Those fraud-detection programs at banks are supposed to help you out — not strand you in Siberia with no source of funds.
Bank of America on July 28, soon after I arrived in Irkutsk, Russia, for a 2-week trans-Siberian vacation, deactivated my debit card after I withdrew about $400 from an Irkutsk ATM. This was quite unexpected since I had called Bank of America before my vacation to inform them that I would be in Russia.
BofA apparently thought the card was being used fraudulently. The difficulty of communicating from Siberia didn’t help matters. Finally Shannon got through and asked to have her card reactivated. BofA said they couldn’t do that, but they could send her a new card — a solution that made Shannon laugh.
At this point it became glaringly apparent to me that Bank of America does not often do business in Russia. The Russian postal system is famously unreliable, as are courier services there. In fact, many Russian offices have their mail sent to Finland, where it is then privately couriered to Russia. Also, we had not booked many of our hostels and hotels in advance, and explaining the situation to a hostel or hotel over the phone with my 30 words of Russian would have proven frustrating indeed.
There was a logical problem with that solution, too:
Bank of America has used super-science security technology and policy-making to determine the following: not reactivating a card used in Russia prevents fraud, but sending a new debit card to an unverified address is A-OK!
It all worked out in the end, though not without a final twist:
BofA rushed me a new ATM card, but neglected to also rush the accompanying pin number, which arrived five days after the card did. As a result I was unable to activate my card in a BofA ATM, as a sticker on the new card instructed me to. I ended up having to speak with a rep at a local BofA branch, but between the fact that she spoke English combined with my somewhat diminished expectations of BofA, I was able to handle it without further issue.
All’s well that ends well….
