Capital One 360 Fail

So you all know that ING Direct was "acquired" by Capital One some time ago... and this month they finally swapped their name so ING Direct is no more... its now Capital One 360...

It's a sad day and I mourn the loss of my orange bouncy ball and my simple banking... Why? because they have already failed and its only day one.

Earlier this month I pulled paperwork at Vanguard to start moving some of my funds from my first Roth IRA to my new Roth IRA at Vanguard. I called and got all the things I needed from Vanguard (very helpful by the way), and then I called the folks at Capital One about any additional steps I needed to do to make the transfer happen... and they told me that no additional forms or paperwork were needed on their end and I simply needed to just send in Vanguards forms and all would be taken care of.

I called Capital One first because of the last time when I tried to move one 457 to another and ran into 6 months of red tape and bad phone calls and customer service issues--- and I didn't want to repeat the process. 

I asked again... They told me I was set to go.

So imagine my surprise when when I got the mail yesterday and found my paperwork from Vanguard had been returned with a letter telling me that I would need to get a "medallion" signature on all my forms because Capital One required it...

I looked at the papers feeling dumb... I had no idea what a "medallion signature" was and quite frankly when you have an online only bank, you can't really walk into an office and ask people to explain it and provide their John Hancock for you...

oh, and in case your wondering, a medallion signature is different than the signature a notary can do... It said so on the papers... so i was at a dead end and went to the internet.

According to Wikipedia,

In the United States and Canada, a medallion signature guarantee is a special signature guarantee for the transfer of securities. It is a guarantee by the transferring financial institution that the signature is genuine and the financial institution accepts liability for any forgery. Signature guarantees protect shareholders by preventing unauthorized transfers and possible investor losses. They also limit the liability of the transfer agent who accepts the certificates.

I decided to put the task on hold and run some errands with my husband instead because procrastination is the best solution sometimes :)

We had some funds that needed to be deposited for our small business (You can see what my husband makes here), so SCB and I went down to US BANK where his account is. The guy who originally signed us up for an account was there and was happily chatting away about the woodturning business with us while my husband deposited funds.

While we were chatting I just happened to bring up the medallion signature problem... and he said he could do it for me there! At no charge too!

the forms were in my purse so I whipped them out and handed them over... He let me use his computer to print off my latest account statement to prove the account was mine... then signed it and let us go on our way.

That's a customer service WIN in my books! 
Thanks US BANK!!!

If I liked their online interfacing and account set up more, I might consider trying to get rid of BOFA... since i only keep my accounts there because of my mortgage and the fact that I need a brick and mortar bank for peace of mind...  So if your reading this US Bank... model your website after capital one 360 and i'm yours :)