Since I visited my son in Redmond, WA regularly, I opened a bank account in a small local bank that had a branch in the supermarket he shopped at. When I started to get a small social security payments, I had them deposited there. In the fullness of time, the small local bank was taken over by BoA (and that supermarket branch closed). The bank card was replaced by a BoA card that doubled as a debit card and I would use it from time to time to pay for stuff in the US.
Well, a month or so ago, I tried it and it was declined because the expiration date of the card had expired (in 2023) and they hadn’t sent a replacement. I tried to get a replacement using their online system. But they insisted I was not eligible to apply online, call the following number. So I called. It turned out that they would not send a replacement without verifying my identity, which is done via a texted number. But wait, their system cannot send a text to a phone registered outside the US. After 15 minutes of talking the best he could offer me was that I should go to the nearest branch of BoA and identify myself. Well, there are no branches in Montreal.
I immediately wrote a check for nearly the entire balance and cashed it locally. They did pay it. If only I could get the social security to send my money to a local bank, but I have heard that they have been DOGEd into total dysfunction and I am afraid to ask them anything.
The thing is why do they need to verify my identity? I am asking them to send me the card at my address, not somewhere else. I will be visiting my other son in New London, CT in a couple weeks and there is a BoA there and I can walk in there with a checkbook and passport. Why do I feel that they will put up some new barrier?
BoA is probably worried about complying with U.S. regulations to verify identity and prevent fraud. A lot of factors which on their own aren’t suspicious, taken together, may constitute a red flag:
You haven’t used your card in three years
You haven’t requested a replacement card in three years
Foreign address
Foreign phone number
Possibly no in-person verification by Bank of America, ever
Account holder is retired / may be a low-activity account
Plus, there are more logistics involved in sending automated text messages to phones registered in multiple countries. The inability to verify your identity may not have been a conscious choice on BoA’s part.
I recently moved and opened a BoA account. The branch representative helped me get it set up on my phone. I’m sure the BoA in New London can get you a debit card, but you might want to ask about the mobile app. Then you’d have another way of proving your identity when you’re back in Canada, though I think they stop mailing you statements if you get the app.
I stopped using them when they stole money out of my bank account to pay for my parents’ overdrawn account, causing me to have an overdraft. (I believe a check just didn’t come in when they were expecting it to.) It’s like, you already charged them for the overdraft. They were correcting it. I can’t see any reason to take it from me other than to cause that exact thing to happen.
Hell, my parents were only on the account so they could deposit some extra money while I was at college.
And, yes, they were legally allowed to do it because of that. But fuck that bullshit.
That’s yet another reason to not “share” bank accounts. Don’t let your aging parents put you on their account so you can e.g. easily pay their bills with their money. Or make it simpler when they pass.
There are easy-enough legal ways to achieve those goals. Putting separate households as joint owners of funds are a tempting but very dangerous shortcut. Even if everyone is honest and trustworthy, there are legal traps you’ve probably never heard of.
It is rare that I can boast about my third world country (aside from the incredible landscape), but as much as I hate my bank… it is several orders of magnitude better than the USA appears to be.
I had an issue when I lost my card in really, really rural Zanzibar. There was some complication but my bank just issued a new (temporary) card via a Tanzanian bank. I had access to money after just a couple of hours.
You’re basing this on one out of thousands of banks and credit unions in this country. The place where I have done my banking for over thirty years would behave exactly like yours. When I lost my debit card, they cancelled the old one and gave me a new one on the spot
That said, BofA has a decades long reputation of being horrible. I’ve been boycotting them since the early 80s. Local credit unions are generally the way to go.
A little anecdote to support that view. When my son was still quite young, he and I had an ambitious program of saving coins in a gigantic piggy bank in the shape of a crayon that was about as tall as he was. It eventually came to quite a substantial amount of cash.
When we cashed it all in, I decided to teach him a little about the stock market so we put it all into shares of Electronic Arts, a computer gaming company. In order to feel that this was really “his” money, since he was a minor at the time I set up the stock account as a trust account, controlled by me but in his name.
Big, big, big mistake!
After some ups and down the stock ended up doing really well and when he needed some cash I sold the stock and expected a cheque in the mail that I could cash and give him the money. No way, Jose! The cheque could only be issued in both our names, and when so issued, could only be deposited in a bank account in both our names.
I don’t remember exactly how it was finally resolved, but somehow it was, but it was a major, major pain the ass.