I love credit unions, especially mine. Monday night, I noted a pending charge on my debit card of an amount and a merchant unfamiliar to me. Last night, it moved from pending to real and right out of my account, so I did a web search on the name and city (Studio City, CA), followed by a local search for anything with that name or an order amount of US$40.00 – nothing – then called the credit union this morning.
The efficient woman in the call centre four towns away said the details indicated it was a point-of-sale charge – with a signature, in California, on Monday. As I haven’t been in California since 2002, and I’m pretty sure that was a Friday, we thought it prudent to cancel the card. She filled out the online disputed charge form for me and said, “We can either mail you a new card or you can stop at a branch and get a new one.” She also said it might take up to five days for the charge to be reversed, but it was actually reversed by the time I moseyed over to the nearest branch three hours later to get my new card, which they printed and handed to me less than two minutes after I gave them my old card and driver’s licence. The problem’s complete resolution: 3½ hours. It would have been less had I not waited until lunch to visit the CU.
I imagine if I was still a Bank of America customer as I was twelve years ago before joining the credit union, that 3½ hours would be about the amount of time they’d’ve spent on just the first day interrogating me to find out just what sort of dastardly conspiracy I was masterminding. I base this theory on their standard policy of assuming that all in-person customer so-called deposits are being perpetrated by people trying to kite checks, and making everyone wait days to access their money. Of course, that was twelve years ago, so I imagine things must be much improved over there at the friendly neighbourhood BoA branch, because monolithic banks, like fine wine, only improve with age, right? Why are you shaking your head? More like old milk, you say?
The web search I did indicated the merchant in question may be a surfing instructor. Surfing? T’yuh.
Darn!!!
You could have at least waited until I had a couple of my beginner surfing classes completed.
“Bohdi! This is your wakeup call! I am an FBI agent!”