Now we get into my first rule of life. If there's a private choice for purchasing goods, or especially manipulating money, it's much better than a publicly traded company. A private organization is beholden to you, the customer, not shareholders. Publicly traded companies would whore out their mothers for a profitable next quarter, without any concern for the future. Private companies rely more on their names, and if they fuck their their customers over too bad, they won't be around for long.
True, credit unions are not actually owned by a private person, but by the individual account holders. It's designed almost like a cooperative. Even to the point where they may hold meetings to elect the managers/operating officers, where the persons casting those ballots are the individual account holders of that bank. As a result you generally get friendlier service, lower loan rates and less overall bull shit.
However, with everything there is an advantage/disadvantage. Credit unions are often inconvenient and/or have limited technology and/or available services. I.E. i have a credit union with the state when I was a state employee. I used them to refinance my first house. I moved to a new house in a bordering county and still retain ownership of the old property. Unfortunately now there are absolutely no branches in the county. I have to drive around 30 miles to get to the nearest credit union branch. Also this credit union doesn't allow online bill pay through their online services. You can only view balance and loan balance.
Also they don't have electronic services for wire transfer, so if I try to make an online bill payment to them, it takes 4 days from my BOA account, verses my cable bill (Comcast) takes only a day. So ultimately I have to mail a check to pay my mortgage.