BOA Credit card "compromised"

[SumDay]

I'm not a big Bank of America fan, but DH's alma mater offers an alumni credit card through them. It's a good deal for us due to season football & basketball tickets, airline miles, etc.

I normally get online on Mondays to make sure our weekend activity looks OK. Well, my credit card didn't show up in my account!?! Assuming it was an IT issue, I opened a chat window to let them know it needed to be fixed.

The friendly customer service rep tells me that a retailer informed them my "credit card information was possibly compromised", and therefore the account was closed. WHAT? We use this card for absolutely everything and pay it off each month. I have many automatic payments set up through this card, including church donations, gym membership, cell phone bill, etc.

I'm really ticked that I have to now take the time to update my card info for all these retailers.

But what I'm REALLY ticked about is the fact that other than me discovering it missing and making a subsequent inquiry, I've had NO contact with BOA. No phone call, no email, no letter, nothing. We are going out of town to a football game this weekend, and if I hadn't checked my account, I'd never have known this credit card wouldn't have worked for anything we tried to use it for. They say the new card will be here in 5-10 days. The whole thing is just bazaar.

And, to top it off, they will not reveal what retailer had the breach.

Not happy - I just needed a place to rant. Thanks for listening....

[Sarah in SC]

Bank of America has always had the worst customer service. And I've had an account with them since I was a teenager. You need to have more than one card, and try to use one that isn't used on a regular basis to hook up your auto payments. That makes it less likely to be compromised.

I've had it happen 3 times with Penfed alone. And maybe 2-3 times with other banks. None of them were really johnny-on-the-spot about it, thought I did get a text and email from Chase.

Sucks, though, to be sure.

[SumDay]

Quote:

You need to have more than one card, and try to use one that isn't used on a regular basis to hook up your auto payments.

Great idea! Duh, why didn't I think of that? I like keeping things simple and just having one bill/card to watch, but this would certainly simplify this piece of it when it happens again.

[Sarah in SC]

Well, it doesn't guarantee that you won't get compromised, but it does lower the odds. My last one was from a card that the only place I had it on file was a SIM card company, and hadn't used it anywhere else in months. So they were the obvious culprit, but there's not really anything to gain from knowing the "who" let your card number slip out the door, in my mind.

Oh, and I also suggest using something like Mint.com, to see if charges suddenly appear on a dormant card. It is easier (especially for someone like me that milks a card for the sign-up bonus, then doesn't use it much again) to track nefarious uses that way than going to each bank's website.

[Free To Canoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC Bank of America has always had the worst customer service. ..... Sucks, though, to be sure.

Just another data point here. I have had B of A card since 1986 and have always had excellent customer service. It is the only CC we own. Others have went by the wayside. Perhaps a backup card is a good thing.

[Sarah in SC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Free To Canoe Just another data point here. I have had B of A card since 1986 and have always had excellent customer service. It is the only CC we own. Others have went by the wayside. Perhaps a backup card is a good thing.

To be fair, I was talking about the bank itself, rated the worst bank a few years running. I still bank with them, but only a checking account.


National survey again ranks Bank of America worst for customer service — Business — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine
Bank of America has topped for the third year in a row MSN Money’s annual list of major companies with the worst customer service.

In MSN Money’s seventh annual customer-service survey — which was conducted by Zogby International and asked 1,500 randomly chosen respondents to rate customer service at 150 companies as “excellent,” “good,” “fair” and “poor” — 23.4 percent of respondents said Bank of America’s banking service was “poor,” while 21 percent said its credit card services were “poor.” Those percentages were enough to place the company at the top of MSN Money’s “Customer Service Hall of Shame,” a place its held since 2011. In 2010, it placed 2nd.

[nwsteve]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC Bank of America has always had the worst customer service. And I've had an account with them since I was a teenager. You need to have more than one card, and try to use one that isn't used on a regular basis to hook up your auto payments. That makes it less likely to be compromised. I've had it happen 3 times with Penfed alone. And maybe 2-3 times with other banks. None of them were really johnny-on-the-spot about it, thought I did get a text and email from Chase. Sucks, though, to be sure.

+1000
B of A's customer service not to mention their other banking practices clearly among the worst of providers! I had to go to a regional VP to get funds restored for an auto payment someone setup against our checking.
Clearly an error in setting up the account. Truly amazing how incapable they were in resolving a simple issue. I was with them for nearly 20 years but their gross indifference pushed me out the door.
When you get your new credit card be very alert you do not get BofA back. Their FIA Card Services is just another version of B of A practices. Bof A does a lot of their private label business through FIA (e.g. Fidelity's Visa).
I am using Chase now and so far at least have found them pretty responsive to any issues and reasonably proactive with good tech for letting you know what is happening in your account. For example, you can set up text and email alerts for dollars or certain events (i.e. an international charge).

Nwsteve

[Alan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC You need to have more than one card, and try to use one that isn't used on a regular basis to hook up your auto payments. That makes it less likely to be compromised.

The card that we use for all automatic payments stays in the house. Plus it is a card with lots of available alerts so I have it set so I get an e-mail every time a charge is made. That way it should be easy to spot if the details are stolen and used by someone else.

I've also had my Penfed card details stolen 3 times. The last time, in June, it cost Penfed over $23k. We get lots of calls these days from Penfed fraud officers, like today, whenever we make a large purchase, or multiple purchases on the same day.

[MRG]

Wow that is not good. We had a similar situation, different card serviced by FIACardholder services. Worst customer experience ever had, guess there's no shortage of bad providers.

Best wishes

MRG

[MichaelB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SumDay But what I'm REALLY ticked about is the fact that other than me discovering it missing and making a subsequent inquiry, I've had NO contact with BOA. No phone call, no email, no letter, nothing. We are going out of town to a football game this weekend, and if I hadn't checked my account, I'd never have known this credit card wouldn't have worked for anything we tried to use it for. They say the new card will be here in 5-10 days. The whole thing is just bazaar. And, to top it off, they will not reveal what retailer had the breach. Not happy - I just needed a place to rant. Thanks for listening....

Another rant I too can identify with. We've found out at the checkout counter of the supermarket after everything's been rung up.

I did what Sarah and Alan suggest and now have a card just for autopay.

[Sarah S]

Just happened to me with BOA card. Same scenario noticed it was gone online and called. But they told me I could use the card for up to three weeks and a new one was in the mail. Got it in less than 2 weeks. Did receive an official notification a couple of days after my call. And although they would not tell me the retailers I know what it was. Use the card very rarely and had just ordered from amazon an item that turned out to be coming from China

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah S Just happened to me with BOA card. Same scenario noticed it was gone online and called. But they told me I could use the card for up to three weeks and a new one was in the mail. Got it in less than 2 weeks. Did receive an official notification a couple of days after my call. And although they would not tell me the retailers I know what it was. Use the card very rarely and had just ordered from amazon an item that turned out to be coming from China

Yes that's usually how they handle it when there is a "group compromise". They send the letter followed up by a call 1 week later and you can use the old card for up to three weeks.

Whenever it's been my card specifically (as opposed to a group of cards compromised) I get an immediate call to verify charges and then shut down if fraud has occurred with a new card sent to me within 2 days if possible.

We also segregate cards used for recurring bills from cards carried in our wallets. It helps.

BTW the new BofA travel rewards VISA chip card (chip and signature) worked very well in Europe, even at locations that didn't accept swipe cards. With no foreign exchange transaction fee plus 1.5% rewards, I was very happy.

Audrey

[Rustward]

Auto payments go through the same authorization and settlement systems as all other charges, so even if you have a card only for auto payments, it is also at risk -- perhaps less risk because of being used at a limited number of merchants. But the merchant certainly has the card data, the merchant submits the card data with transactions to a processor, so the processor has the information (the processor is an intermediary between the merchant and the issuing bank), and the issuing bank also has the card data (duh).

You can't just automatically blame a merchant even if you only used the card for one transaction with one merchant and then never used the card again.

If you use the card anywhere except perhaps, the issuing bank's ATMs, it will be at risk.

It is very easy for a trusted insider to get card information.

Here is one inside a bank:
Bank of America Gets Hit Twice by Access Abusers - Bank Technology News

And in this one, the bank is blaming a processor:
Bank of America says data breach occured at third party - Computerworld

[Texas Proud]

It is not only BofA that will not tell where the breach is located... I have had that happen with Chase and Cap One....

I think it was Chase that said that they did not know (probably true), it really does not matter, and even if they could tell me it really could have been a third party that was the culprit....

[Free To Canoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC To be fair, I was talking about the bank itself, rated the worst bank a few years running. I still bank with them, but only a checking account. National survey again ranks Bank of America worst for customer service — Business — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine Bank of America has topped for the third year in a row MSN Money’s annual list of major companies with the worst customer service. In MSN Money’s seventh annual customer-service survey — which was conducted by Zogby International and asked 1,500 randomly chosen respondents to rate customer service at 150 companies as “excellent,” “good,” “fair” and “poor” — 23.4 percent of respondents said Bank of America’s banking service was “poor,” while 21 percent said its credit card services were “poor.” Those percentages were enough to place the company at the top of MSN Money’s “Customer Service Hall of Shame,” a place its held since 2011. In 2010, it placed 2nd.

As a former BofA bank customer, I agree with you that the bank was pretty bad.