Tag Banking

Number Please

Michael Leave a comment
Something the pandemic and its quarantines, closures, restrictions, and general craziness did not change for me is banking. Like many I rarely go to the bank, often carry no cash. I’ve been in that habit though for years. I was a direct deposit pioneer. The last time I saw an actual pay check was in the 1978. Maybe 77. It’s been almost as long since I’ve written an actual check. Housing or car payments were auto-drafted as we called it in the 80s since the 80s. Other payments went on automatic by the end of the 1900s. Over the last 20 years I’ve been inside a bank maybe once a year and have not written a check or used any other non electronic payment for a monthly bill, except one. Ugh! And this year’s trip to the bank?  Double Ugh!
 
For some reason my prescription drug plan does not have a working on line bill paying option. They claim to have one. Their website menu has an option for one. The monthly paperless statement even includes a link to one. Lies! All lies!  Well … Perhaps semi-lies. They have the option but not a working option. When I am lucky(?) enough to speak with a support someone about it I am told the system is down (indeed it is)  but will be available again soon (it never is)  and I am left with the choice of either “pay by phone” or write a check. I detest phone paying services but I destester sending a check. Actually not so much the sending as the remembering to send a check early enough that it gets to them by the due date. 
 
Pay by phone services have not improved since their days as the darlings of paperless payment service in the 1990s. The problem with pay by phone is that you do not have the option to enter a number and review it for accuracy before “sending” it. Each press of a button seals its fate as part of your entry. And there are a lot of numbers. Account number, the famous SSN last four, ZIP Code, payment type, payment account numbers, payment amount, and the *, #, $, and / in between (or not). An incorrect push of any button sends you back to the beginning.  Let’s not forget the “Press1 for Yes, 2 for No” between each entry. Ugh.  
 
They may have regressed when they instituted voice non-recognition. Oh, they can tell the difference between a letter “O” and the number “0” a long a you call “0” zero. Often you have to wait for the entire question before saying your answer even when the question is “If this is correct say yes, if it is not say no” which is asked after every entry. Say yes too soon and you’re back at the beginning again. Then there is the annoying habit of switching to keypad entries at random points of the call. Ugh. 
 
Unlike computer or app payment services, there is no written confirmation of the transaction to either email or messages. In its place is the Confirmation  Number that could be 10 digits, maybe 15, possibly 25, spoken either very slowly with options to repeat it or at the speed of the world’s first talker once and then it disconnects. Ugh. 
 
Next year I’m doing auto-pay!
 
Now that bank story. Oh, maybe we’ll save it for another day. 
 
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Who’s Calling Please

Michael 2 Comments
Happy Veterans Day. I would have come on sooner with that but there is no death of greetings for veterans in early November. Everybody wants to thank somebody for his or her service. Personally as a veteran myself I’d rather we also be remembered in February or June or whenever I’m struggling across the supermarket parking lot with a cartful than everybody figuring they’ve done their duty for those who did their duty by offering an extra 11% off (with valid ID) on the second Monday of November.
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What I really want to write about today is a new twist on an old scam that is making its way around the globe thanks to our reluctance as a society you to reconsider using real money now and then. But before we get to that I want to mention two other things I read in the past week that tie these pieces together like a granny knot that’s been caught in the rain over a 3 day weekend.
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In a recent “letter to the editor” in a national magazine in response to an article on phone scams, the writer seemed quite proud that he never answers his phone without knowing who is on the other end. If it’s important they’ll leave a message. On land line phones this is aided by the use of real Caller ID assuming the caller and the ID actually match (stay tuned). Anybody with a cell phone, which is just about the same as saying everybody in the the known world and probably most of the unknown other worlds  know there is no such thing as real Caller ID on a cell phone. Rather we only “know” who is calling if the caller is in our personal contacts list. Why on a system where you can send text and data, transfer money, and even make video calls can no one figure out how to identify who is on the other end of that signal? Well for whatever reason, the writer does not answer a call unless he can identify the caller and encourages everybody else to do the same.
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In another issue of that same magazine there appeared an article on how to avoid fraudulent phone calls. It was actually subtitled “How to detect and defeat the latest phone fraud.” In my opinion that was a little fraudulent. The article explained how with currently available low priced and even free apps anybody can alter their phone number to make it appear to the reciever as any number the caller chooses, even the receiver’s number. This is called “spoofing.” Their recommendation for “defeating” this fraudulent practice is to assume no number you see on your screen is the actual number of the caller. I’m not sure who just got defeated but yeah, sure, that will show them a thing or two!
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Now, let’s put those two thoughts together. The user says to not answer any call from any number you don’t recognize. If it is important they will leave a message. The expert says to assume every call is from an unidentified source and a potential scam, even if you recognize the number. Ergo, nobody answer any call! Instead, check your voicemail each time the phone rings. If it was important, there will be a message. If it is a voice you recognize and can identify, you can call him or her back but knowing that person will likewise screen all calls, expect to leave a message which may or may not be listened to. It is very possible this can instigate a world record attempt at the longest game of phone tag but nobody will ever know because nobody will take the call from the Guiness people because nobody knows their number nor for sure if they are them.
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imagesSo where was all this going? Oh yes, the new scam. But first, a question. Do you have a Zelle account? A more pertinent question, do you know if you have a Zelle account? Zelle is a money transfer system used by almost every bank in the U.S. Interestingly, if you have installed your bank’s mobile app on your phone you almost certainly have a Zelle account whether or not you know it or want it. It’s just waiting to be activated. And there is the next biggest scam we’ll not hear about until some Senator’s son is duped into losing his allowance.
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The scammer using an already available low priced or even free app calls you after having spoofed your bank’s phone number. You answer because you recognize that number and you are told it is the bank fraud department calling because they noticed unusual activity on your account. Don’t, they say, give them your account login or password, just confirm if these were your charges and rattle off a couple obvious non-purchases. Of course they aren’t yours and you say so. Good, they say, they can take care of this. You are told to open the bank app, again reminded to not give them your login or password. Once you have the app open they will text you a verification code to enter on the login page. At that point they begin to change your user ID and password, open the Zelle account and transfer your balance to a disposable phone which is then discarded as soon as they re-transfer your money to their account. Because you entered the code on your own device, the bank does not act on it as being potential fraud. They will email or text you a notice that your user ID and/or password had been changed. You may not even get that notice if the scammers took the extra time to change your contact information. Even if they did not, Zelle transfers happen so quickly, by the time you would contact your back to inform them that you did not change your user ID and/or password it will be too late.
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Moral of the story. Check your accounts and even if you never asked for it, see if you were enrolled in Zelle, and anything else, “automatically for your convenience.” If you are planning to use it, set it up yourself then lock it.  If you aren’t going to be using it, ask if it can be removed from your service package or at least locked from being activated.
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And maybe make a note of the Guiness record people’s phone number and start screening your calls. Just in case.
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Forget About It

Michael Leave a comment

I cleaned out my desk last week. Not the one at work. That one was cleaned out last summer on my last day. Not the one in my home office. That one was cleaned out of anything of value years ago and the whole room took on more of a storage quality. Well, that sounds too neat. It sort of became a junk drawer with expandable walls. No, the one I cleaned out was the one I use almost every day. It’s the spot where bills are paid, receipts are kept, coupons are sorted, and important papers are stored. After almost thirty years I figured it was time to do some thinning.

Geez, you should have seen the stuff I dug out of those drawers. If they could only talk maybe they’d tell me what I was doing with some of that. There was once a time when I spoke at a lot of conferences and that time reached back to before we put our slide shows on a flash drive and used real slides. For some reason I decided to keep those slides but couldn’t imagine what that reason was. Out they went. Over the years the bank I deal with has been bought, sold, and/or changed names. Several times. Lots of several times. And each time they felt it necessary to change account numbers and thus change checks. And I found all the old checks. Not cancelled ones to prove when I paid for the coffee grinder so I could take advantage of the 90 day warranty. These were the unused leftover checks the bank said not to use after some specific date usually 2 or 3 days before the letter from them was received. I couldn’t recall any good reason why I would have kept checks just as useless as if there was no money in the bank. To the shredder they went. I also uncovered eight (yes, 8) pages of return address labels, 200 labels per sheet, each page with 4 to 6 labels used and the other 190-some waiting patiently to be stuck on an envelope. That was over 1500 return labels. Apparently I paid my monthly bills, did not remember that I had labels somewhere, and printed another page. Several pages found themselves on the inside of the recycle bin.

But the point of today’s post isn’t pre-hoarding proclivities I may be demonstrating. It’s the tale of a specific piece of paper, a single page of a simple form to reclaim lost money. In our state, any sort of property held by an institution in a person’s name is turned over to the state treasury if said person has forgotten about said property. Before it becomes part of the general fund and disappears forever into the current year’s pool for graft, the state conducts a search for the rightful owner. Quite some few years ago I was the rightful owner of an account forgotten at a credit union. Amazingly, years’ worth of fees had not depleted the balance to nothing and there was still money to be reclaimed.

Reclaiming it was easy. All one had to do was prove one was the one being sought and one owned that which was the reason for the seeking. Easy enough, a state issued ID such as a driver’s license is sufficient to prove who I was, or am.  And a copy of a statement from the credit union showing my name and address was sufficient to prove ownership. Hmm, now I began to remember why I had forgotten about this form those many years ago. I actually had a statement from the credit union even though it has been many, many years since I had dealt with them. But that statement had an address three addresses old. According to the nice lady who answered the phone at the state treasury it is a simple process to prove I am that person who lived at the address three addresses ago. Just provide copies of the change of address requests for each change from that address to the one on my current ID.

So in order to get my own money back from the state I have to prove that I once held an account that I completely forgot about when I was living somewhere else in a different century.  I think I just might have remembered why I never finished that form.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?