Your Corporate Overlords Have Spoken

I have complained about the wonderful MBNA credit card company being bought out by the evil Bank of America credit card company before. So if that post bored you, this one probably will, too. Except this post is shorter.

I got a letter from Bank of America saying that they’ve suspended the account due to ‘unauthorized access’ – all of our cards won’t work. We’re getting new cards with new account numbers, a new web login and password, and yadda yadda.

So my wife called them and it turns out that my hotel stay on a business trip in Detroit set off some sort of fraud alarm. Because flying to Detriot and staying a hotel for 10 straight days is the first thing credit card theives do, apparently. (Note to all the thieves in the world - if this is your plan, don't do it! That breakfast buffet is totally not worth it.)

The Bank of America folks said they tried to contact us (although both my wife and I do not have any voice mails or emails and certainly don’t remember getting any calls from B of A anytime recently), but, because they didn’t get a response, just went ahead with Plan B – shut down everything and reboot the account.

Here is their kicker – Their advice was from now on to call the Bank of America Fraud Department before we leave town if we want our credit cards to work while we’re on the road!!!

To quote my wife’s email to me on the subject:

>WTF????

Indeed.