*WINNER!* Worst Customer Experience in Banking: Bank of America

Total wait: 2 hours, 38 minutes.
Accomplished: Nothing
Since I still needed to cancel the bill pay payment, this morning it required another 1 hour 12 minutes waiting for a callback (they gave me a 30 minute estimate), an additional 20 minutes on hold, and another transfer another hold to get my $56 back from an undelivered December bill.

Looks like I may still need to make one more phone call…

The craziest part is the two things I need done I’m able to do in under a minute online with half a dozen other banks and credit card companies.
If the call center service is so horrendous, why would you force people to have to use it for every simple task?
Why are you unable to send secure messages to customer service?

This is my 14th year as a Bank of America customer, and my last.

Needed to get two simple things done yesterday

I’m well-acquainted with how terrible Bank of America’s service is, at least I know what to expect. Therefore, I waited a little over a week, when I would be able to set time aside, to take care of two small things that I should be able to do online in the first place. I was expecting a 9/10 in the unpleasant service category, this was so far off the charts. This is all I needed:

• Cancel a mailed payment — The option to be able to send checks postage paid to anyone from online banking is one of the reasons I’ve stayed with BoA so long. I don’t think I’ve had a checkbook since opening my first account.
  Couple problems: 1. The amount is debited from your account when the check is mailed, not when it’s cashed; 2. If the check gets lost, to get your money back, you have to cancel it. To cancel it, you have to call.
  At other banks, I am able to cancel a payment from online banking, or at most send a message to customer service. Maybe BoA just wants to keep my money longer?
• Change the source of automatic payments for BoA credit cards — I want to pay two Bank of America credit cards from a Bank of America checking account. Should be pretty easy, right? Nope. But they’re even within the same bank? Nada.
  Every other credit card I’m able to add any bank account, make and schedule payments immediately, online.

What happened

I held off until I had a solid hour to sit in front of the computer, and made the call.

• 3 minutes to get through the menu to request a call back. As usual, I had to say what I needed to do and have the robot not understand me 3 times. Also, the recording needed to make sure I wasn’t in the service and if so instead of doing what I called for would I like to hear any special benefits.
• Waited 30 minutes for callback.
• Explained I needed to set up automatic payments to BoA credit cards, from BoA checking account. After “looking into it” this is something they couldn’t do, but would “make sure it’s taken care of today” and were transferring me.
• Waited on hold for 49 minutes.
• Attendant #2 said she could help me set up “eBills” online which takes time to verify. Or, a “Business Specialist” could help me get it done today. I didn’t want to have to call back again, and wanted to complete this.
• Waited on hold for 31 more minutes.
• Attached to the phone/computer, I put off until the last minute needing to stop by the farm. So I am on speakerphone, while driving, and brought my laptop with me.
  At the farm, three times I asked the agent if she needed any more information to verify account so I could keep moving (I was now somehow late for an appointment). Still, twice, I had to go back to the car, open up the laptop, and sign back into online banking.
• The conclusion, as the length of call since my automatic callback reached 1 HOUR 38 MINUTES:
  I was told “eBill” that I went ahead and set up on my own while on hold was the only way to pay, and I would need to wait two billing cycles before I could apply automatic payments to that. (I’ve had this set up before, as Attendant #2 stated, without eBills and waiting 2 more months. It did require calling and waiting and transferring a bunch, of course.)
• Even though I initially called at 10 am, I was now late for a 12:30 pm meeting due to being tied to the phone, so I never had a chance to cancel the bill payment.
  I’m still waiting for a callback to cancel the bill payment.

I did get some things done

While my phone was playing hold music on speakerphone, I:

• Wrote a blog post.
• Processed all my email inboxes, and sent all the important emails for the day.
• Delivered eggs to a friend.
• Collected eggs from the farm.
• Fed our chickens.

So, it wasn’t a complete waste of time, but I accomplished nothing with the bank.

Fortunately, I’ve already moved all my deposits to other accounts. In fact, changing bill pay on these cards was my final step to practically disconnecting from using Bank of America altogether. I need to determine whether it makes sense to keep the credit cards open, but not use them, for credit score purposes. There is no annual fee so this may make the most sense.

I’m looking forward to technology continuing to improve, replacing the dinosaurs. Until then…

Good riddance, Bank of America. Fix your service. An easy obvious to start is giving your customers ability to make updates online.