It’s things like this that get my neo-digital Luddite blood simmering. This is what happens when systems become so complicated they’re almost impossible to manage. When software is managing software. These are the sorts of things that are the precursors to “SkyNet”.

I go to pay bills yesterday and discover that BofA had shut off my bill pay system. Nothing was wrong, there had been no hacks (that they’ll admit to), there had been no unusual activity on my accounts, etc. No, I appear simply to have been the victim of software managing software during a bank merger.

As many people know, Bank of America has been working a purchase of Countrywide Financial through the courts for some months now. Apparently, on September 30th, they did the final computer file and records merge to bring all those Countrywide customers on board with online banking.  In the process of doing that, I guess someone clicked the wrong thing or whatever and ended up hosing a bunch of existing online bill pay customers.

OK, fine.  I get this stuff.  This merger can’t have been easy – particularly given all the B.S. political crap that’s floating around the whole financial world right now.  But here’s the thing – it’s not the like WHOLE system was hosed and that I had to start over again – that would have almost been preferable to what did happen.  Here’s a quick timeline:

• 9/21 – I get a letter in the mail from BofA informing me that they haven’t been able to send me online banking alerts because my e-mail address isn’t working.  It was, actually, and upon going in to my online account and sending a test e-mail, it worked fine.  The CSR’s at BofA couldn’t figure that one out.
• 9/30 – BofA “accidentally” shuts down my bill pay and resets all the customized data in my online account settings back to “factory default” – nothing major with this, it’s mostly account nicknames I had set up and other “usability stuff”.  No data was lost, all pending debit card transactions are there, etc.
• 10/3 – I go to pay bills and discover what happened on 9/30 and spend about an hour on the phone with BofA getting me access to my bill pay again.  “It can take up to 24 hours for this to take effect, so please check your online account tomorrow”…
• 10/4 – I go to pay bills and discover that while bill pay has been turned back on, not all of my checking accounts are available as “pay-from” accounts – AND, payments that I had scheduled prior to the Wednesday meltdown had been cancelled.  Another two calls to BofA and here’s the part that makes me nuts … they can turn on the pay from accounts again, BUT, they can’t reinstate the scheduled payments that they canceled without my permission, without notification and without warning.  Well, heck, that’s OK – turns out I find out this morning that they still have my OREGON drivers license number on file.  I ask to change that and ……………… I have to physically walk in to a baking center to get my new license number recorded.

It seems to me that if a company, a bank, an insurance company or whomever is going to embrace online technology, then for cryin’ out loud embrace it all the way and do a better job of it.  Online, I can change my physical address and phone numbers, passwords, security questions, add and subtract payees to and from bill pay and initiate all manner of transfers and payments from accounts both inside and outside of BofA – but I have to go to a bank and show a teller my driver’s license “for security purposes”.

It almost (almost) make you want to go back to just writing checks and dropping them in the mailbox.