Bank of America - Unending Problems
I don't like to write negative stuff and bring my readers down, but sometimes when my outrage is too high, I have to get it off my chest. I believe this post is in the public interest, so I decided to publish it. It's about my experiences with the worst bank I have ever used, Bank of America.
Many years ago I opened my very first business banking account for the very first small-business I ever held. I chose to use Bank of America, at the time they had a nice deal for small business accounts (I forget the details). I was happy to open a personal savings, personal checking, and business checking account with them.
I mean, a bank is a bank, right? They assign you an account number, which you use to identify your account with their bank. You can deposit money in and withdraw money out of your account, with that number.
You get a bunch of printed checks - you can fill one out, sign it, and hand it to someone as payment; when they take it to any bank, they can transfer the money from your account to theirs. You also get a debit-card, with which you can perform credit-card transactions to pay people, or debit-transactions to withdraw money. All banks and credit-unions are the same in this respect.
Every month, the bank mails you a statement of all activity that went on with your account. This helps you balance your checkbook, keep track of deposits and withdrawls, and verify there's no fraud going on - every withdrawl listed is something you expected.
All fine and dandy. Until the month after I moved.
Then the Problems Began
I moved, so I had a new street address. I went to the bank and gave my new address to the overly cheerful BofA teller. She joyfully typed it into the computer. But at the end of the month, I didn't get my statement in the mail.
This is weird, especially considering I forwarded my mail at the post office from the old address to the new one, and I had already been receiving some mail that had been redirected from the old address to my new place.
When I went to the bank to ask about it, a different (but equally ecstaticly overjoyed) teller said it had been mailed, she didn't know why I didn't get it in the mail. "Would you like a copy of the statement right now?" she smilingly asked. I said Yes. "Should I deduct the $8.00 fee from your account?" WHAT? $8 to print a 1-page statement for my tiny business that's not profitable yet? Yep, for business banking that is the cost (price accurate as of the time this occurred, probably 12 years ago). OK, whatever, I paid it because I just wanted my statement.
I had her re-enter my new address, which she was completely happy to do.
Next month - no statement.
Each time I'd ask at the bank, I got lots of excuses about time-delays updating the database, and assurances that it was fixed now.
Each month my statement didn't come.
Each month I went to the bank in person, and spent $8 to get my statement printed out.
I checked with the post office again, nothing wrong at their end.
This went on for about 4 months. I made phone calls to various departments at the bank, all to no avail. Everybody either told me "it looks like the right address is already in the computer," or "it will take 30-60 days for the change to take affect."
Now, I am a programmer and database designer by trade. You can't tell me it will take 30 days for data to be updated in a database. What the hell kind of database takes that long?!?
Oh sure, maybe there are multiple databases tied together, far, far apart. Using standard networking technologies today, why would that take more than 30 seconds to copy data between servers located around the world? From what I understand, banks don't use the Internet to transfer data internally, they use direct-connect lines that are even faster than the Internet.
Let's look at it another way. When I opened my account, I gave them my address only once. It went into the first database just fine. It was distributed to all the other databases that needed it in less than 30 days. I know this because I received my very first statement in the mail within 30 days of opening the account! So why should it take more than 30 days to re-distribute my new address to the same servers using the same distribution method? How can that be?!?
I wasn't receiving the statements, which means it was not being sent to either the old or new address, from what I can tell. How is that? If postal mail is stamped "do not forward," which many banks do, that's their feedback-loop to know when the address they have for a customer is no longer the best one. This way they can obtain the new address. Maybe BofA uses that technique; I don't know. If they do, they should have received the bounced statement, corrected their database, and re-sent the statement to the new address. That would result in a delay, from my viewpoint, but I would eventually have received it.
Let's suppose they do it wrong, and correcting the database does not result in re-sending the statement. I would have "lost" the first statement, then received the very next month's statement at my new address. I would then have only missed 1 statement, not 4 in a row.
Shouldn't a bank have the best technology available, to provide the best service to their customers? Don't banks value the accuracy of data, don't they want to keep it current? Don't banks MAKE MONEY based on accurate data, being a financial business and all? Can't they spend a little of that money upgrading their computers to perform properly for however many accounts they have in however many states they exist in, in the United States? If my home Linux-server-and-database, which costs less than $1000 to build, can exchange data quickly with other systems in under 1 minute, why can't a big bank mainframe do it?
That Was the End of That
After about 4 months of paying $8 for a replacement statement, I couldn't take it any longer. I went into BofA and closed all my accounts there. I moved everything to a new upstart bank named Compass Bank which promised Free Checking, even for business accounts. That was new and amazing at the time; since then most banks have adopted this policy, but Compass started it all. I do not work for Compass, I'm just a happy customer of theirs. And I'm sure there's other banks equally good out there today.
Fast Forward To Today
Why am I writing about painful old banking memories right now? Because the were all stirred up by my visit to BofA today.
I didn't want to visit BofA today, but I had to. I needed to send some money to someone I know who has an account there. The fastest way to transfer money between banks is NOT electronic (strangely enough). It's faster to drive to bank #1 and withdraw cash, then drive to bank #2 and deposit the cash. I won't write any more about how completely stupid this is in the year 2008 - that I have to physically visit both banks to perform a high-speed money transfer - I'll save that for another day.
So, after withdrawing some money from the first bank, I drive over to BofA and walk straight over to the little writing table with deposit slips on it. There isn't just 1 kind of deposit slip, oh no. There's 2 kinds: one for local deposits, and one for out of state deposits. What? I have to know what state they're in? I have their account number and the routing number, that should be all I need.
I start filling in the out-of-state deposit slip, because I know the person lives in Texas.
There's little boxes for nearly every state in the USA - separate box for each state - I'm supposed to mark what state they're in. This section literally uses up the upper 1/4 of the form.
I fill in the account number, person's name and the date, but don't get any further.
The teller lady at the front isn't helping anyone at the moment so she calls me over, which ordinarily would be annoying (if I knew what I was doing, I'd want to be left alone until I finished writing my deposit slip). So I went over to her counter and gave her the money to deposit, and the deposit slip, as she's smiling a big smile at me.
"What state was the account created in?" she asks me cheerfully after glancing at the form.
"I have no idea what state the account was created in. It's not my account. I'm trying to deposit money in someone else's account. The person lives in Texas," I reply.
She types on the computer and puts a mark in the "Georgia" box on the form (which I would never have guessed), and says, "what's the birthday of the person on the account?" What? What's their birthday? How am I supposed to know that?
I tell her, "I don't know, July something. I shouldn't have to know their birthday to put money in their account."
I imagine she was asking that for verification reasons, to make sure I didn't give her the wrong account number. It's easy to mis-read or mis-write numbers - we don't want the money going in the wrong account! But isn't the full name of the person enough verification? I wrote their full name on the deposit slip. This person's name is so unique, there surely is nobody else in the entire USA with the same name; nor, possibly, in the world.
I say to her, "I have the routing number and the account number. That should be enough to uniquely identify the right account." She says, "we're not doing a wire transfer, so I don't need the routing number." I say, "OK, so the account number is all you need to deposit this money."
"That and the state they created the account in," she adds. "See here, at the top of the deposit slip, you can check the box of which state the account was created in... unless your friend doesn't want you to know that," and she puts away the deposit slip.
At this point, just as she's handing me my deposit receipt, I can't take it any longer.
"Look," I say, "you just told me the account number is all you need." "Yes," she says, "we can look up the state for you from the account number." I say, "no other bank I've ever used has ever asked me what state the account is created in, nor should they ever have to. They never ask me the birthday of the person holding the account. The account number has all the info you need. Please tell your management to stop asking people what state the account was created in, because you don't need to ask that question. Do not make your customers do more work than they have to. If you can look it up, then you should always look it up, and stop asking. Please tell your manager to print new deposit slips that don't have little boxes for every state in the union on the top; it's completely unnecessary and confusing and frustrating for your customers."
"OK, thanks," she said, with a worried look on her face, at which time I turned and walked out.
I've been around long enough to know how businesses work. She'll probably gossip to her coworkers about that weird customer, to relieve the pain she felt from our conversation. I never intend to cause pain for anyone, in my life; but sometimes its unavoidable. There's probably a 10% chance she'll actually mention my suggestions to her boss. There's absolutely no chance that her boss will do anything about it, or if s/he does, there's no chance their higher-ups will actually listen and respond. I know this bank will never change their deposit slips, at least, not as a result of my efforts today. Only if a VP high up the chain makes it a new policy corporate-wide, will the deposit slips change.
My Conclusion
BofA has serious issues (many of them) which cause their customers lots of pain and agony. Their policy of how they deal with this has always been "be more friendly and smiley," rather than actually fixing the problems. This makes me doubly-angry when I detect it. And I always sense it with this bank. Why fix the problems when you can just sweet-talk your customers more? After all, PR is more important than quality, right? At least, in my experience, this has been BofA's underlying policy for the past 15 years, at all branches I have ever visited in Arizona - and it really pisses me off.
Do you use Bank of America? You're welcome to, if you want. I'm sure many people have had acceptable experiences with it, or the bank wouldn't exist today.
But I'm sticking to my promise: I will never hold any BofA account again for as long as I live. They don't deserve my money ever again.
OK, I feel better now.