Tangled webs
Kasia May 18th, 2008
UPDATE 5/19/08: I’ve received a very courteous comment in my box (which I have not yet approved because I don’t know if he would want his contact details posted) from the Director of Customer Relations at Working Assets. He must have a pretty good Google Alert set, let me tell you… 
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What drives me the craziest about doing business these days is trying to figure out who exactly I’m doing business with.
I don’t mean “who” in some deep philosophical sense. I mean, if I bank at Bank A, even putting aside the fact that it’s likely to change names six times in ten years, who does Bank A contribute to and who are their close business partners?
Let’s use a real-world example, since that’s what prompted this post. The other day I see a credit card offer in my mail. That’s not terribly uncommon, even in these days of tighter credit standards. What struck me was that it was from Working Assets.
Now, I am not 100% sure, but I did at least consider doing business with WA about eight years ago, when I was much more left-wing than I am now, and more notably was still on the fence about abortion. At the time, I didn’t particularly care that they were affiliated with Planned Parenthood. Now, of course, I do.
In any case, I haven’t done any business with WA in at least eight years, and I don’t think I ever actually did. But I used to be on their e-mail lists; I unsubscribed some time ago. So I was more than a little surprised to see this solicitation. But hey, I figured, they probably had a list from one of those bean-counters who makes their living by trying to predict what I’ll support, and somehow I was on it. I’ll just call or e-mail them and ask them to take me off their lists.
Then I looked more closely at the envelope. The postage meter reads “PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID BANK OF AMERICA” (my emphasis) .
Whoaaa, Nellie! Are they the same? Or are they different?
So I started doing some research, and at the same time I called my Bank of America card services phone number. See, I DO have a BOA card (well, I got it through MBNA, and of course BOA acquired them recently, or they merged, or some such thing). And I’m thinking “If Working Assets is now a subsidiary of Bank of America, do I really want to keep doing business with BOA?”
Well, the woman at BOA was somewhat helpful. She told me that BOA is the credit card provider for WA, but that that’s the extent of their relationship. At this point I’m not sure how to proceed, so I ask her how I can get off of WA’s mailing lists. I’m especially confused because I already HAVE a BOA card, so why would they be soliciting me for what is, in effect, another BOA card? But I figured - having worked with mass mailings before - that they probably didn’t cross-check the list against current BOA customers, so I was just an unfortunate duplicate.
Well, she couldn’t freeze me from just WA offers. She had to freeze me from all BOA offers. I said fine, go ahead and do it, and while we’re at it, may I please have WA’s phone number so I can call them and ask to be taken off of their lists? She gave it to me, we said goodbye, and I started dialing Working Assets’ number.
Except that when it picked up, it was Bank of America.
It was the application line for the WA/BOA Visa card that I had been offered.
The gentleman I spoke with there was slightly less helpful, though he did make an effort. Like the previous woman, he offered to freeze me from offers. But he could not provide me with any information for or about Working Assets apart from what I already had gleaned.
I’m starting to get a little miffed. And I’m seriously considering canceling my Bank of America card. Which is unfortunate, because BOA just took over what was, about five iterations ago, a local bank called Standard Federal, for whom I used to work and with whom I used to bank, and which has a branch about a block from my home. Canuck and I will be merging our finances in about eight months, and we were looking at a Bank of America product as a very real possibility. Now I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that. We may just stick with credit unions.
Does anyone know how I can get a hold of Working Assets themselves? There seems to not be a lot of accountability here - Bank of America provided the list (which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but OK), but Working Assets is the one I’m trying to tell to leave me alone. It’s a murky, slip-slidy kind of thing that I’m not having a lot of success getting a grip on.
