WTF? Bank of America - Debit Card "Closure"

For the most part, today was the normal BS that the standard work day brings. But I did have a bit of an issue at the restaurant we chose to go to for lunch.

As some of you know, I've been purging the house and a friend of my DLH has been clearing out the garage for me. So I ordered a dumpster to make things easier for him so he wouldn't have to make dump runs. While we were waiting for our food to come, I remembered that I neglected to contact my trash service to schedule a pick-up for the dumpster so I could fill it up again. This essentially constitutes a new dumpster scheduling and I had to provide a credit card number.

I gave him my debit card number as I did before and it came back declined. I didn't think much of it because I didn't have my reading glasses on when I rattled off the number and just figured I screwed up. So I grabbed my Chase card as it is easier to read and ended the phone call.

Then it was time to pay for lunch. I placed my debit card with the bill and again, it came back declined.

WTF?

After I got back to work, I checked my bank account just to make sure there wasn't something funky going on. No... all fine there. So I called the number on the back of my card to find out what was going on.

After I described my adventures to the individual that answered the call, he left to check on the debit card number and came back to the phone indicating that my card had been closed due to potential fraudulent activity and a new one had been issued. And "Yes, we did not notify you."

WTF?

So I asked him why I wasn't notified. A similar situation happened earlier this year and I received a call both at home and on my cell instructing me to stop by a local branch and replace my card. So I pushed again. His less than informative reply indicated that they felt it was best to not notify the card users and then asked if I checked my mail. Now I'm not the greatest at checking my mail, (I typically check it once a week), but in this case I had just checked it yesterday. I had not received anything from BofA. So I pushed again informing him that the banks so desperately want us to use the debit cards, so why would they take such a lame action? He danced around that question and finally indicated that he didn't know. I then asked to speak to someone that did know and he told me there was no one to talk to in all of BofA.

At that point I produced a gutteral growl (literally), thanked him for his "service" and promised that if this happened again that I would switch banks. He didn't care.

Needless to say, when I got home I checked the mail. Sure enough, there was an envelope from BofA with a new debit card inside accompanied by a letter:

Note the 2nd bullet. How stupid of a statement is that? How can they possibly know when I've received the letter? How can they possibly know that my mailman is less efficient than most? Secondly, notice that this letter is not even dated.

The letter doesn't state the form of fraudulent activity beyond "third party" issues. Also, if I cannot rely on them to contact me for this issue, how can I rely on them to contact me if they find any suspicious behavior during their monitoring period. Since they've closed my card, it wouldn't affect me anyway.

I do all of my banking and bill pay on line through the BofA site. They could have easily sent me a message there. In fact, it would have been cheaper than printing off a zillion letters to enclose with the new card.

WTF?

The card was labeled with the standard sticker. Since the card was assigned a new number, they could have easily cancelled the old card upon activation of the new one.

Blah, Blah, Blah.

And how was your Wednesday?