don't forget to ask permission...

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

...to spend your own money, if you bank at Wainwright and use an ATM card to access your hoard. (Disclaimer: I otherwise love Wainwright Bank, as they are not only progressive in policy, but in action.)

My partner and I were in yesterday, because they now need to be alerted IN WRITING that you wish to leave town and use your ATM/debit card. Otherwise they will interpret purchases as attempts at fraud, and deny the transaction. (Yes, this has happened to me. Most embarrassing.)

They say this is to prevent possible theft; I say it is a theft of my privacy. They will be getting a[nother] nasty note from me when I return from the trip I leave on (in about half an hour). I say "another" because the written notification I gave them was so...vivid...that the Davis Square customer service person was going to fax it over to the main office, probably so they could use advanced graphological analysis to see how infuriated I am.

If I wanted to inform the authorities of my whereabouts, and ask permission to spend my own money, I would face the satellite cameras and vote Republican.

Comments

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU!!! I'm heading to Canada this weekend and would have run into trouble with this!

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

The customer service woman suggested I write to the HQ and tell them my thoughts on this. I hope you do the same. She will give you email addresses, which I have already packed.

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

I've had to do it when going overseas, which made sense to me but notification of every domestic travel seems a bit drastic.

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

I'll make sure to ask. Thank SO MUCH again!!!!!!

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

Indeed - Illinois.

[lidiya6.livejournal.com]

are you serious? how far "out of town"? I don't travel that much but I can imagine this would be a major pain for people who do. Isn't it much more likely that your atm card would be used fraudulently in your own town than out-of-town ?

[lidiya6.livejournal.com]

would western MA be "out of town"? Manchester NH?

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which -- GOOD LUCK OUT THERE! :)

We'd have been at the send-ff but Mandy's show was this weekend.

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

Dunno, M - worth a call.

[inahandbasket]

wow. and I thought the $1000 single purchase limit was a pain in the butt! (My significant-other was trying to buy an Apple laptop online.)

They'll be hearing from me about this one, that's for sure.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Or the fact that you can't cash a check for more than you have in your account - that just boggles my mind.

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I saw the postg.
:)

[inahandbasket]

I fail to see how sarcasm was called for.

[cos]

This has actually happened to me with several banks. It's not a consistent thing - I travel a lot and never tell Wainwright, and my card pretty much always works. But once, I tripped the automatic fraud sensor by travelling too far too fast and it got disabled and I had to call them to re-enable it. The same thing had happened with Fleet and with BankBoston in the past, again not consistently.

Wainwright doesn't actually do their own cards, they're not big enough for that, so they outsource to a company that does cards for a lot of small banks. It's that company that controls the fraud sensor stuff.

In my experience, it never happens when you travel to one place, it only happens when you travel to multiple places in rapid succession. I do that a lot, I go on cross country road trips and I sometimes drive all day. If I use my card in Colorado, Nevada, and California on the same day, that's when I'm at risk of tripping the fraud sensor.

[cos]

See my comment below.

[cos]

Probably not, but see my comment below. They never tell you how the fraud heuristic works (probably even the people at Wainwright don't know), so it's not predictable.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Makes me kind of glad I kept my credit union in California (I've been with them since 1984). I've never had this problem with them.

Of course, I also have only one local ATM (I think), but I can still get cash at CVS. It's all about tradeoffs.

[csbermack.livejournal.com]

1k is high. A lot of banks have lower limits.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

That sounds supremely sucky, I have to say.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

yeah, the one that got me on a credit card once was traveling from Boston to Jacksonville, Florida by motorcycle. Stopping for $5 worth of gas every 150-170 miles all along I-95 apparently does it. :-P I found out when I attempted to make a purchase in JAX with said CC--about $35 worth of maps at a Barnes & Noble--and the card was declined. Fortunately a quick phone call to the bank set things right and reactivated the card.

[ron_newman]

is this only for debit purchases, or also for ATM withdrawals? Does it matter if the card has a MasterCard or Visa logo on it? (Mine doesn't, at my explicit request.)

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

Huh? I'm not sure if you're responding to me, here.

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

I was just volunteering another example of something that was a pain in the butt, no sarcasm.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

It reads like sarcasm because it reads like you're talking about cashing a check *made out to cash*, that is, drawing down your own account. The alternate interpretation of a third-party check didn't occur to me, at least, until you responded.

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

ah - you’re referring to their unwillingness to let you deliberately bounce a check? yeah, that irritates me too, but not overly (i’ve been trying to break that habit for a while now, and i’m feeling the urge a lot less).

-steve

p.s. thanks for the explanation; i initially thought you were being snarky.