USAA Temporarily Deletes 14k Roth IRA, But Won't Explain Why
USAA just pulled a huge mindf#@k on Travis and his wife, and now he wants to talk to someone high enough up the chain to find out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. His wife "went online yesterday to check on some transactions and discovered her IRA balance was $0. Six hours prior to that, her balance was $14,000." When she tried to find out what had happened, the first CSR she spoke with told her she had no IRA account, and the second CSR told her to refresh her browser. Yeah, you know how these newfangled browswers are always wiping out retirement accounts.
I am in the military and both my wife and I bank with USAA. She and I have separate checking accounts and separate Roth IRA's through USAA. Since we don't live in San Antonio, we bank online with USAA. My wife went online yesterday to check on some transactions and discovered her IRA balance was $0. Six hours prior to that, her balance was $14,000. We live on the East coast and the banks phone lines close at 10:00 PM Eastern. My wife discovered her missing balance at about 10:30 PM.
USAA allows you to e-mail them and promises to provide a response within 24 hours. We sent an e-mail and waited until the next business day. No e-mail arrived and finally my wife could not take it any longer. She called at 5:00 PM Eastern and got a CSR on the line. The CSR treated my wife as if she was lying and kept telling her she must be thinking about her husband's account because my wife has no account! My wife then demaned to speak to a supervisor and was "transferred" to the proverbial click.....dial tone. She called back and got in touch with another CSR who told her to "refresh" her screen because my wife must have been staring at the page too long. Lo and behold, her account appeared.
While her account was ultimately restored, I find it disconcerting that $14,000 can disappear that easily and then be treated so nonchalantly or even accusatory by the CSR. I also find it disheartening that USAA does not return e-mails for something of this magnitude.
I want to get a hold of someone HIGH in the food chain for an EECB and some phone numbers to go along with it. USAA guards these like the Colonels secret recipe and I wanted to ask the Consumerist for help. Can you help me??
We don't have that info. Do any of you? The best we can come up with is the general mailing address and phone number, and names of executives. But even if you can't get hold of private email addresses or phone numbers, you should still write a detailed account of what happened and mail copies of it to each one of USAA's executives:
- Joe Robles, CEO
- Kristi Ann Matus, CFO
- F. David Bohne, President of USAA Federal Savings Bank
- Christopher Weber Claus, President of USAA Financial Services Group
- Wendi E. Strong, EVP, Corporate Communications
- Dawn M. Johnson, EVP Marketing
Update: A lot of readers are referring to a "glitch" and implying that the OP must have not refreshed her browser. I've marked in bold the important line from the second paragraph of the OP's own story, where the CSR tells Travis' wife that she has no IRA. If this was a glitch, it was certainly more than just on the OP's computer.
(Photo: informant)
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If it happens again, I would take screenshots, then visit the local police station and report it as a theft.
I suspect USAA will "take it seriously" when they start getting phone calls from investigators.
I also do banking / retirement / insurance with USAA, and have for several years. This seems totally out of character with my experiences with USAA. I suppose it's always possible to get a bad apple, but every CSR I've ever talked to was extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and well-trained, so I would suggest just calling back and speaking to someone else.
+1-210-498-2211
That should be the phone number to their corporate headquarters, but I'm not sure.
Woah guys, its USAA. Remember USAA? God > USAA, but only by a tiny bit. Its a glitch, calm down!!
@kamikasee: Yes, agreed. I have done business with USAA -- banking, investments, retirement, insurance -- for over 20 years. The CSRs over there are always friendly and knowledgeable. Whenever something has gone wrong -- and things do go wrong sometimes, even with USAA -- they work with you to fix it as soon as possible.
Ask to talk to someone in the Executive Resolution Team. You can get to them through any regular phone monkey the checking/savings area. Most lines of business at USAA have something similar but this is specific to the IRA/Checking/Savings/CD/Credit Cards area in USAA
They are able to spend time going back and forth between the IRA department, back office, IT, etc so that you don't have to. Just explain to them that you're at a point where you have received poor/incorrect information and you just want it fixed and if you push for it, they can call you back when it's resolved. If you send an EECB the email will get forwarded to this team anyway...so might as well call them up and handle it directly.
The only way you should get "passed around" is if it NOT a bank IRA and is instead an investment IRA which they are not licensed to discuss. If you are sent to the IRA department it will be to someone at the same level as them. They resolve executive level issues and act as the member's liason between departments.
The other thing you should look at: Was it a CD IRA? If it is a CD IRA, you will see a zero balance while it is not in maturity because funds are not "available". You will see an available balance while it is in maturity and during the 10 day grace period because funds are technically available for withdrawal.
the wording of the post makes it sounds like refreshing the page worked. did i miss something?
it could have been a serverside error in pulling the information, if refreshing the page did in fact fix the problem. perhaps they were having trouble with their database servers?
Sometimes I have the same problem with my library. When they are updating their systems, it shows that I have no books/videos checked out and none on request.
On the other hand, it's understandable why the OP freaked out :)
I'm not sure why people freak out so much over an internet glitch. Just because the website said it was gone for a few minutes doesn't mean that the money actually disappeared. The banks website isn't completely dispositive of the balance, and the simple fact that it says zero doesn't make it a crime either. Calling the police because your banks website says zero for a few minutes is a waste of the polices time, and is a terribly foolish suggestion.
@panzerschreck1: If the first CSR could have confirmed the existence of the IRA on USAA's end, I would agree. However, based on Travis' full story, the first CSR asked if his wife was lying, and said that she must be thinking of her husband's account because she had no IRA.
@swissdietcoke: Sorry, mate, but if I had 14k in an account, and it was all of a sudden gone. Temporally or not, someone's head needs to roll. Glitch or not.
@dmuth: Yep, I bet they will.
@Pylon83: My earlier comment to you got re-routed to the wrong comment. Here's attempt #2, and it's what I wrote above to panzerscheck1: If the first CSR could have confirmed the existence of the IRA on USAA's end, I would agree. However, based on Travis' full story, the first CSR asked if his wife was lying, and said that she must be thinking of her husband's account because she had no IRA.
I think it's unclear. Did the wife check the account from the time of the missing money was noticed? And it was still missing?
Or did she actually not refresh the browers/check again because they didn't get an e-mail.
Seems that there are details missing. Did the wife keep checking or did she just keep looking for an email then call?
I use USAA as well, and have never had a problem. Just call, be POLITE and they WILL help you. I have never ended a call with any USAA CSR unsatisfied, or without them asking if "they could help me with anything else".
I know it can be traumatic to see that much money *gone* but they will get this right.
The first CSR sounds like an idiot; with the transfer-to-nothing, who knows what she was looking at, or how far she bothered to go into the account? I think it *is* entirely possible this was a glitch, as it turned out with the second CSR, but the first CSR should be reported, because that kind of dismissive behavior is definitely not normal for USAA, and shouldn't be taken lightly.
Yup...be polite to USAA and they treat you like gold. Remember, they're all members too. They all members too.
This is extremely out of character for USAA. I've been a USAA member for over 20 years and have never seen behavior like that from their employees. You should definitely send a letter to company headquarters and ask for someone to call you. It is worth pointing out that USAA staff may be dealing with claims from Ivan right now, so a modicum of patience may be necessary.
On a side note, the guy in the photo is a friend of mine! In fact, he was one of the folks in the Italy trip from this Consumerist story (although he's not in the photo that ran with the story).
I agree with everyone else, I've never had any issues with USAA for the 22 years I've been a member (and I'm almost 24, thanks dad!)
Their webpage, especially their main accounts page where you can see all your accounts appears to be a lot more flash or javascript (I'm too lazy to see which one), but those technologies sometimes won't get info from a database quick enough and just show $0. It's happened to me a time or two. Usually I give it 10-15 min and login again and everything is peachy.
Like celyn said, they are probably waist deep in claims from Ike, so cut them a break. In the grand scheme of things, this appears to be a very isolated glitch.
I have this exact same issue. On Sunday I noticed a $0 balance in my investment accounts and called the online support phone number (1-877-632-3002). I asked if they were experiencing any problems with the website. He replied, "Yes, we've had a couple calls about the Investments section reading $0." I tell him that is also my issue and he says not to worry, they are tracking down the problem, it's website related (but not due to scheduled maintenance), and my money is still all there. He then added my info to the already open trouble ticket. As of right now, Tuesday night, my balance still reads $0 but I am not worried...it's USAA for pete's sake!
Banks online systems do go down from time to time, sometimes planned for upgrades/enhancements, other times unexpectedaly, but either way all information is backed up on more than one system. Unless you got a statement that says you have a zero balance there is nothing to worry about.
Most banks also have a disclaimer somewhere that information found online "is not guaranteed to be accurate but deemed reliable" so they have an out right there.
@Chris Walters: Unfortunately, CSRs are sometimes burdened with the same client-side web portals that the customers have to use. One glitch can affect both the customer and the CSRs. A low-level CSR may simply be clicking through the exact same portal that Travis and his wife are using, only with a global pass via intranet; or a unique portal, but likely susceptible to the same server-side issues.
There should always be more fail-safes, backups, and histories than ever necessary. Even if your accounts suddenly get wiped, they'll never be irretrievable. Just don't panic.
your 14k ira just got patriotically diverted to buy distressed assets from a foreign bank! yes, you'll have to make a small sacrifice, but look on the bright side, this will add liquidity to the system and help unfreeze the credit markets so some mom&pop adult bookstore will get the financing it needs to keep 3 high school dropouts on its payroll and afford a shipping container full of the very latest hi-def pr0n, nyuk nyuk nyuk.
i love the naive characters saying it's usaa, they were immaculately conceived so they can't possibly be bad. tell them to explain the zero balance to you right now, or else explain it to you in court. no company is above suspicion. i'm old enough to remember when merrill lynch was thought to be immortal.
I am in the military.
I bet there's some fine print in the website TOS that says that there's a "best effort" to provide accurate acocunt information, but that displayed balances aren't guaranteed.
I agree with swissdietcoke. USAA is a good company, and they will *not* screw you. Like the OP, I'm also in the military - my guess is that that OP is somewhat low on the food chain and a mite more shrill than someone with some experience. I have a >lot< more than $14K, and I wouldn't lose an instant's sleep trusting it to USAA....
Let's see how much faith you'd have in anyone telling you your 14 grand wasn't there.
Everyone I've ever talked to who used USAA for anything has lauded them, this seems surprisingly out of character.
@kamikasee: I also have banked with USAA for over 15 years and have never had such a problem. They've always been extremely polite, curteous and helpful, even when it's been with a third party vendor that they contract with they have gone the extra mile to fix things.
I use USAA for banking and insurance. I have seen similar glitches on their website.
Once scheduled payment transfer was not listed the day before it was due. So I scheduled a new one. Both transfers executed so I ended up paying double my credit card balance.
Also their site use to not work well with the mozilla firefox browser. They seem to have corrected that flaw though.
There is a fine print standard disclamer on the website stating something like, "The information presented by the website may not be 100% accurate."
@dmuth: sheeze that seems like an over reaction. It's possible it was something as simple as a database connection error.
I understand being a careful consumer but this just seems like a lot of panic over nothing.
USAA has been nothing but stellar service providers to myself and my family. I am sure there is a reason for what has happend and to which I am sure the OP will get it. I have always found the USAA CSRs to be some of the most highly trained and skilled individuals in the industry. Always a pleasure to chat with them.
Unfortunately the ability to click a few links to see all of your account infomation in the age of technology brings with it certain potential failure points. Lets face it hardware breaks, software has bugs, either of which could result in what was seen. Did the first CSR handle it correctly probably not and should be purged.
Why is everyone so quick to dismiss the OP on this? Often when one goes online and sees something awry with a bank/credit card/IRA account, it is due to one being a victim of identity theft. While I have been fortunate so far as to never have been in that position, I can understand the immediate panic that could set in when one discovers thousands of hard-earned dollars apparently vanish. On top of that, the discovery happens after business hours and you cannot get a quick confirmation on what happened, and you could imagine the worst (i.e. what other accounts have been or are going to be compromised?)
i would have to agree with those to give usaa a break. as a member and former employee, i have to give them creds for being more often on the good side of the customer service scale. i have had CSRs tell me they cant help me or dont want understand my issue, but for the most part usaa has been very solid on support (not so much when davis was there, but more so now that robles is)
but mainly, this isnt bank of america, so i wouldnt worry too much.
FWIW, Forrester's June 2008 Customer Advocacy report to industry listed USAA as having the highest customer advocacy score for 2008. They scored 76% versus Citibank at 22% (lowest) and Wachovia Bank at 38%. USAA was also tops in 2007.
Customer advocacy was reported by each institutions' customers, and is defined as the perception on the part of consumers that the firm does what's best for its customers, not just the firm's own bottom line.
I think you're seeing that sentiment from the USAA members commenting on this thread.
totally out of character for them. been using them a long time. i'm sure everything is fine, but i would definitely pursue it because i am certain this is the type of thing the top of the chain will want to know about and investigate.
@kamikasee: Another "agree." I've had an account with USAA since 1999 and they have been absolutely brilliant on the phone every time I've called. (They've been good by e-mail, too.)
@kenblakely: I'm confused. What exactly do you mean by saying that the OP is "low on the food chain"? I hardly think social status or pay-grade (which I'm inclined to think that you're referring to) has anything to do with his reaction to the problem. I think it was a valid concern.
Oh, and I'm so proud of you for having WAAAAYYY more than $14,000 in your retirement account. Congratulations.
Completely agree. on the off chance that you actually get an unresponsive agent at USAA, just call them back and speak to someone else. They're usually very polite and helpful.
@kamikasee: I too have had the same *excellent* service from USAA. My dad's in the Army and I've had some form of account with them since I was tiny. They've handled my crazy Massachusetts car insurance (though my parents live in Kansas) excellently and always been very helpful and given good rates.
@KevinReyn: Ditto on the good service from USAA. I expect this CSR will be dealt with in a very appropriate manner.
@Mike8813:
I agree with you, a customer is a customer, despite if they have 500k or 5k in their account. And 14k is a lot if you are just starting a 401k (like the wife probably had done 2 or 3 years ago). Hell, with most americans up to their eyeballs in debt, having ANY savings at this point is laudable.
I also had an issue seeing my Roth. It didn't have a zero balance, it just was not there. I tried a few thing including moving around accounts to different categories on the web page, and poof it showed back up.
@tankertodd: I was thinking this very thing this morning as I read through the comments. USAA has an impressively high degree of customer loyalty.
That doesn't negate the OP's right to ask why a retirement account went missing for at least 18.5 hours, but still.
USAA > God
Did anyone consider the notion that the database that sends data to the customer-facing website is the same database that sends data to the back-end USAA accounting system? I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the CSR in that he/she could very well have been looking at the same thing the OP was looking at.
Just sounds like an isolated glitch that was fixed. If this is something that happened all the time, I could understand the outrage, but as it is, it seems a little unjustified.
I concur with kazoni, sometimes there's a lot of information processing on the server side and on the client side, and some shortcuts are used to make things faster on both ends. It would help to clear your internet temporary files just in case also. If some data doesn't finish downloading, it will sometimes use cached information to save face instead of an error message.
then again, if it was me and it looked like I was missing $14,000, I would have called it in right away, not sent a measly email. some fire departments and police stations have email addresses. would you ever email a fire alert pr break-in?
I smell huge financial malfeasance by someone at USAA.