Hi everybody.
I'm seeking all and any advice on something which has become an extremely stressful issue in our household. Here goes:
My wife got a letter a few weeks ago from "Bank of America" asking her to update the information on her account. It looked suspicious. The number it said to call wasn't the number on the back of her card so she called the number on her card and asked if it was legit.
She was congratulated for being vigilant and advised that it did sound like a scam. She was told to destroy the letter, so she duly did.
A couple of weeks later she tried to access her account but was locked out. So she called BofA and was told the account had been closed because her information hadn't been updated. So she answered some questions etc and was told the account would be restored asap.
Sure enough, her account was soon back up and running. But the balance was ZERO. So she called back. She was told that the entire balance of her account (I won't say the figure but it was her entire life savings) had been posted by check to her here in the UK. No tracking. Just DHL to London.
It's now been close to 3 weeks and still no cheque. Having lived here for 10 years she's pretty familiar with the standard postage times to the UK and it's usually less than a week. As you can imagine, she's a complete wreck but I've been reassuring her "it's really annoying but you won't just LOSE the money" She has called them every day since, and got a different answer every day.
Today she spoke to someone who assured her a) That the person to whom she was speaking was the highest rank person she could possibly talk to and b) That if the check was cashed by someone else, BofA would take no responsibility.
"There's nothing you can do but wait for 90 days (90 DAYS!!!) at which point we can reissue", they said. They won't cancel it, they can't track it, they just said "wait". Suddenly I'm not so confident about my reassurances to her.
The good news is that is hasn't yet been cashed by anyone, but that's not helping my wife much - she's terrified all of her money will just be gone in a puff of smoke if someone does cash it. Given the sophistication of fraudsters today, it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone managed to do just that. I can't even imagine.
But she's been told there's literally nothing she can do. No amount of calls will escalate her case. It's "no longer their responsibility". There's "Nothing they can do" if it's cashed, they told her. I don't believe this. I can't believe it.
Surely a bank as high profile as BofA wouldn't just empty a customer's account & tell them "good luck getting that back"?
Is there anything we can do other than wait for 90 days? They won't cancel the check. (I have no idea why not but they won't).
Thanks for reading this, any advice appreciated, hope the hive mind of reddit comes through.
J
Submitted November 14, 2017 at 11:17AM by ukpoppet http://ift.tt/2AJQrwW
