We applied through BoA on the first day as well and never heard a word. All documents are still in Intralinks apparently untouched. Only two things we ever heard from them were the link to upload documents and a call a few days later verifying we were able to upload the documents. Radio silence since then.
I did read somewhere though that their system was looking for specific file names in Intralinks and if you did not have those your application fell through the system. After reading that, I went back yesterday and looked at our docs and one the we had renamed the addendum and template files to remove spaces. I also looked at their instructions (probably should have read them more clearly from the beginning) and it does say in there not to rename files and/or to use specific file names. I am now wondering if that was what caused our application with them to fall to the black hole.
Luckily we had applied through a local bank and received a SBA number. Waiting on final docs now from them.
This is completely the case with Chase. I had several accounts with them over the years and increasingly had issues (i.e. false positive fraud alerts, unexplained account locks, etc...). At one point the closest branch was an over an hour away from my home (I had moved since opening the account). When I would call the phone support they would tell me I needed to go to the branch. I would then make the drive to the branch only to have the branch manager call the same phone support I had. It's so bad that I once was locked out of online banking for over 6 months on one account and no one, both at the branch level and corporate level, seemed to know how to fix the issue. When I would go to the branch they would call support, support would tell them it is a branch level issue with needing to verify my identity, and the circle continued. I finally just gave up and closed all my accounts with them.
On the other hand, I have an account at BB&T, and their in branch help is phenomenal. Most issues are resolved direct in bank without having to call outside support. Only time they have contacted outside support is when they don't know the answer to a question. On the other hand, if I call support they are quick to answer questions and provide detailed explanations.
I have other accounts at another local bank and the same holds true. In branch support is where it is at.
There is no question that as a bank grows in size and territory the level of support at the branch level and via phone support seems to degrade rapidly.
That's interesting, about 5-6 years ago I had a great experience with Chase in person. I lived in Seattle but was on a 2 week work trip in Cupertino, and I forgot most of the contents of my wallet in Seattle. All I had on me was my ID and a Chase credit card.
The Chase card got shut down due to someone stealing the number, so I was suddenly in a tight spot.
I went into the local Cupertino branch, and the manager was able to put in a rush order for a replacement card to be delivered directly to that branch for me in 48 hours, and then he called my cell to let me know when it arrived. All in all it worked out great.
On the flip side, I'd had TERRIBLE experiences with Chase when I was in college years earlier. Just the classic situation of having an account with $3 in it, getting a "minimum balance fee" that pushes me negative, and then a bunch of chained-together overdraft fees.
Even worse scenario here. I had 4 accounts (a personal checking, savings, a joint checking, and a business account) at Chase. I transferred money from my savings to my checking one day to buy a car. Did a wire transfer from the checking to the dealership. The next day transferred excess funds back to my savings. To me a completely normal set of banking transactions. To some Chase fraud algorithm though it was a red flag and my primary checking was closed. But instead of notifying me there was an issue or that they were closing the account they opted to just lock me out of online banking entirely on ALL my accounts since they were all linked together with one user id.
When I called to figure out what was going on I was advised the account was closed and that a check would be mailed with remaining funds within 60-90 days. I asked about the other accounts and they are all fine and open. BUT, because the fraud closure was related to an online banking transaction I would no longer have access to online banking. Pretty much rendered the remaining accounts useless at this point. So while they didn't close all my accounts themselves, they pretty much forced my hand to close my remaining accounts.
Back in the early 90s I had a summer internship for a contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center. My job for the entire summer was to track down and inventory a list of 1000s of devices across the entire campus. At the time they were building a tracking database for all the devices on the campus.
The printout I was handed on my first day had not been updated in several years. It basically contained a tracking ID, what building/room the device was supposedly located, and who it was assigned to.
I spent every day walking building to building, room to room, interviewing employees, trying to track down devices. I never finished updating the list simply because I was never able to track down over half the devices. Outside of a few secure areas I did not have access to, I pretty much turned the campus upside down looking for devices. I can only imagine where all those devices ended up.
I interned at Goddard in 2006 and my PI had a rogue wireless access point for his interns to use. Apparently it was a long and convoluted process to get network access for personal computers, so he didn’t even bother trying. I remember some of my fellow interns complaining about having to work offline for the first month of their 10 week internship.
Cool thing is: with that argument I was able to convince management to roll out WiFi worldwide at a large corp where the CISO hated WiFi and had halted all projects that sought to implement it.
Needless to say, there where dozens of rogue AP's in the network, which where a biatch to find (was a manual job actually walking around with a laptop trying to find them). With the global rollout we made sure "rogue AP detection" was implemented as an additional feature, which came with its own challenges (sometimes not knowing something is easier to deal with...).
Another fellow Goddard intern checking in! But mine was back before anyone worried about “working offline” vs. “working online”. We just wrote our code—without needing to browse HN and StackOverflow every 10 minutes :-) We still had plenty of other non-Internet related red tape, bureaucracy, and other forms of Work Prevention to overcome and avoid though.
Im having flashbacks to when i had a similar job at IBM back in the day, and we "lost" a z990 system. There was considerable more understanding when I couldn't find a blade server the size of a hardback book than when i couldn't find a machine the size of a car. Thankfully it showed up in Beaverton like 3 months later.
Im still bitter about their ITCS 300 policies that dictated I couldn't have access to the LOM of the blades to enable the beacon light for identification. Nothing like walking through multiple 8,000 sft server rooms looking for 1 server among thousands.
I have always thought this conspiracy. I have Comcast Gigabit and more often than not the first speed test always caps around 250-275. If I run more than 2 times I get 980-990 on average. I wondered if it was some kind of prioritization at play here.
I have this problem a lot with the Chase app. For me at least, it seems to be tied to using my thumbprint to login. If I enter my password manually it goes right in.
I live about 4 miles south of Bethany Beach on the Atlantic. I was inside, but the light lit up my house so much I thought either my house was on fire or a car was about to crash into my home.
My kids dentist is closed Thursday and Friday, but open Saturday and Sunday. While this is great, the downside is it is you have to schedule well in advance and even still there is always still a wait. The plus side is they will work until all patients are seen that day. The convenience factor alone is a huge driver for their business.
Interesting you say this as I had heard similar stories of underfunded mail crime investigations in the past. However, where I live is a very seasonal location. Population goes from 10000+ over the summer to under 1000 during the winter months.
Several years ago a couple people in the community noticed problems with their mail (mail seemingly missing, receiving wrongly addressed items, etc..). They called the postal service and an investigator was out in days. Within two weeks there were hidden cameras mounted in various locations around town pointed at mailboxes. A few more weeks and they apprehended an individual going through mailboxes based on the photos from those cameras. I don't know the final outcome, but the total turnaround from notification to arrest was less than 3 months.
> They called the postal service and an investigator was out in days.
Even underfunded agencies can prioritize. A call notifying them of a problem is a world of difference than them identifying and pursuing issues on their own.
Just like how an underfunded police department may not patrol all the areas they should, but if you call them to notify them of a crime, an officer will likely show up at some point. Even if the officer shows up quite a bit later, the relative difference to when an officer might stumble across that area, much less evidence of the crime, is probably somewhat comparable.
I would bet that it is related to the tornado. It was pretty bad, pretty much taking out an entire Amazon warehouse in Baltimore, Maryland (outside DC) and killing 2 employees.
With that said, if this is the case, it is curious that Amazon doesn't have contingency plans in place to avoid significant disruptions in service such as extended delays. I can understand a slight hiccup/delay, but weeks seems a bit odd. Might be more going on than just the tornado issue.
I did read somewhere though that their system was looking for specific file names in Intralinks and if you did not have those your application fell through the system. After reading that, I went back yesterday and looked at our docs and one the we had renamed the addendum and template files to remove spaces. I also looked at their instructions (probably should have read them more clearly from the beginning) and it does say in there not to rename files and/or to use specific file names. I am now wondering if that was what caused our application with them to fall to the black hole.
Luckily we had applied through a local bank and received a SBA number. Waiting on final docs now from them.