Since the Bank of America fiasco I find myself constantly logging into my account to make sure my money is still there. My new bank account won’t be open for a few days and the transfer of investments to E-Trade takes two weeks. Why is everything related to banking still so slow? And to top it off, today when I tried to use my Citi card to book an airline ticket it was rejected, even after going through some asinine verification process that for all I know may have been a phishing attempt. One thing I will say for BofA, they have never made me jump through stupid hoops like that.

This morning I spoke to a nice rep from the BofA “Twitter team” and explained to her my concerns and recommendations on how the situation could have been avoided. She clearly articulated the concerns and recommendations back to me and apologized for my experience. She said she would pass the feedback on to appropriate people and that BofA had to work to “rebuild [my] trust.” I appreciated that she didn’t try to bribe me with a credit or anything. I’m curious to see if BofA will take any further action or if someone from the actual fraud department will contact me about the experience, but I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve decided to go with E-Trade, as stated above, for my investments. Already I’ve had two wonderful phone interactions with them in the process of trying to transfer my assets. A much better experience than I had with BofA/Merrill Lynch, and their whole online experience is better. For checking, savings, and credit cards, I’m still up in the air. I’ve opened a PNC Virtual Wallet account, because their online tools look really nice, including online bill pay with ebills. PNC doesn’t have any Massachusetts branches, but they do refund ATM fees at other banks. I don’t think I’d necessarily want to move all of my money to a bank with no local presence, but I am going to check out what they offer.