb more stars.

Their systems are not accurate and I am currently in the process of taking legal action against overdraft fees which were clearly system errors. The customer service reps are neglectful & will leave you on hold for 15+ min then come back and say there is nothing they are capable to do. I highly doubt a supervisor ever reviewed my account in detail. I should have pulled out of this bank after their FIRST class action lawsuit a few years back due to the same issue with overdraft fees. If you have the choice pick CalCoast or Mission Federal.

Big miss: Does not adopt landscape view when running on iPad (and cannot change from portrait to landscape by turning device).
Slow when transitioning between screens.
Got stuck, twice, with “spinning donut of death,” when transitioning between screens.
I was able to enroll finger print reader, and SDCCU presents lots of detail for a mobile implementation. Great start!

SDCCU asks for verification with three options. Text, call or answer questions. I selected text, gave me a message immediately that it can not verify my identity using the option selected. I then tried the other options and got the same message. I have no way to log on using the mobile app!!! And there’s no “help” selection to go to. SDCCU is obviously not ready for customer use. Hold off as long as you can before switching over.