Ascencia bank frustrates and disappoints faithful consumer

Because some drug-happy criminal got a hold of my debit card number and used it to purchase pharmaceuticals from an online Filipino pusher I have been on and off the phone with Ascencia Bank for over a month. While I give Ascencia kudos for finally crediting back my money and untangling what could have easily elevated into a financial mess for me, I was quite disappointed with their bumbling when it came to doing something so presumably simple as getting me a debit card replacement.

Ascencia is strictly an online bank based out of Louisville, KY. We do all our banking with them over the innerwebs, and my wife and I monitor our accounts almost daily. When we noticed two transactions from Mercury Drug totaling around $50 we got suspicious and called the number on the back of the card to report fraudulent activity.

I honestly don't know who that number belongs to. I'm guessing it's some clearinghouse for debit cards issued from various banks. Anyway, I know it's not Ascencia Bank because the guy on the other end of the phone, who sounded like he was all of fourteen years old, had no clue how to spell Ascencia. Even after I spelled it for him. Twice. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't know how to spell bank, but anyway I digress.

We didn't know which card, hers or mine, had been compromised, so we canceled them both. Unfortunately it was on Friday evening that we caught the transaction, so we had to wait until the following Monday to contact our bank. The service rep was kind enough to hear my tale of woe, inform me as to what should happen and then order replacement debit cards for both me and my wife.

So I thought.

As anyone with an ATM or a debit card is aware, before you get a new card in the mail, you first get correspondence from the bank telling you that the card is on its way and what the PIN will be when you get it. Well, we waited a week and no such correspondence ever came. No cards. No PINS. No nothing.

I called Ascencia and was told to wait a few more days, and we did. In the meantime we were asked to sign affidavits affirming that we were not the ones who had made the purchases. Incidentally I have no way of knowing what drugs the thief ordered but I hope for his own sake he got something good like Oxycontin or Valium and not just some antidepressant or fatty fatty Phentermine.

Still nothing from the bank so we called back. Again. This time I was placed on hold while the service rep called the third-party company that makes and distributes the debit cards to all the happy boys and girls. When the rep came back on the line she explained that for whatever reason no cards had originally been ordered to be mailed out, but she was going to order them now to be overnighted to us so that we would have them in due course. Well, sure enough, a couple of overnights later, the cards arrived via DHL.

But alas, the cards did not work. I tried a number of times to activate them through an ATM and also at the grocery store register where I'd have to key in my PIN. Each time I was told by the ATM that my transaction could not be processed, and my favorite crotchety checkout lady at Kroger just looked at me like I was some deadbeat dad with no money and a soiled credit record. This is the same lady that scolds me for not buckling my kid into the grocery cart seat or for not bundling her up well enough to protect her from the elements, but anyway I digress further.

Sorry, this whole thing just has me worked up.

When I called Ascencia back to tell them my further misfortune, they informed me that while my cards were overnighted to me, my PINs would not arrive for another week or so. Dearest Ascencia Bank, what EFFING good does it do me to receive cards in the mail I cannot use? What do you think I would do with a non-functioning debit card? Sleep with it like some attachment object the same way a kid goes to bed with a favorite teddy bear? Well, I don't. My Amex maybe, but not by bootleg debit card.

After several more days of waiting and making do with nothing but our 12.9% credit and good looks for payment, the PINs finally arrived. Hooray for PINs! Like a kid in a candy store with a blank check, I hurried off to the nearest ATM to activate the card with the newly arrived personal identification number.

No dice.

Apparently my multiple attempts at having previously tried to activate the card with the wrong PIN put a red flag on the card so that now when I tried to activate it with the correct PIN it was too late. I don't know what about this frustrated me more, that I still did not have a working debit card or that I was going to have to once again call my bank. With gritted teeth, I got Ascencia on the horn. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi, my name's Kevin and I just received the PINs in the mail for two cards I had already been overnighted, and I think my card is deactivated because I originally used an incorrect PIN."

"I spoke with you before. Remember, I told you you were going to have to wait for the PINs in the mail before you used the card?" the rep said.

Time out.

The phrase I told you is rather accusatory and therefor needs to be reserved for scolding children. Gentle reader, can you ever remember a time that someone said I told you and they weren't in some way admonishing you because you handled a situation differently than how they thought you should have handled it? I thought not. I worked in a call center. The phrase I told you, much like any use of the imperative form, shouldn't be used in any type of customer correspondence.

Secondly IF this customer service rep told me to wait until my personal identification numbers came in the mail (and honestly I don't remember being told that by her or anyone else), she would have had to have said that only AFTER I deactivated the card unknowingly by keying in the wrong PIN and not before. How wrong was it of me to assume that because my bank went to the expense of overnighting cards to me that they should work with the PINs I already had? Otherwise would that same bank have not also overnighted the PINs to me as well? Am I some super genious or should any monkey be able to figure this out?

Thirdly, even IF this customer service rep had warned me to not try and activate the new cards without first having received new corresponding PINs and even IF I ran out to activate them against her advice just to piss off my bank (I didn't, mind you, but I'm just saying for argument's sake) what damn difference does it make? That still wouldn't have changed the fact that I needed this rep's assistance in resetting my PIN. What good would it have done her or me or any of the other customers waiting on hold for her to take the time to shame me by saying I told you so?

And finally -- yes, I have as many as four reasons as to why this rep was amiss in her telephone behavior -- she did not run me through the security questions Ascencia normally requires of me before they dole out personal information about my account over the phone. She did not ask me for my Social Security number. She did not ask me for my mother's maiden name. She didn't ask me for so much as my account number, which by the way is readily available to anyone to whom I've written a check but at LEAST it would have been some form of verification on her part. She just happily went about her way admonishing this wayward caller whose ID she had no way of knowing.

For all she knew I could have been the man in the moon! Even if her phone is equipped with technology that identifies the number I'm calling from as matching the home number they have on file for me, she doesn't know that I'm not some crazy roommate pretending to be someone I'm not with the hopes of gaining someone else's personal financial information. How does she know my wife and I don't rent out a room and thus share a phone line with the Unibomber?

That shit is wrong.

I desperately try not to cop an attitude when I'm on the phone with a customer service rep for reasons I've outlined here. I like to think that when I had Ascencia on the phone that last time I maintained my calm demeanor. I did make a passive attempt to rectify my situation by simply mentioning another service representative in my response to the surly one with the hopes of getting passed on to someone I felt would be more willing to help out, and, by the way, this worked.

Surly Rep promptly kept me on hold while I assume she bitched to Much More Accommodating and Jovial Rep who ended up being more than happy to rectify my situation with little chitchat much less scolding, and she threw in some good ol' fashioned bless your heart. I don't care if when she disconnected the call Accommodating Rep made fun of me and joked with her next-cube neighbor that I was an incompetent dumbass. She was polite when she had me on the phone, and that's all that matters.

I don't know that I plan on firing my bank any time soon. Ascencia does offer some good rates and in all honesty this has been my first negative experience with them. And like I said, they did credit my account with money I never thought I'd see again which I appreciated. I just have little tolerance for those who can't adequately handle what should have been a simple customer request.