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Problem seems to be fixed. I purged all cookies on my browsers, restarted the machines, and so far (knock wood) I'm not getting that constant device verification at the moment.
As Schwab's tech support told me the other day:
For the security of our client’s accounts, we have several systems that work together to determine if a device is trusted at login. The systems first looks to determine if the browser has the authentication cookie in place or if the device matches the previous Device ID. At this time there is no way to determine the way in which the device was recognized.
Since you were asked for the access code after trusting the device, that means that either the system determined the cookie on the browser was not present or is corrupted, or intervention was needed due to mismatching Device ID.
Here are some troubleshooting tips.
Login to the Schwab account, successfully complete Device Validation and trust the device. After you log in, logout and back in once more. If device validation intervenes once more, its likely related to browser cookie. Please clear cache and cookies and attempt login once more. Other settings in the browser have also been known to interfere. Please check browser extensions that may block or delete cookies upon exit.
If it is not intervened, its likely related to Device ID. Please reboot the device and attempt to login once more.
If neither of these troubleshooting tips solves the issue, please reach out to our Technical Support Team at 800-565-826, Monday - Friday: 8:00 am – 9:00 pm ET, to speak with a specialist for further assistance.
If you have any further questions, please start a live chat on Schwab.com or reply to this secure message. Our representatives are available at any time to assist you. We greatly appreciate your business.
Yes, problem fixed. The double-authentication is stopped after I told Schwab to remember my laptop. The phone agent was typically friendly, overly so... Then he offered: it may be...
I said: OK. I'm just letting you know. I can't do the work of your IT Dept. FOR them. Thank you.
- Fidelity does not work with Zelle. Zelle can only work with bank accounts and Fidelity is not technically a bank whereas Schwab is. - Fidelity CMA offers free automatic overdraft which I do not believe Fidelity Brokerage account offers.
- Fidelity does not work with Zelle. Zelle can only work with bank accounts and Fidelity is not technically a bank whereas Schwab is. - Fidelity CMA offers free automatic overdraft which I do not believe Fidelity Brokerage account offers.
I don't use Zelle, but as a test I downloaded it to a no-service cheap smart phone I have and signed up. For the cash source I entered my Fidelity debit card number. Zelle seemed happy with everything. The debit card is issued by PNC Bank.
Since I don't use Zelle I have no one to send some test cash to. And no, you can't offer to be my test recipient.
I am exploring options to consolidate my banking and brokerage relationships.
Have you guys dealt with BoA banking?
I have been a client of Merrill for more than 10 years and hence I have a BoA checking (minimal activity) and BoA credit cards.
Today, I went into the BoA branch to open a new account (my Merrill contact had set up an appointment with her banking guys). Dealing with them was like dealing with the Government office. Compared to BoA banking, all the complaints I hear about Schwab and other brokerages seem pedestrian.
If anyone here has a self directed BMO brokerage account, please share your experience.
(My family has a small relationship on the banking side (walking distance to my home) and the BMO branch people are always very customer focused and the manager sits in the open for people to go talk to.)
@BaluBalu : I've been with BMO for a few years since they bought out my former bank. I had to open a checking account that pays .o5 % to get my MM account to pay 2.2% . I just moved money over to Schwab to get a better rate! This week I received notice that a CD is maturing & that it would rollover at the "new" rate. I don't remember that it was roll-able , but will probably be sending that money elsewhere, unless they can come up with 5%. If my SS & pension checks weren't going there, I'd be gone. Yes they're friendly bankers, but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone! Let me add that after I opened the checking account I received 4 starter checks. Wouldn't you think if they were friendly, they would send out a box of 40 or fifty checks ?! No they would order them & then charge the account, as that is what happens with the MM account. Then I stop in at the bank & see if they'll eat the checking printing charge & they do, but why the run around?
If anyone here has a self directed BMO brokerage account, please share your experience.
(My family has a small relationship on the banking side (walking distance to my home) and the BMO branch people are always very customer focused and the manager sits in the open for people to go talk to.)
BMO is the Bank of Montreal (I checked up on this awhile ago when I was considering BMO Alto for an online savings account):
The Bank of Montreal was founded in 1817, making it Canada’s oldest incorporated bank. ... Today, the various components of the Bank of Montreal are collectively known as BMO Financial Group.
I vaguely recall Schwab saying years ago that some of its branches (largely west coast?) functioned as banks as well as brokerages. That doesn't seem to be true now - Schwab Bank seems to be a pure internet bank.
Fidelity used to have pseudo ATMs in their branches where you could deposit checks, but not get cash. Those also vanished years ago. I guess the cost of maintaining something that did only one task, did it only marginally faster than the human being at the desk, and was limited to branch hours made no sense. Nice when it worked, though.
The nice thing about Schwab ATM is the fact you can take out money around the world and they will refund you the fee by the end of the month. Question: suppose you took out $300 from an ATM and you want to deposit back $150, how do you it with Schwab or a bank that doesn't have branches?
The nice thing about Schwab ATM is the fact you can take out money around the world and they will refund you the fee by the end of the month. Question: suppose you took out $300 from an ATM and you want to deposit back $150, how do you it with Schwab or a bank that doesn't have branches?
... Ya, hey? The Honolulu office WILL NOT ACCEPT CASH. The whole raison d'etre of Schwab is to DEAL WITH MONEY. "Nuts." --- General Anthony McAuliffe, at Bastogne.
The nice thing about Schwab ATM is the fact you can take out money around the world and they will refund you the fee by the end of the month. (Confirmed; see footnote 8)
At Fidelity "The reimbursement will be credited to the account the same day the ATM fee is debited." (See footnote 2.)
About Fidelity's disclaimer that it may not cover the 1% network exchange fee ... No one seems to have actually been charged. That includes me - I did a test at Heathrow a few years ago - same ATM, same withdrawal amount; compared Schwab and Fidelity, no difference.
Here is my latest BoA experience. Took my 80+ yr mother to the branch to add her to my safe box account which I had opened exclusively for her.
First Day - the branch lady said she can not accept insurance card, Medicare, or social security card as second proof of ID (in addition to state issued ID). I said print me instructions on what you need. She said there are no instructions to print but all she needs is a credit or debit card issued by a different company / bank and we will be all set.
Second Day - The branch lady said, “your credit is frozen, we can not verify your mother’s identity. Unfreeze your credit and wait for 72 hours and come back”.
I figured before I drag my mother a third time to the branch, I ask her to print me the account opening brochure so I know all the things you need. She said she had nothing to print or share and claimed all I need is bring my mother a third time with State ID, CC, and unfrozen credit. I asked her why she needs credit unfrozen when we are not applying for credit and she insisted that is how they do business. When I asked her to send a customer suggestion to her higher ups about providing clear, printed instructions to customers, she said she will send the request to her CEO (I doubt she knows his name).
This is worse than third world experience and trust me I spent considerable time there.
I looked up other BoA branches within 15 miles of my home and they all have 2 out of 5 consumer online rating. Yelp rating for my branch is 1.6. (My entire previous experience with BoA is thru their self directed brokerage, Merrill.)
What happened to Corporate America?
Bottom line, I am going to either short BAC stock or buy put options on it.
Chase and Citi customer service in my town is so much better but they do not offer safe deposit boxes. BoA is a nightmare.
I looked up other BoA branches within 15 miles of my home and they all had 2 out of 5 consumer online rating.
Under "branch services" BofA used to tell you whether that branch offered safe deposit boxes. This information has been removed. Consider yourself lucky that you've got a local branch of any bank that still offers boxes.
Corporate America has always been about greed. When customer service was the norm, companies had to provide good service, else they would lose business. As people became familiar with (dare I say enamored with?) self-service, customer service became an excess cost to be jettisoned.
The bank I use for a safe deposit box used to be a reasonably sized (88 branch) regional bank. It merged with a similar sized, out of state bank (assets doubled). That in turn was acquired by another bank (assets doubled again). That put it into the list of 40 largest US banks.
With that went customer service. No more notary service (used to be free even for noncustomers). Advance appointments are now required to access our box. Most of the desks in the branch that used to have bankers are now sitting empty.
We still have a safe deposit box at another bank that we kept for transition to BoA. My desire to consolidate financial institution relationships down to two (or at best three) is not going so great.
I would be ashamed to work at an institution that has a customer satisfaction rating of 1.6 out 5. May be the new crop of American workers are all Buddhas!
Any way, part of my reason to post about BoA is to let the forum members know that however bad our brokerage experiences are, judging by banking experience, brokerages appear to be quite good. It seems there are worse companies in America for customer experience. Banking experience impacts wider society than us brokerage customers.
Bank or credit union? We prefer the latter. Two banking accounts here. If you have a military connection, there's NFCU. Our other is Hickam FCU. You must live on Oahu to qualify for membership. Both have offered us superb service. Even on the Mainland, NFCU offices are few and far between.
I am somewhat amused by all of the criticism regarding BofA. I came to the same conclusion over fifty years ago. When BofA took over the bank that held our mortgage I walked into our local branch, was granted an audience with the surly unfriendly woman who had replaced the former pleasant and helpful manager, handed her a check (on a different bank) and paid off the mortgage then and there. Haven't had any traffic with BofA since.
When I was a youngster (1940s/50s) BofA was headquartered in San Francisco. It had taken over and replaced a historic and outstanding local bank: The Bank of Italy, started by A.P. Giannini, a revered local businessman. After the earthquake of 1906 Mr. Giannini loaded all of his customer's money into horse-drawn wagons and transported it down the San Francisco peninsula to his own home, where it was safe from the fire which later consumed his bank offices in San Francisco's North Beach enclave.
From Wickipedia:
A. P. Giannini was an American banker who founded the Bank of Italy, which eventually became Bank of America. Giannini is credited as the inventor of many modern banking practices. Most notably, Giannini was one of the first bankers to offer banking services to middle-class Americans, mainly Italian immigrants, rather than only the upper class. He also pioneered the holding company structure and established one of the first modern trans-national institutions.
My father, who was also Italian, had nothing but contempt for the BofA, which had turned a friendly and helpful local bank into what you folks are still observing today. Boy, was he ever right.
I never had a bad experience with any of the credit unions I ever had accounts with. (I closed the last of the credit union accounts about a year ago.) One wonders why the fat cat bankers can not provide the same level of service as the credit unions. I do not mind any government support for the credit unions and small banks.
I never had an account with Wells Fargo, another bank with SF roots. When I read about all the fraudulent behavior towards their customers I thought it must be an isolated bank but I can imagine all the big banks doing the same if they can get away with it.
All in all, I blame the enablers more than the CEOs / executives. The roster of enablers goes down all the way to the lowest level employees. Whenever I see a lower level employee enabling corporate bad behavior, I tell them they are being used to line the pockets at the top but they will be thrown under the bus. One of the managers and her boss at one of my ex-employers were sent to jail for enabling corporate bad behavior while the executives paid no price (not even claw back of compensation), though the company paid a $500 million fine (20 yrs ago). While we all rant about political leaders, does not the blame actually rest with the enablers (us)?
BofA isn’t even the BofA you walked away from back in the day. They were bought out by NationsBank who adopted the BofA name for their entire operation because it had a better reputation than BofA.
@msf Thanks for the Zelle experiment with Fidelity debit card. Good to know. Still a little inconvenient because Zelle is directly integrated with my other banks (no need to download Zelle app)
Comments
(link).
As Schwab's tech support told me the other day:
For the security of our client’s accounts, we have several systems that work together to determine if a device is trusted at login. The systems first looks to determine if the browser has the authentication cookie in place or if the device matches the previous Device ID. At this time there is no way to determine the way in which the device was recognized.
Since you were asked for the access code after trusting the device, that means that either the system determined the cookie on the browser was not present or is corrupted, or intervention was needed due to mismatching Device ID.
Here are some troubleshooting tips.
Login to the Schwab account, successfully complete Device Validation and trust the device. After you log in, logout and back in once more. If device validation intervenes once more, its likely related to browser cookie. Please clear cache and cookies and attempt login once more. Other settings in the browser have also been known to interfere. Please check browser extensions that may block or delete cookies upon exit.
If it is not intervened, its likely related to Device ID. Please reboot the device and attempt to login once more.
If neither of these troubleshooting tips solves the issue, please reach out to our Technical Support Team at 800-565-826, Monday - Friday: 8:00 am – 9:00 pm ET, to speak with a specialist for further assistance.
If you have any further questions, please start a live chat on Schwab.com or reply to this secure message. Our representatives are available at any time to assist you. We greatly appreciate your business.
I said: OK. I'm just letting you know. I can't do the work of your IT Dept. FOR them. Thank you.
- Fidelity CMA offers free automatic overdraft which I do not believe Fidelity Brokerage account offers.
https://www.fidelity.com/spend-save/features-by-account
I don't use Zelle, but as a test I downloaded it to a no-service cheap smart phone I have and signed up. For the cash source I entered my Fidelity debit card number. Zelle seemed happy with everything. The debit card is issued by PNC Bank.
Since I don't use Zelle I have no one to send some test cash to. And no, you can't offer to be my test recipient
Have you guys dealt with BoA banking?
I have been a client of Merrill for more than 10 years and hence I have a BoA checking (minimal activity) and BoA credit cards.
Today, I went into the BoA branch to open a new account (my Merrill contact had set up an appointment with her banking guys). Dealing with them was like dealing with the Government office. Compared to BoA banking, all the complaints I hear about Schwab and other brokerages seem pedestrian.
If anyone here has a self directed BMO brokerage account, please share your experience.
(My family has a small relationship on the banking side (walking distance to my home) and the BMO branch people are always very customer focused and the manager sits in the open for people to go talk to.)
I had to open a checking account that pays .o5 % to get my MM account to pay 2.2% .
I just moved money over to Schwab to get a better rate!
This week I received notice that a CD is maturing & that it would rollover at the "new" rate. I don't remember that it was roll-able , but will probably be sending that money elsewhere, unless they can come up with 5%. If my SS & pension checks weren't going there, I'd be gone.
Yes they're friendly bankers, but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone!
Let me add that after I opened the checking account I received 4 starter checks. Wouldn't you think if they were friendly, they would send out a box of 40 or fifty checks ?! No they would order them & then charge the account, as that is what happens with the MM account. Then I stop in at the bank & see if they'll eat the checking printing charge & they do, but why the run around?
Where else do you bank?
While the bank has a US operation, even with a branch near you, its self-directed brokerage appears limited to Canadian residents: Maybe it's that they don't charge transaction fees on mutual funds that caught your attention?
https://www.bmoinvestorline.com/selfDirected/pdfs/SDFeeSchedule_E.pdf
That's offset by their charging $9.95 (Cdn) for stock and ETF trades, except for 95 NTF Canadian ETFs.
Fidelity used to have pseudo ATMs in their branches where you could deposit checks, but not get cash. Those also vanished years ago. I guess the cost of maintaining something that did only one task, did it only marginally faster than the human being at the desk, and was limited to branch hours made no sense. Nice when it worked, though.
Question: suppose you took out $300 from an ATM and you want to deposit back $150, how do you it with Schwab or a bank that doesn't have branches?
The nice thing about Schwab ATM is the fact you can take out money around the world and they will refund you the fee by the end of the month. (Confirmed; see footnote 8)
At Fidelity "The reimbursement will be credited to the account the same day the ATM fee is debited." (See footnote 2.)
About Fidelity's disclaimer that it may not cover the 1% network exchange fee ... No one seems to have actually been charged. That includes me - I did a test at Heathrow a few years ago - same ATM, same withdrawal amount; compared Schwab and Fidelity, no difference.
The Finance Buff, Fidelity Debit Card Foreign Transaction Fee on ATM Withdrawals
First Day - the branch lady said she can not accept insurance card, Medicare, or social security card as second proof of ID (in addition to state issued ID). I said print me instructions on what you need. She said there are no instructions to print but all she needs is a credit or debit card issued by a different company / bank and we will be all set.
Second Day - The branch lady said, “your credit is frozen, we can not verify your mother’s identity. Unfreeze your credit and wait for 72 hours and come back”.
I figured before I drag my mother a third time to the branch, I ask her to print me the account opening brochure so I know all the things you need. She said she had nothing to print or share and claimed all I need is bring my mother a third time with State ID, CC, and unfrozen credit. I asked her why she needs credit unfrozen when we are not applying for credit and she insisted that is how they do business. When I asked her to send a customer suggestion to her higher ups about providing clear, printed instructions to customers, she said she will send the request to her CEO (I doubt she knows his name).
This is worse than third world experience and trust me I spent considerable time there.
I looked up other BoA branches within 15 miles of my home and they all have 2 out of 5 consumer online rating. Yelp rating for my branch is 1.6. (My entire previous experience with BoA is thru their self directed brokerage, Merrill.)
What happened to Corporate America?
Bottom line, I am going to either short BAC stock or buy put options on it.
Chase and Citi customer service in my town is so much better but they do not offer safe deposit boxes.
BoA is a nightmare.
Under "branch services" BofA used to tell you whether that branch offered safe deposit boxes. This information has been removed. Consider yourself lucky that you've got a local branch of any bank that still offers boxes.
Corporate America has always been about greed. When customer service was the norm, companies had to provide good service, else they would lose business. As people became familiar with (dare I say enamored with?) self-service, customer service became an excess cost to be jettisoned.
The bank I use for a safe deposit box used to be a reasonably sized (88 branch) regional bank. It merged with a similar sized, out of state bank (assets doubled). That in turn was acquired by another bank (assets doubled again). That put it into the list of 40 largest US banks.
With that went customer service. No more notary service (used to be free even for noncustomers). Advance appointments are now required to access our box. Most of the desks in the branch that used to have bankers are now sitting empty.
I would be ashamed to work at an institution that has a customer satisfaction rating of 1.6 out 5. May be the new crop of American workers are all Buddhas!
Any way, part of my reason to post about BoA is to let the forum members know that however bad our brokerage experiences are, judging by banking experience, brokerages appear to be quite good. It seems there are worse companies in America for customer experience. Banking experience impacts wider society than us brokerage customers.
When I was a youngster (1940s/50s) BofA was headquartered in San Francisco. It had taken over and replaced a historic and outstanding local bank: The Bank of Italy, started by A.P. Giannini, a revered local businessman. After the earthquake of 1906 Mr. Giannini loaded all of his customer's money into horse-drawn wagons and transported it down the San Francisco peninsula to his own home, where it was safe from the fire which later consumed his bank offices in San Francisco's North Beach enclave.
From Wickipedia: My father, who was also Italian, had nothing but contempt for the BofA, which had turned a friendly and helpful local bank into what you folks are still observing today. Boy, was he ever right.
I never had an account with Wells Fargo, another bank with SF roots. When I read about all the fraudulent behavior towards their customers I thought it must be an isolated bank but I can imagine all the big banks doing the same if they can get away with it.
All in all, I blame the enablers more than the CEOs / executives. The roster of enablers goes down all the way to the lowest level employees. Whenever I see a lower level employee enabling corporate bad behavior, I tell them they are being used to line the pockets at the top but they will be thrown under the bus. One of the managers and her boss at one of my ex-employers were sent to jail for enabling corporate bad behavior while the executives paid no price (not even claw back of compensation), though the company paid a $500 million fine (20 yrs ago). While we all rant about political leaders, does not the blame actually rest with the enablers (us)?
Thanks to @Old_Joe for sharing.
BofA isn’t even the BofA you walked away from back in the day. They were bought out by NationsBank who adopted the BofA name for their entire operation because it had a better reputation than BofA.
Thanks for the Zelle experiment with Fidelity debit card. Good to know. Still a little inconvenient because Zelle is directly integrated with my other banks (no need to download Zelle app)