Today, I was on a call with TD Bank’s Card Services. During the call, TD Card Services declined to make a record of my negative feedback about their inaccurate error message. It all began when I tried to log into their website, tdcardservices.com and received a message saying:
“Sorry! We couldn’t find that user name in our system.”
My files said that my username and password were both correct, case and all. However, it is conceivable that I copied and pasted incorrectly and left out a character. I tried to recover my username, just in case I had recorded it incorrectly.
The result was exactly what I had typed as my username before.
Second time trying to log in: Same message. Recovered again in case I misread the recovered user name. The same username was produced.
I called the helpline. The upside was a rather short wait period after I managed to exit the “Press 1 for . . .” system. The woman who answered told me to “Recover user name or password” yet again and this time reset my password. I successfully logged in with the same username and a new password.
This had been a password problem, not a username problem! The error message had been unhelpful, false, and irrelevant. Because my old password did not follow the new guidelines (something like 8-25 characters, at least 1 uppercase and 1 lowercase, and 1 number), it seemed to me that their system had decided to lock out any accounts whose passwords did not follow the new guidelines and give the wrong message. That is speculation, but the error message was obviously wrong either way.
Now, for the ridiculous part…
After confirming that I logged in successfully, I pointed out to the woman on the other end that the initial error message was incorrect. She did not answer. I said more bluntly, “I don’t think it should work that way. You should pass that on to whoever does development.”
The woman on the other end immediately answered, “I’m sorry. I can’t do that, ma’am. Is there anything I can help you with?”
It troubles me that TD’s helpline declined to pass on the feedback that their web site gives an incorrect error message. The woman on the other end did not even say that she made a record of the matter. However, given that my initial problem, not being able to log in, was solved— and that I hardly had the time to argue about passing on negative feedback with someone who might literally be unable to pass on the negative feedback (If so, TD Card Services has a bad system for complaints, too!)— we said our goodbyes and ended the call.
In life, everyone eventually encounters a person or a company that refuses to deal with negative feedback effectively. I do not think it is prudent to allow any person or company who refuses to hear negative feedback to be involved with your finances. I have been with TD Bank since my original bank was bought out and was generally satisfied. There is nothing exceptionally good, but there is nothing exceptionally bad, either.
I just formed a negative opinion of TD’s credit card services. Incorrect error messages waste time, but they might be mistakes. Refusing to fix things or to take steps to fix things (in this case, adding my complaint to some list of “things customers claim are wrong” for review) means that TD Bank’s Card Services simply does not care.