Reason #24 why you should never bank with Bank of America
A few months back I had mentioned that Elf and I wanted to divorce ourselves from Bank of America and were looking at moving to a credit union. Well, we are on our way to finishing that divorce. It took longer than we expected because we pay a lot of our bills through EFT, and changing the EFT accounts differ for every single business (pain in the butt, let me tell you).
But even after the checking and savings accounts are shut down, we are still stuck with the Visa credit card at BoA until Elf gets a job, because neither one of us qualifies for a credit card from anywhere with him unemployed and me not making a cent of profit on my business.
So, in the mail about a week ago, I get this letter supposedly from BoA. I hadn't taken a close look at it until today. It stated that I might have experienced difficulty in using my PIN number for my credit card at an ATM (we never use our credit cards at ATMs) and gave me my actual PIN number.
Then it had a form at the bottom: PIN Code Request Form. This form gave me the option of selecting a new PIN number by writing it in the boxes provided
I immediately smelled scam, which became worse when I looked on the legitimate BoA website and could find neither the PO box mentioned on the return envelope nor the phone number listed. So, I called the phone number on the back of the credit card itself.
And I have discovered that BoA is not just idiotic, but dangerously idiotic.
First and foremost, the person I finally spoke to informed me that he couldn't find any indication that there were PIN declines on the system for my credit card, but they must be there because the system sent it out and he didn't think it was fraud. Then he went out of his way to assure me that if there was any fraud that occurred it wouldn't matter because they have excellent fraud protection on the account and would I like to change the PIN because they had several methods to do so...
I finally interrupted him to let him know that this is not what I needed to find out. I wanted to confirm that the letter in my hand actually came from BoA, because I would be very disturbed to find out that BoA was asking for people to change their PIN numbers in this manner. He didn't seem to get it at all. He also never asked what the phone number or PO box on the letter were, to confirm that they did, actually, come from BoA. He did state that as far as he knew the letter was from BoA.
What I got from all of this was:
1. The automated systems run the day-to-day operations of Bank of America. When the automated systems can be bothered to, they let the "ugly bags of mostly water" know some of what they do.
2. BoA doesn't seem interested in actually confirming whether mail fraud is taking place, just assuming that if the automated system said a letter had been sent, that the one in my hand must be it.
3. BoA is managed by a bunch of fucking morons who think that financial security means changing your PIN number by writing it in a set of little boxes, sealing it in an unsecured enveloped (that you can see through), mailing it through the unsecured postal mail, and finding it in the hands of who knows how many people before it is typed by the last person who, btw, now knows your PIN number, into the system.
DON'T EVER THINK THAT BANKING WITH BANK OF AMERICA IS A GOOD IDEA
But even after the checking and savings accounts are shut down, we are still stuck with the Visa credit card at BoA until Elf gets a job, because neither one of us qualifies for a credit card from anywhere with him unemployed and me not making a cent of profit on my business.
So, in the mail about a week ago, I get this letter supposedly from BoA. I hadn't taken a close look at it until today. It stated that I might have experienced difficulty in using my PIN number for my credit card at an ATM (we never use our credit cards at ATMs) and gave me my actual PIN number.
Then it had a form at the bottom: PIN Code Request Form. This form gave me the option of selecting a new PIN number by writing it in the boxes provided
I immediately smelled scam, which became worse when I looked on the legitimate BoA website and could find neither the PO box mentioned on the return envelope nor the phone number listed. So, I called the phone number on the back of the credit card itself.
And I have discovered that BoA is not just idiotic, but dangerously idiotic.
First and foremost, the person I finally spoke to informed me that he couldn't find any indication that there were PIN declines on the system for my credit card, but they must be there because the system sent it out and he didn't think it was fraud. Then he went out of his way to assure me that if there was any fraud that occurred it wouldn't matter because they have excellent fraud protection on the account and would I like to change the PIN because they had several methods to do so...
I finally interrupted him to let him know that this is not what I needed to find out. I wanted to confirm that the letter in my hand actually came from BoA, because I would be very disturbed to find out that BoA was asking for people to change their PIN numbers in this manner. He didn't seem to get it at all. He also never asked what the phone number or PO box on the letter were, to confirm that they did, actually, come from BoA. He did state that as far as he knew the letter was from BoA.
What I got from all of this was:
1. The automated systems run the day-to-day operations of Bank of America. When the automated systems can be bothered to, they let the "ugly bags of mostly water" know some of what they do.
2. BoA doesn't seem interested in actually confirming whether mail fraud is taking place, just assuming that if the automated system said a letter had been sent, that the one in my hand must be it.
3. BoA is managed by a bunch of fucking morons who think that financial security means changing your PIN number by writing it in a set of little boxes, sealing it in an unsecured enveloped (that you can see through), mailing it through the unsecured postal mail, and finding it in the hands of who knows how many people before it is typed by the last person who, btw, now knows your PIN number, into the system.
DON'T EVER THINK THAT BANKING WITH BANK OF AMERICA IS A GOOD IDEA