Attention Bank of Amer. safe-deposit box holders

[mm-ll-kk.livejournal.com]

I went to access my safe-deposit box at the Bank of America branch on Highland Ave. in Davis on Friday and found that my box had been drilled open in July, "inventoried" and the contents put in a sealed plastic bag in the event I showed up to retrieve it. Apparently, the bank sent out letters to box holders earlier this year telling them to come in and empty out their boxes, because they were moving the vault which stored them from the basement to a new vault upstairs.

I never received this letter and the bank made no other effort to contact me. The bank manager told me that they are sending all of the unclaimed items to the state's abandoned property division next week. My bag of stuff was in a pile on the floor with what looked like dozens of other similar bags, so there are obviously many other people who this will affect.

The reason I have the word "inventoried" in quotation marks above is because certain very valuable items that I knew were in the box were missing. Luckily they were insured, and I've filed claims with my insurance company and the bank, but the entire situation has been infuriating. I spoke to the police today and they said that while there wasn't anything they could do about it, I may want to get in touch with the Attorney General's office, which I'm considering doing.

Comments

Re: Switched to a local bank last year

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! I bank with Wainwright, and have been very happy about it. There's a Wainwright branch in just about every square in Camberville, plus a few others downtown and elsewhere. There's also a Winter Hill Bank branch in Davis, but I don't know anything about them. Any locally owned small bank is part of the SUM network, which means you can use any of their ATMs for free. The big banks want to convince you that they're more convenient because they have more ATMs, but because of SUM, that's just not true.

I have no idea what Wainwright's safe deposit box situation is like.