Dan Weese's Blog

The User Experience of Bank of America #ux

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 19:53:28 -0700

A few months ago I got divorced. One of the to-do's of any divorce is to take any joint bank accounts and remove one of the names. So, with my divorce paperwork in hand, I went down to my local Bank of America branch. I asked them how to go about removing my ex-wife from my checking account. They told me that she would have to go into her local branch and have her name taken off. Ok, no problem. How hard could that be?

So, I called my ex and asked her to go to the bank. A couple days later she was able to get to the bank, however, when she got there they told her that I had to be with her in order for her to take her own name off my bank account. Seriously? What's even more ridiculous is they told her she could close the account and clean out every red cent in there without my signature, but in order to leave the bank account intact I had to be there. Perfect. You can close an account with more than one person on it, but you can't remove your name from that same account. That makes sense.

It turns out that the reason they need both parties in the branch at the same time is they say the remaining person has to sign a new signature card with only their name on it. Welcome to 2011.

So, about a week goes by before my schedule and my ex-wife's schedule line up so we can meet at the bank. We walk in, and after a 30 minute wait, someone is finally available to help us. They ask for her drivers license and my check card. After a phone call to the Online Banking department to make sure they can remove her name without crashing any online banking stuff, they remove her name from the account. I sat and waited for them to hand me a signature card so I could give them an updated signature. It never happened. They said the process was complete and we could go ahead and leave. What? I don't have to sign anything? She doesn't have to sign anything? Why exactly did we both have to be here?

Epic FAIL. What if you and your ex aren't on good terms? I suppose the only thing you can do is open a new checking account, have your direct deposit changed over through your employer, start paying bills out of the new account as you deposit money until you can totally switch without missing any bill payments. If I'm going to go through all that, I'm switching banks. Thankfully, my ex and I are still friends so it was just a 2 week pain in the ass to accomplish.

Bank of America needs to change their policies. #1, if I have a court document that says checking account number 12345 belongs to me and my ex will no longer have access to it, that should be enough for Bank of America to remove her name. It's a legal document signed by a judge. #2, if that doesn't do, the person needing to be removed should be able to do it by themselves. #3, you shouldn't be able to close a joint bank account without the other person signing something. That just doesn't make sense.

Dan Weese's Blog

The User Experience of Bank of America #ux

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