Can You Hear Me Now?

I loathe and despise corporate America, and especially Big Banks, so after a recent fiasco with Bank of America, where I've banked for more than 30 years, I decided enough is enough and began the arduous process of switching to a smaller, friendlier, less expensive institution. If you live in a house, where you have a unique street number address, congratulations, because you've automatically saved yourself hours of work. But if, like me, you live in a condo (or an apartment or a co-op), where although your apartment or unit number is unique, you share the actual street address with many other people, plan to spend a couple of weeks downloading paper application forms which you'll have to complete the old-fashioned way and submit via snail mail before you're allowed to open an online account. When I asked why there's no provision to apply online unless you live in a house, I was repeatedly told this is a provision of The Patriot Act, "to prevent terrorism". I didn't realize terrorists only operate out of apartments or condos, but hey, what do I know? 

So today, approximately a month after I submitted the initial paperwork via snail mail, having jumped through all the initial hoops, I went online to activate my new checking and savings accounts. I'm retired and my only income is my Social Security check, so the first thing I did was go online to change that deposit from Bank of America to the new place. Today is June 8th; that change will go into effect in late August (!!!). I spent several hours online, attempting to update auto-pay sources. I use AT&T for my cellphone, and Spectrum for internet, and I was unable to change the info at either of those websites due to problems with the websites. Neither website provided any information that they were having problems. Instead, both websites allowed me to enter all of my information, including account and routing numbers, but after I hit submit a pop-up appeared with a message saying they were "unable to complete my request, but please do try again later". Eventually, I was successful with AT&T but not with Spectrum. Tomorrow I'll try once more and if Spectrum still can't process my request, I'll phone customer service and try to get help that way. I find it ironic that the website that gave me the most trouble is my internet provider website. First world problems, I know, but I do have to solve this.