{"id":137,"date":"2013-09-18T17:37:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T17:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/weblog\/?p=249"},"modified":"2013-09-18T17:37:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T17:37:22","slug":"bank-of-america-screws-its-small-customers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2013\/09\/18\/bank-of-america-screws-its-small-customers\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank of America Screws Its Small Customers"},"content":{"rendered":"

All your money are belong to us...<\/b><\/em><\/code><\/p>\n

You think Bank America really cares about its customers?<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 A couple days later, I got a similar notice for my Visa account with them.<\/p>\n

The one thing the notices didn’t contain was the name of the retailer who’d been hacked.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I contacted B of A to find out the name of the company.\u00a0 I figured that’s a pretty basic thing to know, so I could protect myself in the future.\u00a0 Because any company that was stupid enough to let itself be hacked once could easily let it happen again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Changing my card numbers was great, but I needed the name of the company so I could stop doing business with them.<\/p>\n

What I ran into was a stone wall from B of A.<\/p>\n

I called the normal customer service lines and was told “they didn’t have that information,” which sounded stupid.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 She told me was going to buck the thing up to her regional VP.\u00a0 And that was the last I heard from her.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I did get a really neat letter from the B of A CEO’s office, the bottom line of which was:<\/p>\n

“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.\u00a0 However, our response has not changed.\u00a0 Due to the sensitivity of the information, details specific to the compromise is [sic] not provided to the bank.\u00a0 Therefore we are not able to provide the name where the data compromise occurred.”<\/i><\/p>\n

This is not a credible response.\u00a0 I find it impossible to believe that Bank of America does not have or cannot access the information if it chose to.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 That is indeed “sensitive” information.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the public knew, for instance, that Amazon.com had been hacked, that could really affect sales there.\u00a0 And a company like that might have millions<\/i> in B of A accounts.<\/p>\n

So the message I get from B of A:\u00a0 Our BIG customers mean everything to us;\u00a0 everyone else is road kill…<\/p>\n

They’re throwing their personal banking customers under the bus to protect one of the big boys.\u00a0 Now that’s great customer service.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.\u00a0 If the company was stupid enough to get hacked once, it\u2019s likely they will let it happen again.\u00a0 I personally don\u2019t want to be part of that program.\u00a0 I don’t want to be a statistic.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about being thrown under the bus?\u00a0 If you think B of A should disclose what company was hacked, call or write to the address below:<\/p>\n

Lakesha Harmen
\nCustomer advocate, Office of the CEO and President
\nBank of America
\n655 Paper Mill Road
\nNewark, DE 19711
\n1-800-218-6670 Ext 433804<\/p>\n

If you think B of A should disclose what company was hacked, hit “like” on Facebook.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 A couple days later, I got […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[14,15],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-arrogant-assholes","tag-bank-of-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}