Brett’s Bank of America debit card stopped working. A merchant he had patronized recently (they wouldn’t say who, of course) had been compromised, and they sent him a new card a month before. The problem: Brett is in Afghanistan right now. The bank sent a replacement card out to him right away by FedEx, but only after it didn’t show up did they remember: oh, yeah, they don’t send new debit cards to APO addresses! Helpful.

The 2nd of October I attempted to buy a pair of glasses online using PayPal. My debit card which is linked to my PayPal account was denied. Thinking it was an issue on PayPal’s side I called them and notified them of the problem. After researching the issue I was told that it was actually a problem on Bank Of America’s side. I contacted BOA to see why my card had been denied and was told that a merchant I had previously used my card at (which they weren’t allowed to disclose) had been hacked and my card number was one of those which had been compromised. I was told that a new card had been sent to my home the 9th of September.

This would have been fine except for the fact that I was allowed to have continued use of a “compromised” card for an entire month and I’m currently in Afghanistan with no way to obtain the new card. I explained to on to the representative and he told me that BOA would FedEx me a new card to my APO address in Afghanistan. I gave him the address and phone number so that once the card arrived the FedEx station could call me and notify me. After 2 weeks of waiting I finally went to FedEx myself to see if maybe they just forgot to call. There was still no package.

I called BOA and told them that I still hadn’t received my card when I was notified that BOA doesn’t ship to APO addresses. Due to this “accident” I was forced to cancel my vacation to Thailand because I had no way to access my money. Well, as if that wasn’t enough, because the card I had used to purchase my plane ticket to Thailand had been canceled I wasn’t able to obtain a refund as I had no card for the airline to refund my money to.

Thank God for USAA.

A lot of our readers, military-affiliated and not, agree with that last sentiment.

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