A blank envelope arrived on Amanda’s doorstep. She almost tossed it aside, since it didn’t say “HEY! I’M IMPORTANT!” on it. She happened to feel a plastic card inside, though, so she opened it up. Inside was her new debit card. That’s good, isn’t it? Amanda doesn’t think so.
The letter from her bank said that they were issuing customers new cards as a pre-emptive measure becacuse of all of the large recent data breaches, even though Amanda’s card number hadn’t turned up in any of the stolen data sets and she hadn’t used it at any retailers that have reported data breaches (yet.)
“The kicker? I had two business days lead time to activate my new card before my current one would stop working,” Amanda wrote to Consumerist. “A little irksome, to say the least.” What if she had been on vacation or out of town, away from her mailbox but dependent on that debit card to get around?
She wrote to us in order to warn other U.S. Bank customers that a new card might be coming, if it hasn’t already. Watch out, especially if you plan to be out of town for more than a few days. “If I’d been gone for a long weekend or accidentally destroyed the new card, my current card would have been canceled and I would have no idea why!” notes Amanda.
We contacted U.S. Bank and asked why they’re automatically deactivating customers’ cards without notifying them first. We’ll update this post if we find out.
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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