As a part of my business, I do recurring wire transfers overseas to my international vendors.   To get this done, I had to go by my local branch and have one of the managers complete a fairly intricate form.   They were always helpful and responsive, but I did have to figure out how to be in town at the end of every month and spend an hour to go and get this done.   BofA had an option to do this by phone.  We filled out a bunch more forms and submitted them, but I never seemed to be able to get the phone pin thing working right, so I settled with taking the time to go to the branch to get this done.

I was pretty pleased last month when the person that I worked with at the local branch told me I would be able to do this from online banking starting in August.   I do all the rest of my banking that way and am pretty happy with it.   When it came time, I decided to do a small test before I sent the full amount.  The new online capability was easy to use.  I was able to select the specific branch of the overseas bank my vendor used and send the transfer.  I received online and email confirmations. My vendor monitored their account and confirmed when it was received.  No issues and I was a happy customer.

Then I did the full transfer.  This time it said it was on hold for review and asked my to call to verify.  Figured this was for security, which was more than ok.  Called the number and was told I needed to call back during the business day. No big problem, so I called back first thing the next morning.  Got the autobot saying they were busy and my wait would be more than "6 minutes" (no kidding).  This particular autobot came back every 2 minutes to tell me how sorry it was.  2+ hours later I got to speak to a human.  Took about a 5 minute conversation and everything was released. While I was appreciative of the precautions, it seemed like the bank should have anticipated the increased load and had things staffed correctly.   Things went through ok, but my vendor got feedback from their bank that the SWIFT transfer was not "really correct".   Another 2 hour wait with BofA and then a transfer to the wire department and this was resolved.

So this is not a horror story, but it is an example of how a good program can fail because the "fit and finish" is not done.  I think this is a great new service.  I makes me even more "loyal" to BofA because they made my life easier. If they had anticipated issues and given me an easy, quick way by phone or online to connect with the right person I would be singing their praises.  Instead I am writing about how businesses should pay closer attention.