Not a new thing, either.
And if I recall correctly BofA has restrictions on what you can put in a safe deposit box that include many of the sorts of things you’d put in a safe deposit box, like coins.
You bring up a good point.
I will counter with, just how safe is a safety deposit box in a big bank that may decide to take it and offer you no explanation? You’re only safe as long as they are willing to stick to the rules.
And yet they are still among the front of the pack.
“Too big to fail” happened. How the fuck is Wells Fargo still even a thing after all the shit they’ve pulled. Same answer.
All people are to banks and corporations are wallets with legs.
Chic-fil-A messed up my breakfast order at the drive-thru this morning (yes, I know, Chic-fil-A doesn’t mesh well with my politics, but I like their chicken; I’m a bit of a hypocrite, but at least I’m not GOP bad). It was too late for me to go back, so I decided to call them which is something I never do. They were extremely apologetic, are sending me free meal cards to make up for it, and said they hoped I would be willing to come back in the future. Maybe they should be put in charge of BoA?
That’s almost some Douglas Adams level shit there.
Well done!
Or you could leave a sealed and notarized list with your lawyer in the event that your box goes missing. Maybe even have photographic evidence? But to be fair you don’t expect your safe deposit box to go missing in the first place. I think this is going to be a very messy class action lawsuit for BoA.
Each time I go to our safe deposit box, I take a photo of the contents.
I do it so I can remember what’s in there…I never thought that it might be useful for this situation.
The most likely explanation to me is that the customer had their identity stolen. Someone knew that they had a safe deposit box, went to the bank to open the box and stated that their key was lost (it happens). Produce fraudulent identification, the lock is drilled and the contents purloined. Bank of America’s not going to hock your grandmother’s necklace; they’ve got much better ways to steal your money.
Good point and one I hadn’t considered. Cheers.
Oh I seriously doubt it would be an action by the bank. I suspect an employee. But in either case, I think the FBI should investigate this as a bank robbery.
I’ll bet Wells Fargo’s upper management is relieved it’s not them for a change.
From the article:
Bank of America accounted for 23% of recent safe deposit complaints to the agency, second only to Wells Fargo which accounted for 24% of the complaints.
Two syllables: mat and tress.
My understanding is that the bank not knowing the contents of the box is a common condition (quite possibly treated as an outright feature). This wouldn’t preclude a shipper-style “you declare the value you want it insured for” arrangement; but the system isn’t designed to include an inventory.
(Please note: none of the above is intended to be exculpatory; just an explanation of why “the full value of the contents” would not be a likely standard.
My hope would-be that, regardless of the contents, the mere failure to maintain access control as agreed would carry reasonably serious penalties; since that’s a fundamental violation of your promised service(which has a nasty habit of being negligence or fraud; with the occasional actual robbery which doesn’t carry the same ethical culpability; but where FDIC-style considerations of not wiping out retail customers suggest a strong policy reason to want a fairly robust minimum threshold for how much liability someone representing themselves as a bank subletting vault space(rather than a cheap 'n cheeful storage unit)in the can disclaim.) but a value-of-contents standard would involve more 3rd party inspection than one would really prefer.)
Susan Nomi says when she went to open her Bank of America safe deposit box of 16 years, the entire box was gone.
I went to the source article, and verified, both in text and the news segment video. I’m pretty sure if you close out your safety deposit box, the bank holds on to the actual freaking box.
And if someone claiming to be you came and had the old box drilled out they would both have replaced the box itself so someone else could use the spot, and have a record of that having happened.
Maybe they connected you with someone on the inside, who does what happened to you? Complaining about anything to the perp will often make them smile. Ask me how I know.
The sign on the door should have been a tip-off.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
This sounds like a job for a gang of low-power networked gizmos in various boxes, watching each other.
Official BoA’s response:
Guys, you’re just lucky you didn’t have your safe deposit box at Wells Fargo.
It would’ve been pilfered much earlier.
Anyway, thank God Mick Mulvaney is in the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, dismantling the fuck out of it from the inside out. Imagine if the CFPB were to look into this problem and handled it for us citizens. Would we learn anything, if “someone else” took care of our problem? Would we grow stronger or weaker from this coddling?
Plus, why should banks be punished by big government? This is where the invisible hand of the market should come in. Banks will be incented to steal less (and/or allow less theft) from their customers, because those customers will become impoverished, go extinct, and thereby be unable to pay safe deposit fees.
You had one job.
Safe deposit boxes are one of the few things today that are actually secured by matching signatures. After being refused access to my box for a sloppy signature once, this provides me some comfort. Just seeing that signature card with decades of entries inspires a confidence that you don’t get with an electronic ledger.
I am going to file this as a fluke so I can believe that some things in life are safe.
FDIC does not insure the contents of safe deposit boxes. This makes them ripe targets for dishonest employees of banks OR credit unions.
If you must use one, have the contents insured: by your homeowners or renters insurance if allowed, or by a separate policy.
Home safes are vulnerable to electronic predation, and our beloved Internet kicks our hiding places and stashes out of the closet(s) every week or two.
We are so screwed.
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