howeird | Boo B of A! (Reply)

I tried to use my Bank of America ATM card at Safeway tonight, and it said "Invalid Account". Three times. So I used a credit card instead, which I didn't really want to do since it was only $5.

Got home, phoned the number to check balances, punched in my account and it told me all was well, there was plenty of $$ in there.

But then I fired up Quicken to download my transactions, and B of A gave an error on both checking and savings. Next, I tried online banking, and it too said the account was invalid, and gave a number for me to call.

The canned voice at the end of the line said there was a 14-minute wait for a human. Which is when I remembered a letter I got in the mail from B of A yesterday, which said there was some possibility someone had sniffed some B of A account information, but I stopped reading at the line which said

"Having Thoroughly reviewed your accounts, we see no evidence that your accounts or personal information have been misused in any way."

I dug the letter out of the garbage and read the rest of the paragraph. It said that they were canceling my card anyway "as an additional precaution" -- as of yesterday. A new card will be in the mail in 5 days. The block on online banking should only last one day, the letter said.

Now, this makes no sense at all. I don't use my ATM card for online banking, I use the account number and routing number. The only thing I can think of is someone is making counterfeit ATM cards, so they are un-linking the ATM card numbers from the actual account numbers.

Slightly inconvenient, but if online banking is working tomorrow, then I don't have to worry about any bills not getting paid, or transferring $$ from savings to cover the rent.

Edit follow-up: Online banking worked this morning (2/23), as advertised. And following the instructions of the letter I changed all my auto-bill accounts to use my AAA Visa card or the direct checking account number instead of the check card number. Except PG&E which wouldn't show me the page for changing my billing info.