The saga thus far:
- Summer, 2009 – Bank of America has an online special where you can open an account with no minimum balance. Since that’s my biggest problem with my current (at the time) BofA checking account, I call to see if they can make that change to my existing account. They say they can’t and I have to open the new account then close the current one. Not a great customer experience, but I do the open+close anyway.
- Fall, 2009 – I need the money from my BofA checking account (the one opened during the summer, the only one left open) in a different account (at another bank) and transfer it over – this leaves the account with a $0 balance. (I later learn that apparently this was a huge mistake, as we’ll see)
- January 13, 2010 – due to having a zero balance and 60 days of inactivity (as I learned later), Bank of America decides to go ahead and close my checking account. No email (I get other emails about the account fine), no warning, just closed. Not even a notification that it was closed.
- January 15, 2010 (a Friday)
- my boss is up in New York and drops by a BofA branch to deposit a check into my account. They tell him the account is closed. He emails me to let me know.
- I try to login to my account online to see what’s up and get notified that my account has been closed (well, not directly, I have to infer it from this error)
- I call the 800 number (Online Banking support, it seems) from the error message (800-933-6262) and ask what’s going on. Very nice lady (I really should write notes during calls to customer support lines) explains the “60 days inactivity + zero balance = auto-close account” logic and (thankfully) reopens the account. Once I get off the phone with her, I try to login to the BofA website again and it works fine – account is there, same number, same transaction history, etc.
- I call my boss and let him know that the account had automatically closed, that it’s back open, and he should be able to make the deposit now.
- He goes by during lunch to the same BofA branch up in New York and tries to make the deposit again. They tell him the account is closed. He emails me what happened.
- This will be a common theme throughout this post – the 800 number people in charge of online banking can reopen an account, and their system says the account is then open. However, the system used in the branches (“Merlin”, I think, I learn later) is different and says the account is still closed.
In the email thread, my boss and I guess that the account reopen won’t “take” (process, complete, whatever) until that night and he’ll try again the next business day (Monday)
January 16 – 23, 2010 – we’re on a cruise without free Internet access ($.75/min WiFi in the room, though), so I don’t actively try to resolve this any, although I do find out from my boss that he’s tried 2 more times (Monday and Wednesday) to deposit the check, both times the branches again saying the account is closed.
January 23, 2010 (a Saturday) – I tried logging into the BofA website and apparently it’s been auto-closed again as I get the same error message as the above screenshot. The idea of a nightly job that scans for accounts with those criteria (60 days of inactivity + zero balance) and automatically closes them seems reasonable, although I was surprised that 1) there’s not a bit on the account metadata that exempts it from that or 2) if the bit exists, that my account didn’t have it turned on when I called to have it reopened, at least long enough for me to make a deposit at a branch.
- At this point I suspect I may have a race condition problem facing me – when the account gets “reopened” it’s only open until the next nightly job run, so I only have that day’s remaining window of time to get some kind of deposit made to keep the account from getting auto-closed again.
January 24, 2010 (a Sunday) – no idea if it will actually help or not, but since I had transfers set up between this BofA account and a checking account at another back (in both directions), I start a $1 transfer into the BofA account (I later learn that BofA won’t do transfers under $10, but I digress). An external incoming transfer isn’t going to cause BofA to reopen the account on its own, but my open is that somehow this $1 might make it in to the race condition I fear is happening and get me out of the cycle that’s going on now. It wouldn’t “process” until the 28th anyway, so it doesn’t really help, but I figured it couldn’t hurt, either.
January 25, 2010 (a Monday)
- Since I need to head out to a dentist appointment anyway, I take a check made out to me and run by a branch after my dentist appointment.
- I call the 800 number on the way over and explain that I want them to reopen the account again so I can make the deposit at the branch I’m driving to. Guy on the phone says “just have them reopen the account when you get there”
- …
- Since reopening the account on the phone was just a matter of asking for it, that seems reasonable to me, so I pull up to the branch, walk to a teller with the ~12k check I’m trying to deposit, and explain what I’m trying to do.
- The teller directs me to an assistant-manager-type person (we’ll call her A) who happens to be standing just to my right (she was chitchatting with a couple of the tellers before I walked up), and she directs me back to her office. At this point I’m not sure why this is necessary since it was so simple on the 800 call, but I go in anyway.
- Why not give their real names? Mainly because I don’t really blame the people here – the problems are more systemic within the company from my point of view. The people at the branch were just acting as trained/instructed. I have no reason off-hand to believe a different branch would have given me a different experience.
A looks up the account, says it’s closed (thanks, already knew that), and that I would need to open a new account
- I point out that the same account was just reopened 10 days ago, so clearly they can reopen a closed account and not need me to open a new one.
- Since the whole point of this particular account was the no-minimum-balance bit, I certainly don’t want to go back to a “regular” account – at that point there’d be little point of staying with BofA if I’m forced into yet another new account
A then relents and says they could reopen the account, but “their policy” (I can’t get her to explain exactly what this means, given the behavior I get from the 800 number people) says that an Account Maintenance Authorization form needs to be filled out and that it would take 3 days to get the account reopened. Oh, and since I’ve made the apparent mistake of opening it as a joint account, my wife would have to come in with me. My wife, of course, being the one at home watching our 3 kids.
- A explains how they need the joint account owner because they (my wife in this case) may have decided to close it and doesn’t want to allow it to reopen.
- I point out that her scenario would make sense, but in this case BofA actually did the closing of the account, not either of
us.
- A says she can only tell that it was closed, not what caused the closing. (Seriously? Wow.)
- I point out that no form was needed and zero interaction with my wife was necessary when the 800 number people reopened the account at my request.
- I also point out that I could tell the account was actually reopened (instead of the people on the phone just claiming it was) since I couldn’t login to the website before (“no eligible accounts”) and then I could after, and when I did login, it showed the same account number, same transaction history, etc.
A says she’ll get her manager – we’ll call him N.
A comes back a couple minutes later and says N is finishing up with a customer and he’d be right with me.
I ask A whether N will be able to do anything or if he’ll just be repeating what she’s said.
A replies that he’ll just be saying the same thing.
I say I guess I’ll have to call the 800 number and start walking out of her office (and the branch). A decides to follow me out of the branch, although at this point her intent seems more around keeping me from yelling where other customers can hear me rather than actually trying to work through my problem (I’m guessing my disappointment was visible at this point).
…
I go out to my car in the parking lot and call the 800 number from my cell. This time I don’t say that I’m going to a branch (since that triggered the “just have them open it for you” comment before). They reopen the account.
As they reopen the account I specifically ask “Will I be able to immediately go to a branch and deposit into this account now?”
- The rep forgives my split infinitive (presumably) and answers that yes, the account is “fully open” and I’ll be able to make a deposit. Great.
…
I go back into the branch with the check and talk to the same teller lady I had initially talked to before. I ask her what the status of the account is, she pulls it up, and says it’s indeed open. She has me fill out a deposit slip – I’m not a fan of doing so since all the info needed is on the check (it’s endorsed with the acct # on the back), but I go ahead and do it since I just want to get this done 
For reasons unknown she hands me off to another teller (we’ll call him W) to actually do the deposit, but since she’s said the account is open, I’m hoping I’m beyond the major hurdle at this point.
So I scoot down to W’s teller spot (since she handed the check and deposit slip to him after I handed them to her). W types at his terminal for a couple of minutes while I read and re-read the FDIC statement sticker on the handrest. He then tells me the account is closed.
I point out that the previous teller just said it was open.
W brings over another teller (not the first) and shows them his screen. They don’t know what’s wrong.
W tells me the account status is closed so he can’t do the deposit.
Lacking many other options, I call the 800 number while standing at W’s teller station while he waits. Once I put in my SSN (ugh) and acct #, I hit 0 to get to a CSR and wait for a couple of minutes on hold. A friendly Kevin comes on the line.
I put Kevin on speakerphone and explain how I just called in a few minutes ago, the account was reopened, and I’m trying to make a deposit at a branch but they’re saying it’s closed.
Kevin looks up the account and says it’s indeed open with no signs that it’s still closed and that the branch should have no problems processing a deposit.
At this point the cell phone is in speakerphone mode and sitting on the ledge between W and myself. W decides to pick up my phone to talk to Kevin. I’m not a fan since I’d like to hear both sides (which was the point of me putting it on speakerphone to start with), but I’m trying to play nice.
So now I can only hear the W side of the conversation. W mentions that there are 2 screens, and the first one (gray? green? I forget) says the account is open, but when he goes into the other screen (blue? Merlin? I forget) it says the account is closed so he can’t do the deposit.
They keep chatting for awhile and I kind of fade out and keep re-reading the FDIC sticker at this point.
After a few minutes I hear W saying “Hello? Hello?” and he hands the phone back to me. He says that Kevin hung up but that there was nothing Kevin could do to fix it. Of course, at this point I only have W’s word on what was actually said, but I’ve given up on trying to resolve this at the branch.
…
I drive back home, and while on the drive I call the 800 number again and get to a CSR, this time Stephen, and explain everything that’s happened at this point (which takes a few minutes on its own).
Stephen says he notices that the account has done transfers in from an external checking account before and asks if that’s an option.
I say it sure is, but I didn’t think that would really help any.
Stephen says he’s sure that the account won’t auto-close if there’s a pending incoming transfer.
Once I get home, I hop on and do the transfer from my other bank’s checking account
January 26, 2010 (today, a Tuesday)
- First thing in the morning I try to login to the BofA site to see if Stephen was right.
- Unfortunately, Stephen was dead wrong. The account’s been auto-closed again.
I do have an “out” in that I could take Jessica to the bank with me and go through the form + 3 day wait that the branch requires (although at this point I’m having to assume it would even work), but that means having to find a babysitter or take kids to the bank, neither of which I’m particularly happy with, especially given how much effort I’ve put in at this point.
However, I figured I’d at least document the saga as it stands now. If/when I get this resolved, I’m sure my brain will do its best to flush/block these memories, after all
