‘No’ of Any Kind Is Good Enough for B of A

In Time magazine’s recent excerpt of the new book, “Business @ the Speed of Thought” by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, he advises businesses: “Focus on your most unhappy customers.”

By doing so, Gates says, “You’ll turn those draining bad news experiences into an exhilarating process of improving your product or service. . . . You should examine customer complaints more often than company financials.”

I’ve encountered many companies while writing this column that ignore complaints for as long as they can get away with it.

But indications are that Bank of America is not one of them. Specifically, it seems to have been following Gates’ advice in dealing with customers’ dissatisfaction with the bank’s plans to share its customers’ account information with its affiliates.

To lay out the situation:

The Bank of America is not the only bank to take advantage of a 1996 decision by Congress that customers must say no to prevent their information, including “outside information” on their loan applications, from being shared.

But it is one of the largest such institutions doing so, sending out more than 25 million notices to credit card account holders of its intent to share their information unless they say no in writing.

(Thanks to Congress, which is so frequently prone to satisfy business lobbyists, a bank is not required to obtain a yes before going ahead).

Soon after I reported in last week’s column that to say no, a customer had to write a letter to a Bank of America office back East and include his or her name, address, telephone number, and account and Social Security numbers, I heard from several readers who reported that, actually, Bank of America would take an oral no through its customer service lines.

For instance, William F. Krumm of Arcadia e-mailed me that after telling a supervisor on a customer service line (1-800-863-0475) that he would cancel his account over the issue, “things began to change” in the supervisor’s initially stubborn attitude.

“I was transferred to a woman at the Visa Card Center . . . in Pasadena,” Krumm wrote. “She’d been briefed and was more than anxious to accept my verbal directive that they not divulge information to anyone--affiliated or not.”

I was most interested in that, since an official at the Federal Reserve Board had told me earlier that the authorities are considering interpreting the law to allow an oral no, which may be altogether easier.

So I asked Cary Walker, a spokesman for the Bank of America, whether, despite what the bank said in all its notices, it would take an oral no.

It will, Walker said.

“If people want us to stop sharing information with . . . our affiliates, they can write directly to the address provided, they can go to their local banking center and make a request of one of our representatives there, or they can call the toll-free number listed on their account statement,” he said.

“We encourage people to use mail, because it’s more direct, more accurate and more complete. But if people want to contact us direct, they have those options. . . . We’ve been doing this for some time.”

Some readers also said they wouldn’t send their Social Security number, fearing identity theft.

Walker said, “The Social Security number is not mandatory. But it sure helps to ensure accuracy.”

Also, Walker revealed, no sharing of personal “outside information” will be done by the bank with its affiliates for at least a year, and then only on further notification of account holders. Presumably, they could say no then.

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It thus seems that in this, Bank of America is following Gates’ advice and paying attention to its unhappiest customers. Despite its merger with NationsBank, it still remembers the spirit of its visionary founder, A.P. Giannini, who beat everyone else in making loans to citizens in San Francisco after the earthquake and fire of 1906.

The Bank of America and Walker, moreover, haven’t lost Giannini’s competitive instinct.

Walker suggested that I call rival bank Wells Fargo to ask its position on orally saying no.

When I did, spokeswoman Kathleen Shilkret said a written no is still mandatory at Wells Fargo, although a customer can orally reject solicitations from its affiliates. Also, she said, giving a Social Security number is required by Wells Fargo.

Maybe, Wells Fargo should read Gates’ book.

The issue of sharing information, which Walker insists is in the interest of the customer, remains, and one reader suggested that in the last column I didn’t take it seriously enough.

“I thought you sort of backed into a huge story,” e-mailed Benjamin Cole. “Your bank account at B of A and probably most other banks is essentially public record now. If B of A’s 32-page list of affiliates can access your account, that must represent thousands of individuals who can peer into your bank financials.

“And banks are always merging, selling one division or another, buying, etc. Like anybody is going to be able to keep straight who has access and who doesn’t.

“A surreptitious person,” Cole contended, “now needs only to find a friend or person lacking ethics in [an] . . . affiliate, and ask them to run your financials. This doesn’t sound like security to me. This sounds like a huge change.”

Walker, who took issue with Cole’s dire anxieties, recently said that only an unspecified number of direct financial service affiliates, not all the hundreds of Bank of America affiliates, would share information.

“Our security policies are stringently enforced,” he said. “Everybody is required to sign a code of ethics. No employee can sit down and dial up your information. Information is shared for a purpose and on a need-to-know basis. . . . When somebody violates these policies, they are dismissed.”

I hope Walker is fully accurate on this. Policies are one thing; human nature is another.

Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060, or by e-mail at: ken.reich@latimes.com.