The whole story revolves around how these two call center account managers for MBNA, now a subsidiary of Bank of America, would hard sell credit card customers on expensive cash advances. The piece goes into how they would use all sorts of hard sell tactics, preying on the financial weaknesses of callers, finding any angle to try to wedge a nice fat cash advance in there. There was also the obligatory swing at credit card companies and their terms & conditions, which include the 0% cash advance or balance transfer jumping to the default rate of 28% if they missed a payment, “even by a day.” (Late is late, a minute, a day, a year… it’s still late)

The one woman claims to have “tricked” customers into taking $250M in cash advances, some of which didn’t have a strong enough credit history to warrant the advance. She also gave an example about how she was told to hard sell to an old man in his 90s who had maybe $100,000 in credit available (she never said if she was successful).

Yes, credit card companies are selfish and greedy and exist to try to earn as much money as possible. They are not unlike any other company though and if you were a shareholder of Bank of America or Citigroup, you’d want them to try to generate as much profit as possible. It’s just that the majority of Americans are in credit debt, so the popular opinion is to rail against those companies (just like the popular opinion is to rail against oil companies, power supply companies, airlines, etc.).

Where was personal accountability in all this? The one woman, the one who said less in the interview, quit after a year and a half, I applaud her. The other woman feasted on the fruits of her successful selling techniques. She paraded the fact that she “sold” $250 million in cash advances and balance transfers, some of which were done in a predatory fashion, and acted as if MBNA put a gun to her head and forced her to do it. We all make choices in our lives and hers was to sell credit to people who couldn’t afford it and then go on CNN to get her fifteen minutes.

Yes, credit card companies try to get as much money as they can out of you, every business does, but everyone already knows this already. What we didn’t know before watching this piece was that the call center account managers, the one’s doing the hard selling, felt they had no choice but to get financially strapped customers deeper into the hole.

That black beauty right there is the American Express Black Centurion Card. To make them, American Express harvested the cores of ten black holes and pressed them into little cards of pure consumerism-fueled spending bliss (hush all you physicists).

Want one? You’ll need $5,000 up front to pay for it, followed by $2500 a year in annual fees, plus a minimum spend of $250,000 a year. That’s right. A quarter of a million bucks. Whoo hooo, that’s some serious cash. But look at all the cool features of the American Express Centurion card! (a very extensive review of the AMEX Black by social marketing maven Neil Patel)

If that’s a little too rich for your blood, plenty of other companies are offering affluent banking services:

HSBC Premier

From Wikipedia:

HSBC Premier is the group’s premium financial services product. The exact benefits and qualification criteria vary depending on country, but typically require deposits and investments of at least $100,000, £50,000, or €100,000, or a mortgage of at least $500,000 or £250,000. Customers have a dedicated relationship manager, global 24 hour access to call centres and preferential rates.

Citi Chairman’s Card

This card doesn’t have any application requirements but the $500 annual fee is going to weed out its fair share of applicants. What do you get for five hundred bones a year?

• 24/7 concierge to assist you with hotel, car & dinner reservations, vacation planning & gift ideas
• Annual membership to Priority Pass Airport Lounge
• VIP upgrades & savings at leading hotels. Plus, the benefits of a Hilton HHonors® Gold VIP member
• Private jet services & chartered flight access from providers such as Marquis Jet
• Access to exclusive VIP offers & discounts
• Extraordinary travel benefits, unexpected rewards & personalized service

CitiGold

According to their FAQ, the membership requirements are “$100,000 or more in combined monthly balances, including eligible deposit, credit, investment and retirement products; OR $250,000 or more in combined monthly balances if your first mortgage is linked.” You have six months to reach that level, if you don’t you are subjected to account maintenance fees ($25/mo.). CitiGold also has a CitiGold Select if you have $500,000 in combined assets.

Other perks? If you’re traveling, you get access to CitiGold centers worldwide, which include phones, faxes, and meeting rooms. During an emergency, you can get up to $2,000 from your accounts within 30 minutes, preferential foreign exchange rates, and you can collect call CitiGold customer service.

Bank of America Accolades Card

Bank of America didn’t want to be left out of the affluent banking party and recently began offering their own version of the Black AMEX and calling it the Bank of America Accolades Card. It’s a Bank of America-American Express co-branded card and details of the program are still sketchy, despite it’s announcement a year ago. The “bar” for getting the card appears to be like the other affluent banking cards, $100,000 in assets invested ($295 annual fee is waived).

Forbes has a list of other affluent banking cards.

I always read about how Bank of America sucks this, and Bank of America sucks that, but never had experience the suck that is Bank of America first hand. I opened an account with them a year ago with my then-fiancée because they had a branch within walking distance of my house and because they have ATMs essentially everywhere. I looked past the Bank of America horror stories because, honestly, every company has its bad moments. Well, today I met a bad enough moment to make me can Bank of America and go with M&T Bank. (I opened up a personal and business account with them because a good friend of mine works in their new business development side)

No, they didn’t screw me out of $23049823049 in fees or otherwise hosed me by being unreasonable - they did something far worse because it wasn’t some technical glitch or some procedural hangup. They’re going to lose me as a customer because they were rude. When there are as many choices as there are in the world, you can’t even mess up like that. Sorry!

Today, I went to a Bank of America branch to make some check deposits. When I walked up to the counter with my checks, the first thing the teller asks me is if I had counted the amount. I responded “No” because I wanted them to double check my math, as they always do. The responded with a bit of a roll of her eye and then asked me if I filled out a deposit slip. Again I said no, deposit slips are useless anyway. When she counts them up, she’ll print out a slip that goes with the checks and the deposit slip is just a wasted branch on a tree we’d otherwise like to keep around. This is what has happened the other half dozen times I’ve gone in to deposit a bunch of checks (and didn’t want to you the mechanized paper-cut maker of an ATM they have), the teller simply adds them up for you and you’re on your way.

So she pulled out a deposit slip and told me to fill out my name and address on the slip (useless!). Then she put a calculator in my face and told me to add up the checks. All of this was pretty terse and borderline rude but I was content to let it go. As I added up the checks and showed her the calculator, she proceeds to read out the numbers really loudly over and over again. Is there no sense of privacy? I can understand her reading them back softly, but she was speaking more than normal indoor voice.

Okay fine, whatever, at this point the interaction hadn’t gone great but it was hardly worth closing an account over. Then she looks at my balance and tried to sell me on a certificate of deposit. I politely declined. She persisted by saying I was losing money by putting my money in a regular checking account. She’s right, but I still politely declined. Then she proceeded to start talking to the customer waiting behind me! No good bye, no thank you have a nice day, nothing.

That, Bank of America, was the proverbial straw. Keep that lousy $6 you got for giving me an interest rate of 1.0%, which is essentially paying an annual fee anyway, and keep your other worthless products. We’re outta here.

It’s amazing they didn’t make it out of the first round of the Consumerist 2007 Worst Company in America contest (Verizon was a formidable opponent), but you guys should lock up the first round in 2008 against a cupcake like Toys R Us.

Update: Some people have said that I’m being a baby, that I over-reacted, (one guy said he’d punch me) and I respect all of your opinions (maybe I am a baby, but there are plenty of banking options that are more polite) and thank you for sharing them. I actually wanted to touch on the topic of over-reaction. What’s “worse” of a reaction, closing my account or calling out that teller to their manager? If anything, asking to speak to the bank manager and telling them the teller was rude seems to be like a greater over-reaction than closing an account. Thoughts on that?

The other day, as I was preparing my taxes, I saw a curious little $3 maintenance fee on my Bank of America Savings account. For the last five months, I’d been paying $3 a month in a maintenance fee that didn’t appear until November of last year (the account had been opened over a year ago). When I called, I was informed that the fee was because I had less than $300 in the account despite much more than that in the linked checking account. I had moved the funds over to the checking account because the difference in interest, much less than 1%, wasn’t worth me logging in to move funds as needed (vs. the risk of forgetting and taking a NSF fee). In my mind, I had figured that the account was one of those “minimum balance of $something, or combined account value above $something-else” and that I was safely in the $something-else category (usually it’s like $2,500 or $5,000 for something-else so I figured I was okay). Wrong, and they dinged me for $15 (of which I was able to recover $9 with a polite phone call, the other $6 were more than 90 days back and they couldn’t do it, which seems plausible).

The lesson for me here is two-fold and both are related to simplifying your finances. The first, is that as my life becomes more and more complicated, my ability to keep things “on the table” in my mind will diminish. When I was in college, concerned only with a handful of classes and almost nothing else, managing a dozen accounts was no big deal. Now, there are significantly more demands on my mindshare and thus my ability to keep track of everything lessens. One of the things that fell off the table was a monthly review of bank and credit card statements. By simplifying my finances, I can save money because I can more closely monitor my financial accounts. I can catch the $3 fee in the first month, not the fifth, and nip it in the bud.

The second lesson for me was that sometimes what appears to be a smart money move is really more hassle than its worth. More hassle means I’m less likely to do it, which can the smart money move into a stupid money move. The savings account, with its pathetic < 1.0% APY interest rate, exists only because I thought that we could maximize interest earnings. An external transfer would take several days but an internal one takes mere seconds. The savings account could be a holding tank and I would simply move funds as needed. A year later, the hassle of "mere seconds" became too great and I scrapped that strategy, thus costing me a cool $6 and 15 minutes of phone time. Simple is almost always better because I am inherently lazy.

In the future, I’ll be continuing to simplify our finances and operating under the belief that simple is almost always better (because I’m lazy), a valuable $6 lesson.

It’s been over a year since my last Monthly Review and I believe it’s time to bring them back. While other bloggers have continued their monthly income statements and balance sheets, I stopped a year ago because I felt it had become counter-productive. The reality is that the numbers themselves are irrelevant because they don’t apply to anyone else and they don’t help people make better decisions or learn from my mistakes. In fact, I felt that the numbers may be a distraction from the ultimate purpose of my monthly reviews, which was the explain both the good choices I’ve made as well as the bad choices.

So, in this return of monthly reviews, I’m going to simply outline the good, the bad, and the ugly of the decisions thus far. From here we’ll see how the month to months go.

Good

• Marriage: Since my wife and I got married this year, our tax situation for 2007 was unchanged. We are, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, are one of the many couples affected by the “marriage penalty” created by uneven tax brackets (married filing jointly brackets are not double the single brackets). Additionally, since the house and mortgage are both in my name, I was itemizing while she was claiming the standard deduction. Next year, we will be hit with the marriage penalty plus the loss of a standard deduction… considering its something we didn’t have much of a choice about it (hush those anti-marriage folks in the crowd!) we’ll just roll with it.
• Going with Accounting Pro: I’m now working with an accountant to handle some of my business taxes and help me become legit with the online enterprises. There comes a time when you just have to pay a professional and it’s now time for me to pay (rather than to be the professional/consultant!). It’s not cheap but it forces a rigor that is far superior than the record-keeping I had been doing before.

Bad

• Capital Gains: I made a mistake last year in selling some funds for capital gains but then not offsetting them with some capital losses that we should’ve taken, that was a big mistake. We took on about $5,000 in short term capital gains without offsetting it, whoops. That was entirely my fault.
• Stupid Fees: In all the marriage madness and my own ignorance, we took five months of $3 fees for having less than $300 in our savings account at Bank of America, despite having more than enough in our checking account. Dumb dumb dumb. We got $15 back, for three months, but they said they couldn’t go back farther. I was going to push for the other $6 but they wouldn’t budge and, honestly, I don’t blame them. One month I can understand, five? Hmmm… I screwed up.

Ugly

• Stock Market Suckage: This is ugly not because we made any bad decisions but only because it’s happened. In our taxable brokerage account, we’ve had about an 11% in loss on the holdings stretching back into Q4 of last year. That’s pretty gnarly, but nothing we can do, and we’re just going to set it in forget it.
• Honeymoon: Honeymoon is expensive and one of my vices is splurging on vacations. You only get married once right?

The Future

• Rolling Over 401(k)s: We need to investigate the rolling over of all of our legacy 401(k)s to our Vanguard, each of us has one legacy 401(k) to move. It’s not a difficult process, we just need to hammer out the specifics of doing the trustee-to-trustee rollover process for each account. Don’t want to take a disbursement… that’d be ugly (and foolish).
• Consolidating Accounts: We also need to start consolidating all those excess accounts so we can simplify our finances. The process is made much more difficult as my wife is changing her name so we’ll have to wait for those to shake out before we can finalize all of these. I personally have too many accounts to keep track of so it would be good to start cleaning these up.

I hope this satisfies the voyeurs out there, at least for now, but look for more updates starting in May.

Usually when one company offers to buy another company, it offers a premium on the current stock price and the stock price jumps up pretty close to the offered price. The difference in the current price and the buyout price, that “pretty close” number, includes a variety of factors. Those factors include the risk that the deal won’t be approved by regulators or shareholders, the time value of money (a deal that will close tomorrow has less of a discount versus a deal to close in a year), or a whole host of other factors. The shareholders that held the stock before wind of this pending offer are generally happy since their shares will appreciate more than they expected. Some investors consider buying the stock because there still is a little bit of difference between the current share price and the offered price. It seems like a sure thing right? Wrong.

When Bank of America offered to buy Countrywide Financial, it offered absolutely no premium. It offered $7.16 a share on January 11th. Shares of Countrywide are only trading at $4.27 right now… why not snap up shares of CFC at $4.27 and pick up what appears to be a nice healthy premium for your money? You might not want to do that because Countrywide is going to be investigated by the FBI. Woah! That wasn’t in the list of “factors” I listed above and that’s because it’s not something you typically associate with a buy out! If the FBI finds something bad, Bank of America can still back out.

As Ron Popeil would say, but wait there’s more… let’s say you heard about the Microsoft offer of cash and stock for Yahoo, pricing each share at around $31. Let’s say you decided to snatch up a few shares of Yahoo on the buy-out offer because you wanted to make a few bucks and because you thought the buy-out made sense. Then Yahoo tried to find additional suitors to increase the sale price only to find out no one else was truly interested. In the interim, Yahoo and Microsoft stock prices fell so the original offer wasn’t as high, a scenario not mentioned in the list. The underlying offer, since it was pegged to an asset whose value changed, changed as time passed!

So, if you hear of a buy-out and are considering to snatch up some “sure thing” money, think twice. There are a lot of factors and scenarios out there that you may not be taking into account. The market has figured it out and that’s why there’s a difference in the first place.

Nearly 1 year ago I wrote 50 Fun Facts about Credit Cards, a post that was very well received, so I figured why not follow that up one year later with another 50 fun facts post - this time talking about banks. I like reading about history so the first batch of facts revolve around the central bank, starting with the First Bank of the United States and ending with our current Federal Reserve system (you can see the progression!), then wash that meal down with some more entertaining facts like some other firsts, a few mind boggling statistics, and then some fun stuff like bank robberies and banking sponsorship information. It was fun (and educational) putting it together so I hope you enjoy reading the list. (much like last time, I added in a few bonus facts!)

Central Bank History

• The first chartered bank of the United States was the First Bank of the United States, formed in 1791 by The United States Congress.
• If you want to visit, it’s located at Third Street, between Chestnut & Walnut Streets in Philadelphia; but it’s not open to the public.
• The bank was the brainchild of then-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who proposed that the bank sell $10M in stock to help establish its initial funding. Of the original $10M, $2M would be purchased by the United States. However, since the newly formed United States didn’t actually have $2M, the bank would loan the government $2M that the government would pay back in ten annual installments.
• The creation of the bank was lumped in with an increase in excise taxes on liquor and the minting of paper currency. In order to push the bill through opposition to the excise taxes from southern members of Congress, Hamilton brokered a deal to support a bill that would move the capital from Philadelphia to what later would become Washington, D.C.
• The First Bank of the United States was not the first chartered bank in the territory that is now the United States, that distinction belongs to the Bank of North America. That bank was chartered on the last day in 1781 by the Congress of the Confederation.
• The Bank of North America would be succeeded by the First Bank of the United States.
• The Bank of North America, with national bank charter #1, still exists today and is held by Wachovia, N.A. Wachovia still operates a branch at the northwest corner of 6th and Chestnut in Philly, the site of the original bank.
• As you may have expected, that Wachovia branch is the longest continuously operating branch bank in the US, having been there since 1781.
• The Second Bank of the United States was chartered 5 years after the charter for the First Bank of the United States expired and the Second Bank was again located in Philadephia.
• Why a Second bank if the government allowed the charter for the First Bank to expire? War! The US found itself unable to finance the War of 1812 and thus chartered a Second Bank of the United States.
• There was quite a bit of controversy around the bank, there’s plenty of resources out there to read about it if you’re interested so I’ll skip it here, but eventually it went bankruptcy five years after the expiration of its charter in 1836.
• If you want to visit, it’s located on Chestnut Street between 4th and 5th Streets and it’s open to the public free of charge( National Parks Service info page).
• There was no Third Bank of the United States, or any central bank, for 80 years following the expiration of the Second Bank’s charter. That’s when the Aldrich plan, named after Republican Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, of fifteen regional central banks was floated and discussed.
• Eventually, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 instituted 12 Federal Reserve banks, headed by a seven member Federal Reserve board plus a single US currency, a Federal Reserve Note.
• The twelve Federal Reserve banks are located in Boston (1), New York (2), Philadephia (3), Cleveland (4), Richmond (5), Atlanta (6), Chicago (7), St. Louis (8), Minneapolis (9), Kansas City (10), Dallas (11), and San Francisco (12).
• All nationally chartered banks are required to become members of the Federal Reserve System, which means they must buy non-transferable stock in their regional Federal Reserve bank.
• In the 1930’s, the Federal Reserve Act was amended to include the Federal Open Market Committee that consisted of the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and five representatives from the regional Federal Reserve banks.

Other Firsts (and Lasts)

• Flatbush National Bank of Brooklyn, New York was the first bank to issue a credit card in 1946.
• The first bank to be managed entirely by women? First Woman’s Bank of Tennessee, founded in 1919. Unfortunately, its founder, Brenda Vineyard Runyon, was unable to secure a successor after her health began to fail and it was eventually absorbed by First Trust and Savings Bank of Clarksville in 1926.
• Curious to see a list of all the defunct banks in the United States? Check out this page on Wikipedia, it’s accuracy isn’t known.
• As of this writing, the last bank to close was Miami Valley Bank in Lakeview, Ohio on 10/4/2007. It was closed by the Ohio Department of Commerce, Division of Financial Institutions.
• The one right before that was the much more publicized NetBank, shuttered only a few days earlier on 9/28/2007.
• The first bank Jesse James’ robbed was the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty, it was the first armed robbery of a US bank after the Civil War.
• Barings Bank, founded in 1762 and helped finance the Louisiana Purchase, Napolean’s war effort, and other notable historic events; collapsed after Nick Leeson’s losses of £827 million in Singapore futures contract speculation. It was sold to ING for £1! Barings Bank had been the oldest merchant bank in the City of London. (This was the subject of Rogue Trader)

Stats and Figures (Some Mind-boggling)

• According to the Federal Reserve System’s National Information Center, the top five bank holding companies (in order) are Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wachovia and Taunus (Deutsche Bank).
• As of 9/30/2007, the top five hold $6,775,079,249,000.00 in assets. That’s six trillion, seven hundred seventy-five billion, seventy-nine million, two hundred forty-nine thousand dollars of assets.
• Three of the top five are headquartered in New York City, NY (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Taunus). Bank of America and Wachovia are headquartered in Charlotte, NC.
• In 2006, there were 1,279 savings institutions according to the FDIC. 435 were supervised by the FDIC, the balance were supervised by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
• In 2005, there were 7,527 FDIC-insured banks with 72,775 branches and 80,302 offices at year end.
• In 1934, there were 14,146 FDIC-insured banks (unknown number of branches) at year end.
• At the end of 2005, the total assets of all FDIC-insured banks was $10,090,355,277,000.00. That’s ten trillion, ninety billion, three hundred fifty-five million, two hundred seventy-seven thousand dollars.
• At the end of 1934, the total assets of all FDIC-insured banks was $46,437,000,000.00. That’s a mere forty-six billion, four hundred thirty-seven million dollars. Inflation adjusted according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and you’re talking about $676,801,950,000.00 in 2005 dollars.

Consumer Protection

• If your bank has FDIC insurance, your deposits are protected up to $100,000.
• To check if your bank is FDIC insured, use the FDIC’s Bank Find tool. Just because they say they are insured doesn’t mean they are.
• Credit unions deposits are protected under the National Credit Union Administration.
• To check if your credit union is NCUA insured, use the NCUA Find A Credit Union tool.
• The insurance coverage increases to $250,000 if the account is a retirement account.
• There are over a dozen Fed Regulations and laws that protect consumers, a page on the Chicago Fed website has a list of all of them. You will notice a few popular ones such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Regulation CC (how long a bank can hold your check funds as they process). It may make for some dry reading but it’s useful information to know.
• I wanted to specifically call out Regulation AA, Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices, which governs the procedures a consumer should follow to report unfair or deceptive acts or practices performed by a bank with respect to the extension of credit. This is especially appropriate nowadays but the regulation spells out specifically what you should do.

Actually Fun / Interesting Facts

• Bank of America has merged/acquired plenty of other banks, the most prominent of which was the Bank of Italy. In fact, when Bank of Italy merged with Bank of America, it was the Bank of Italy’s founder that served as its head. So you could say that Bank of America could’ve just as easily been Bank of Italy!
• The largest cash robbery, about $18.9 million) to have taken place in the United States was called the Dunbar Armored robbery, which took place at the Dunbar Armored facility in Los Angeles, CA. While everyone was caught, about $10M of the stolen loot was lost. It was an inside job and no bank was involved but it’s still worth mentioning, don’t you think?
• The largest cash robbery of a bank was the Loomis Fargo bank robbery in 1997, in which $17.3 million was stolen from a regional office vault in Charlotte, NC. Again, another inside job and the thieves were caught (so was 95% of the cash).
• Moments before the US started bombing Baghdad, nearly $1 billion dollars was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq and considered the largest heist in history. $650 million was later recovered in the walls of one of Saddam’s palaces but the balance is still missing.
• The N.A. after the name of a bank indicates it’s a national bank, it stands for “National Association.” It means that the bank is chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
• The FSB after the name of a bank indicates that it is a Federal Savings Bank or a Federal Savings Association. It differs from a bank in that it’s overseen by the OTS and takes deposits for the purposes of lending it out for residential mortgages.
• Savings and loans are slightly different, they’re like FSBs/Thrift banks but for all types of mortgages, not just residential ones. The distinction is very slight and the lines are blurring among the three types.
• The North Hollywood shootout occurred after the pair of heavily armed thieves robbed a branch of Bank of America.
• The Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act, passed in 1994, has a provision that states no bank may hold more than 10% of the all deposits in the United States. The bill also made it possible for banks to buy other banks headquartered in other states, this was previously illegal.
• Bank of America is the official sponsor of the United States Olympic Teams, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing), Major League Baseball, Minor League Baseball, and even Little League Baseball!
• In the NFL, there are currently five stadiums sponsored by financial institutions. M&T Bank (Baltimore Ravens), Invesco (Denver Broncos), Lincoln Financial (Philadelphia Eagles), Bank of America (Carolina Panthers), and Raymond James (Tampa Bay Buccaneers).
• In the NBA, there are currently five six arenas sponsored by financial institutions. TD Banknorth (Boston Celtics), Conseco (Indiana Pacers), TD Waterhouse (Orlando Magic), Quicken Loans (Cleveland Cavaliers), Key Bank (Seattle Supersonics), and Wachovia (Philadelphia 76ers).
• In the MLB, there are currently five stadiums sponsored by financial institutions. Chase (Arizona Diamondbacks), Comerica (Detroit Tigers), Citizens Bank (Philadelphia Phillies), PNC (Pittsburgh Pirates), and Safeco (Seattle Mariners).
• In the NHL, there are currently eight arenas sponsored by financial institutions. Wachovia (Philadelphia Flyers), Mellon (Pittsburgh Penguins), TD Banknorth (Boston Bruins), HSBC (Buffalo Sabres), Scotiabank (Ottawa Senators), BankAtlantic (Florida Panthers), Scottrade (St. Louis Blues), and Pengrowth (Calgary Flames) RBC (Carolina Hurricanes).
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity is not sponsored by any bank, but would certainly entertain offers!

I just opened up a letter from Bank of America explaining a promotion in which they will deposit $10 into my checking account if I make at least 3 purchases before January 31st. The only thing I need to do is call up 1-888-624-2323 to activate my check card (which I’ve already done in the past) and I’m set. I don’t know what it takes to qualify for this (I never use my card, so that’s probably why I received this promotion) but if you have a BoA card, call up 1-877-437-8196 to see if you qualify for it.

Terms and conditions are that only one is allowed per account, not valid on ATM transactions, POS purchase adjustments, purchasing cash-like items (money orders, traveler’s cheques, etc) or account funding transactions. You will get the bonus deposited within 6-8 weeks after Jan 31st (if you qualify for this promotion of course).

Seems like an easy $10, call them up if you have any questions.

Look! It’s a new credit scoring system for the credit bureaus! Isn’t that great!? It is, except it doesn’t address any of the problems I see with the credit reporting industry. In my mind I have a set of features I think all the credit bureaus should institute if they want to clean things up and make life easier for everyone. As great as that sounds in principle, the problem is that consumers aren’t the primary customers of credit bureaus; banks, credit cards, and other lenders are. All the features I’m about to list are ultimately great for both parties but I think the bureaus are too short sighted to realize this, but I’ll scream into the abyss and ask for these things. Maybe Congress can do something useful and force them offer these. (some of these features may or may not be already available, I haven’t checked, so let me know it’s already available!)

Easily Freezing and Unfreezing Your Account

This is one feature that companies offer nowadays and some states require it, but ultimately it’s very difficult to do. The bureaus should offer online account access that lets you freeze and unfreeze your account with the click of a button. You don’t want credit, tell them to freeze your account and not to let any requests through. If you want credit, log in, unfreeze it, apply for credit, when you’re granted it, freeze your account again. Yes, I understand that that credit bureaus want you to pay for this service but when they’re giving away your information for a fee, it’s not unfair for them to offer this simple service to you.

Email Notification of Inquiries

At a minimum, set up a service in which credit history requests trigger an email that gets sent to an email account of your choosing. Again, I realize that this has costs associated with it but roll that into the cost of a credit inquiry in the first place. It can’t possibly be all that expensive, per inquiry, to set up a system in which an email can be sent out.

Option To Accept or Deny Inquiries

Now, let’s say you opted to keep your account unfrozen, you get email notifications, what if you could accept or deny inquiries? You could deny all those unsolicited credit requests but keep all the legitimate ones, hopefully you can keep them straight in your head.

Reject Non-Perfect Inquiries

When I reviewed my credit recently, I had an incorrect address and two social security numbers listed on my account. I thought to myself - “how could I possibly have two social security numbers!?” When I asked the bureau, they said that sometimes that happens and that errors often result in inaccuracies in one’s history. The social security number was close but one number was wrong, isn’t that grounds to deny a request? Apparently not! Apparently, according to the CSR, it happens all the time. Well, I think it shouldn’t happen all the time and that it should happen, um, never.

If Nothing Else, How About A Password

So you apply for a credit card, enter in your credit bureau password. If nothing else, this is the easiest way to ensure that the request legitimately originated from you in the first place. This seems so simple to me that it should’ve already been implemented.

How This Helps Banks, Lenders, Credit Card Companies

Financial institutions shouldn’t be trying to deluge every single person in the world with credit card offers, they should be deluging those people who want to be deluged. It’s called targeted advertising, it’s why beer commercials are shown during football games, it’s why jewelry commercials are shown during the holidays and Valentine’s Day, and it’s why you see clothing and fragrance ads in men’s and women’s magazines. You might get a few errant signups by shotgunning the masses but it’s far more effective to send offers to those who are interested.

Lenders may complain that this will slow the credit process down (and these will), but if you’ve been reading the news, don’t you think it the market could’ve used some slowing down? Credit was flowing too fast for too long and now the likes of Citi, HSBC, Bank of America, Countrywide, and company are feeling the pinch. Slowing down isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you’re the one waiting to be bailed out. How is this related? Sometimes what you expect to be bad, in this case a slowdown in the credit approval process, might actually be good.

Lesson of the Day: Don’t open a Bank of America checking account unless they’re offering you at least a hundred bucks to sign up. This time, Bank of America is saying “welcome to the neighborhood” with their latest re-packaging of this offer. The offer itself is pretty simple, just open a new personal checking account with BoA, deposit $100, and in 90 days BoA will deposit $100. This offer only applies if you are a new customer. If you don’t apply online via this link, then visit a branch and tell them you want offer AOU2611. This offer expires Jan 01, 2008.

Fees:
If you open a Regular Checking account, the most basic of the accounts, the monthly maintenance fee is $7 with a direct deposit and $8 without a direct deposit (that boggles my mind, one dollar off!?). If you maintain a minimum balance of over $750, then the fee is waived. There are other fee reducing conditions but $750 is the bare minimum.

Bob points out that “My Access Checking” is also eligible for this offer and it has no fees. (Thanks Bob!)

Terms & Conditions:

Offer expires 1/31/2008 and is available through our online application or in any Bank of America banking center. Offer does not apply to second or multiple checking accounts and/or existing checking customers. Student checking accounts are not eligible for this offer. Bank of America associates are not eligible for this offer. All accounts are subject to our normal approval process. This form must be presented at the time the account is opened if account is opened in a banking center. This minimum deposit required to open a new, personal checking account and receive the $100 offer is $100. We will make every attempt to directly deposit the $100 into your new Bank of America checking account. If for any reason we are unable to do so, a check will be issued as a replacement. We will deposit the money within 90 days of opening your new account. Limit one check per household. To the extent required by law, Bank of America will report the value of the offer to the IRS on Form 1099. Any applicable taxes are the responsibility of the account holder. For interest-bearing personal checking accounts, the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) is 0.05% as of 10/9/2007 for any account balance. The rate may change after the account is opened. Fees could reduce earnings on the account. Please consult a Banking Center, visit bankofamerica.com or see the Personal Schedule of Fees for other account fees, rates and information.