All your money are belong to us...
You think Bank America really cares about its customers?
In mid-August, B of A notified me that there’d been a breech of data with some retailer I do business with, and because of that, they were issuing me a new debit card. A couple days later, I got a similar notice for my Visa account with them.
The one thing the notices didn’t contain was the name of the retailer who’d been hacked.
Because the breeches involved both my Visa and debit cards, I was able to narrow it down to only three companies that have both cards: pelicanparts.com, newegg.com and amazon.com.
I contacted B of A to find out the name of the company. I figured that’s a pretty basic thing to know, so I could protect myself in the future. Because any company that was stupid enough to let itself be hacked once could easily let it happen again.
Changing my card numbers was great, but I needed the name of the company so I could stop doing business with them.
What I ran into was a stone wall from B of A.
I called the normal customer service lines and was told “they didn’t have that information,” which sounded stupid.
So I talked with my local branch president, a lady named Laura Minhinnett, who was very helpful and who agreed that wanting the name of the company that had been hacked was a reasonable thing. She told me was going to buck the thing up to her regional VP. And that was the last I heard from her.
Since I appeared to getting nowhere, I filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau, and with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office – neither of which has produced anything substantive, at least yet.
I did get a really neat letter from the B of A CEO’s office, the bottom line of which was:
“We value your relationship and regret you were dissatisfied with the bank’s response pertaining to your request that we provide you with specific information surrounding your compromise. However, our response has not changed. Due to the sensitivity of the information, details specific to the compromise is [sic] not provided to the bank. Therefore we are not able to provide the name where the data compromise occurred.”
This is not a credible response. I find it impossible to believe that Bank of America does not have or cannot access the information if it chose to.
What is obvious is that they’re throwing me under the bus to protect the online retailer that was stupid enough to let itself get hacked. That is indeed “sensitive” information.
If the public knew, for instance, that Amazon.com had been hacked, that could really affect sales there. And a company like that might have millions in B of A accounts.
So the message I get from B of A: Our BIG customers mean everything to us; everyone else is road kill…
They’re throwing their personal banking customers under the bus to protect one of the big boys. Now that’s great customer service.
It’s vital for the general public to know what company was hacked, so consumers can make informed decisions on whether they want to continue doing business with the company. If the company was stupid enough to get hacked once, it’s likely they will let it happen again. I personally don’t want to be part of that program. I don’t want to be a statistic.
How do you feel about being thrown under the bus? If you think B of A should disclose what company was hacked, call or write to the address below:
Lakesha Harmen
Customer advocate, Office of the CEO and President
Bank of America
655 Paper Mill Road
Newark, DE 19711
1-800-218-6670 Ext 433804
If you think B of A should disclose what company was hacked, hit “like” on Facebook.