Taking care of the members meant covering a bank's payroll error last week as the $890 million Gesa Credit Union of Richland, Wash. ended up guaranteeing direct deposit accounts for some of the 1,500 government contractor employees linked to a U.S. Department of Energy nuclear facility in the area.
"We had lots of calls from our members Friday morning worried about the delay and overdrafts," said Tim Andrew, assistant vice president-marketing.
By nightfall the computer glitch by U.S. Bank had been fixed and direct deposit accounts restored but in the meantime, Gesa through its "Solutions Center" had made arrangements to handle overdrafts.
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"You can say we were proactive in this situation and many members appreciated it," said Andrew. The direct deposit funds were destined to some 13 contractor companies doing work for the Hanford nuclear waste facility, one of the area's largest employers.
Staff in the solutions center ended up calling selected members who might have had account problems to let them know that the CU had "become their advocate," said Andrew.
Local news reports on the direct deposit foulup also noted that HAPO Community CU, also of Richland, had performed similarly as Gesa, manually loading pay records into the system.
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