Little bit of life advice.
Be cautious if you sign up with some local-only or family-owned service of some kind. The personal touch might be nice, it’s usually good to have workers personally invested in their clients’ lives and communities, but they also often lack the resources to do a job with all the thoroughness and professionalism you find at a bigger company.
Or maybe it’s just that bigger companies have a lower “we can afford to give them what they want if they’ll go away” threshold. It’s hard to deconvolute those two phenomena.
My experience was with a local credit union. It was attached (not physically) to my church, which was convenient; I could stop there before or after mass if I had to, it was easy to set up automated giving, I’d see the tellers at church, we got to know each other a bit.
Then I left. Moved to a new time zone, where they certainly didn’t have any branches. Went in before I left and asked how to close my account, and they said I could do it with one phone call when I had a new account set up. Easy.
Thinking it would still be easy when I couldn’t walk in and talk to a real person if I hit any snags was my first mistake.
I didn’t cancel my credit card right away but I did empty my checking account since it was easy to write a check for the whole balance when I got to where I was going. I did destroy the credit card as soon as I paid off my last statement once I got a new card through my new bank. This has has sufficed as a de facto cancellation in the past, to the point where I’d get letters from a company saying “you haven’t used this in six months so we’re closing the card.” Then I procrastinated and then forgot about it for a while.
That was my second mistake. Don’t do what I did.
Fast forward a year and I got a statement on that old credit card again. My credit card account apparently was still open, and someone hacked it to make a fourteen dollar purchase. Not a lot, maybe it was just a test by the hacker, but I realized I had put off too long what I should never have put off at all.
I called the credit card company and told them what happened. They promised to take care of it. I made my next mistake here, but I made it again later so I’ll explain it at that time. Then I called my credit union and explained the same thing, adding that I wanted to close my account for good now, what with there apparently being a liability. I even mentioned the credit card situation. They told me the person who handled this stuff was out of the office but she would take care of it when she got back. I knew they had my new contact information so I let it go.
I trusted them enough to forget about how long it would take for the financial wheels to turn. Then I got another credit card bill, not for the zero dollars I expected—I assumed this would be a final “you’re all set and we will miss you as a customer” letter like I’ve gotten before, but no—now for the original fourteen dollars plus a fourteen dollar late fee because I didn’t pay on time originally.
Okay, time to stop trusting and being patient.
I started calling the credit union and the credit card company to get things resolved. At the time it seemed wise not to close my savings account until I had my card issue resolved, but it ended up not working the way I wanted anyway. It wouldn’t have worked anyway, as you’ll see.
So I’m on the phone with the credit card company. I explain my account was hacked and I was challenging a bogus charge, and I wanted to close my account for real. Spelled out that I moved out of the area from where my union was located and I had destroyed my card a year ago so there was no way I could have used it to buy whatever the thing was. For some reason this didn’t get through. I was surprised because when I first called, I actually picked the phone tree option to report a stolen card/fraudulent transaction. But she kept “explaining” that she couldn’t close the card until I made my late payment. I told her again I wasn’t doing that—in retrospect it would have been easier, but I was getting angry enough now I didn’t want to let it go—because it wasn’t my activity on the card, and I had called a month before to report it but nothing happened.
I started to wonder if that first bill I received was a scam and I had actually called a hacker, but my card hadn’t been used again and it was the same phone number as on my union’s web site.
So we’re going back and forth, and it’s like talking to a brick wall. I’m trying to tell her I’m reporting a fraudulent charge, she seems to understand that’s what I’m asking because she’s actually repeating my words, and I want my card cancelled for real, but she’s also telling me it needs to be paid before the card can be closed. Eventually she talks her way in a full circle and I raise my voice when I remind her that I shouldn’t be paying for any charges or late fees on a card that was electronically stolen, especially not after I already called and was told this would get taken care of.
She reminds me that the call is being recorded.
I almost reminded her that she also has been recorded asking me to pay a charge that I have been recorded reporting as fraudulent. She probably wasn’t thinking about that and just got lost in her script somewhere, and remembered her “if they get upset, say X” escape hatch, because then she offered to transfer me to an account closure specialist. No apology for misunderstanding me for fifteen minutes, but at least it was progress.
The specialist can’t find my credit union in her directory.
False alarm: its name was some shorthand neither of us would have guessed.
So, she…transfers my call back to the credit union. Where I started. Where I was told I needed to call the credit card company to take care of that part of it.
At least now I’m talking to someone who, I hope, can get something done.
I explain my situation all over again. I’m told the account closing person is off that day but everything she needs will be provided to her by the guy I’m talking to now, but do I want to have the $28 credit card debt taken out of my savings before it’s closed, or pay by some other way?
I was ready to lose it again but at least this was the first time I was talking to this guy. It’s been half an hour now. Here’s the second mistake I made again: I didn’t take notes on all the conversations I had with everybody about all this. I still had my original statement with the fraudulent $14 charge, and I know I called the day I got it, but I didn’t get the name of the guy I talked to; nor did I remember the name of the woman who got defensive when I told her I’m not taking her advice to pay the fraudulent charge I’m challenging, nor the name of the specialist who routed me back to my union. It might have helped if I could have thrown more of their records, with names and dates and timestamps, back in their face when they started repeating “well all this happened because you didn’t report a stolen card,” which I did once a month ago and about five times twenty minutes ago and another time ten minutes before that when I called the credit union to see what I needed to do to get the ball rolling.
Finally, this guy seems to understand: I want to close my savings and card accounts, and there is fraudulent activity on my card that didn’t get taken care of when I tried to ask them for help a month ago or half an hour ago.
The next day I get emailed an electronic form to sign for the closure of my account. The email states the $28 charge will be reversed as well. Perfect.
A week later I get a banker’s check for what I had left in savings, along with a letter stating my accounts were all closed, and I would not be obligated to pay that $28…even though the problem was that I never asked them to take care of it before I “missed” the payment due date.
Let them believe what they want at this point. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Not anymore.
Coda: my new bank sent me a letter a week later saying “we’re not sure this check you deposited is real. We’re letting your new balance stay where it is for now but if the check doesn’t clear we’re taking it back.” I shouldn’t be surprised, after the amateur hour I went through, that they were skeptical of my old credit union. But it’s been a month, again, and I still have all my money. In a nationally recognized bank. That was recommended to me by trusted family members.
Not one of those shitty ones that tallies up all your withdrawals for the month before they tally up your deposits so they can charge you for covering would-be-but-not-really bounced checks. Don’t make that mistake either.