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Stay Diligent Against Fraud

Federal Regulation Z

Federal Regulation Z

Questions About Your Statement

Please let us know right away if you have any questions about your statement. This notice contains important information about your rights and our responsibilities under the Fair Credit Billing Act.

Billing Questions

If you think your bill is wrong or if you need more information about your transaction on your bill, write to us (on a separate sheet) at:

Democracy Federal Credit Union
PO Box 25516
Alexandria, VA 22313-5516

Write to us as soon as possible. We must hear from you no later than 60 days after we sent you the first bill on which the error or problem appeared. You can telephone us, but doing so will not preserve your rights. In your letter, give us the following information:

  • Your name and account number.
  • Dollar amount of the suspected error.
  • Describe the error and explain, if you can, why you believe there is an error. If you need more information, describe the item you are not sure about. If you have authorized us to pay your credit card bill automatically from your share savings or share draft account, you can stop the payment on any amount that you think is wrong. To stop the payment, your letter must reach us three business days before the automatic payment is scheduled to occur.

Your Rights and Our Responsibilities

We must acknowledge your letter within 30 days, unless we have corrected the error by then. Within 90 days, we must either correct the error or explain why we believe the bill was correct. Once we have explained the bill, we have no further obligation to you even though you still believe there is an error, except as provided below. After we receive your letter, we cannot try to collect any amount you question or report you as delinquent. We can continue to bill you for the amount you question, including finance charges, and we can apply any unpaid amount against your credit limit. You do not have to pay any questioned amount while we are investigating, but you are still obligated to pay the parts of your bill that are not in question. If we find we made a mistake on your bill, you will not have to pay any finance charges related to any questioned amount. If we did not make a mistake, you may have to pay finance charges, and you will have make up any missed payments on the questioned amount. In either case, we will send you a statement of the amount you owe and the date it is due, unless you have agreed that your statement is correct. If you fail to pay the amount that we think you owe, we may report you as delinquent. However, if our explanation does not satisfy you and you write to us within 10 days telling us that you still refuse to pay, we must tell anyone we report you to that you have a question about your bill. And, we must tell you the name of anyone we reported you to. We must tell anyone we report you to that the matter has been settled between us when it finally is. If we do not follow these rules, we cannot collect the first $50 of the questioned amount, even if your bill was correct.

Credit Card Purchases

If you have a problem with the quality of property or services that you purchased with a credit card, and you have tried in good faith to correct the problem with the merchant, you may have the right not to pay the remaining amount due on the property or services. There are two limitations on this right:

You must have made the purchase in your home state or, if not within your home state, within 100 miles of your current mailing address. The purchase price must have been more than $50. These limitations do not apply if we own or operate the merchant or if we mailed you the advertisement for the property or services.

Change of Address

  • You must notify us in writing to change your address. Because we perform monetary transactions by phone request, it is for your protection and security that we do not accept change of address information over the phone.
  • The Credit Union reserves the right to destroy any mail returned to us as undeliverable.

Funds Availability

Your Ability To Withdraw Funds At Democracy FCU

Our policy is to make funds from your deposits available to you on the first business day after the day we receive your deposit. At that time, you can withdraw the funds in cash and we will use the funds to pay checks that you have written. For determining the availability of your deposits, every day is a business day except, Saturdays, Sundays, federal holidays and the Friday after Thanksgiving Day. If you make a deposit before 4:00 p.m. on a business day that we are open, we will consider that day to be the day of your deposit. However, if you make a deposit after 4:00 p.m. or on a day that we are not open, we will consider that the deposit was made on the next business day.

Special Deposits

Deposits Through a Democracy FCU Automated Teller (ATM) Machine

ATM machines are serviced and deposits are collected one time a day. All deposits made through an Democracy FCU ATM Machine after 8:00 a.m. will be considered to have been made on the next business day.

Longer Delays May Apply

In some cases, we will not make all of the funds that you deposited by check available to you on the first business day after the day of your deposit. Depending on the type of check that you deposit, funds may not be available until the fifth business day after the day of your deposit. However, the first $100 of your deposits will be available on the first business day of your deposit.