I'm the executor for an Aunt's estate. She worked for and owns a large amount of stock in a Fortune 500 company. We won't get into the price of the stock, that's another, rather bitter topic.
As soon as I could, after her death, I made changes to her info at an BNY Mellon (
BNY) site that listed her certificates and other details of her account.
BNY, obviously had 'out-sourced' the phone support.
Early this year,
BNY sold their stock monitoring/services to ComputerShare (I'm not certain, but that place may actually be rem ants of CompuServe (
CS), if anyone can remember them!). Of course, the site still uses the
BNY logo and domain but
some of the contact numbers have changed to reach
CS. I discovered this change around February when I tried to access the bookmarked site. None of my info worked! A call to the
BNY number was answered by
CS people who sounded identical to the previous phone support staff. I even put the connection on speaker phone so my wife could listen and offer a suggestion as to what was being said in "English." She said she was impressed by my ability to understand the other side of the conversation.
The result of that conversation was that they were to send me a temporary password by snail mail. Five days later I did receive a letter from (you guessed it...)
BNY not
CS. And, sure enough, there, in plain text was a label "Password" and a six digit number beside it.
I go back to the site which used Flash, of course because of the extra security that technology provides.
Of course, the first text field asked for one's "Personal ID" Well, there is nothing like that in my notes or in 1Password but the account does have an "Investor ID." Enter that 12-digit number and promptly get a page stating that I need to call the phone support group... again.
"Oh, you don't have your 'Personal ID?'"
I was surprised to make that fact known as fast as I did, frankly.
"Just click the 'I forgot my Personal ID' link."
Of course this required opening the site again as the 'Close' button was inoperative... Thanks Flash!
"Now, on the page that opens, click the 'Investor ID' button and enter that 12-digit number in the text box.
Now click the 'I forgot my PIN' link." And Safari crashes. A few minutes later, I'm back to this step and accidentally click the wrong link. The site returns me to the "Call support" page, again without recognizing my clicking the 'Close' button.
I excuse myself my explaining that I need to go to my brain transplant appointment and will call back have the survey heals.
I make a few more attempts and even get to a page, which I'd seen nearly two years ago asking me to select an image and answer three 'security' questions. Still, the site refused to cooperate and I decided to actually check into a brain transplant...
The arrival of another dividend check last week reminded me that I need to get this problem fixed; we're really hoping to close up the estate by the end of the year and the info about the account is important.
This time, I am told that the System was changed in late 2010 and that I didn't have the 'Personal ID' or 'password' set up so I could not access the site/info until that was completed. The lady could not explain why I had been able to access and print out pages from the site several times in 2011. She said that was simply impossible. We obviously had different definitions for that word. I asked, as politely as possible, to speak with her supervisor. In only 23.7 minutes, the supervisor came on the phone and I explained my problem... again.
She walked me through the steps to get things working. Actually, she walked me through several of the steps many times as I was presented with the "Call support" page at least five separate times. But, eventually, I got t the page asking for an image selection! Excited about the progress, I clicked the 'continue' button before noting that I was also supposed to create a caption for that image. As soon as I clicked the 'continue' button, the error checking took effect and dumped me into the page with a warning that there had been a "System problem" and that I should try again, later. But I mentioned that the web form and the letter that had been sent identified the six-digit number in two different ways. While the letter called it a "password," the web form where it when was actually labeled "PIN." And the form field labeled "
Personal ID" was what I would call my User Name/ID. That bit of info was what I could create if I ever got to a stable, working page using the temporary PIN/Password, it had nothing to do with the 12-digit Investor
ID.
I bid the nice lady adieu as I explained I had a few brick walls I needed to take down with my forehead!
Being a glutton for punishment, I
did try again later and enjoyed visiting my old 'non-working' Close button. In yet another attempt, I managed to paste in that Investor ID in the Personal ID field. Up popped a dialog stating that it was not in the valid format and I should read the stupid instructions!!!
But this was the most useful action I had taken because I then got a warning that the site didn't like Safari and I should use Firefox! I did and am proud to say I can now clean out that account!!
OK, not really, but I can now log in.
I will attempt to use Safari, which worked fine last year. And I had disabled Glimmerblocker and ClickToFlash way back at the beginning of this episode, they were not the problem. As far as I'm concerned, the problem is the use of different names for the same items normally found on most registration pages and the different labels used for the same items on the web site and in the letter. The extra sensitive, "make-a-mistake-and-simply-crash-site" error checking does help, either. I'm sure that helps prevent a bot from getting in on the first 1,692 tries, however.
Please, no sympathy notes, but if you'll PM me, I'll give you a snail-mail address where you can send donations to help pay for my upcoming transplant operation. No amount is too small.
I gotta take a nap... 
