Bank of America's Website: Making the Health Care Industry look good by comparison

I had no idea that refinancing my mortgage would have given me such a source of blog material. I would like to think that my previous posts explored business models and lessons learned around the financial services industry rather than complaining about daily inconveniences. However, this post will be different. I am going to happily just complain about daily inconveniences in a way that provides all the insight of a post about hating the morning commute or feeling ill after eating too much Taco Bell.

The bank that owns my house is now Bank of America. Previously, I had such feudal relationships with Countrywide and Wells Fargo and enjoyed the web sites of my lords. With Wells Fargo, I set up automatic re-occurring payments, could find my payment history and tax information easily, and it was very easy to navigate. I actually had happy thoughts about wonders of technology when I gave them most of my pay check every other pay period.

Bank of America, by comparison, makes your average health insurance or hospital website look slick and brilliant by comparison. What makes this ironic is that health care companies often view financial services as an industry that has solved some of the issues that health care still struggles with. Financial service have an excellent understanding of their cost structure, are good at handling sensitive personal data, can effectively explain complicated concepts and services, and are good at working with individual customers on a retail level. These are still goals for the health care industry.

Here's how Bank of America's website has failed to meet those goals and spurned me to openly mock them:

1. I have had to call them 4 times to explain how to do something on their website: Since the most basic business case of any website is that it will reduce customer service calls, this should be a big problem. I had to call them to:
1. Set up a password
2. Figure out how to verify my bank account which involved clicking on "Account Details", then "Manage Account", then "Services", then "Verify. How is anyone expected to figure that out on their own?
3. Figure out how to pay my bill. It turns out their menu bars on the top are for people with regular accounts and the main page is for my specific mortgage.
4. My absolute favorite was calling them to go paperless and not get bills mailed to me. The "Go paperless" button is just an FAQ. The customer service rep had to do it for me and could not tell me how to do it on the web. I almost expected to have to send a letter in the mail to request that Bank of America stop sending me mail.

2. I still have to call them 2 more times: Some things that I would like to do are 1) set up reocurring payments and 2) have bills emailed to me. However, it's easier to set up calendar reminders on my email so I'll just do that instead.

3. Their privacy features are draconian: Protecting financial data is a good thing so I should have no complaints. Only problem is that when I call and verify my account number, zip code, enter my options, and a customer service rep gets one the line, I get logged off due to inactivity. Therefore, the rep has to wait for me to log back in and ask my question. Bank of America could 1) not log me off so quickly, 2) answer their phones quicker, or 3) improve their website so I don't have to call customer service to explain things to me.

I also don't know the answer to most of their security questions like the name of my best friend's pet since he had 12 reptiles growing up.

For a final score card, Bank of America can't explain simple concepts on their website and renders their website almost inoperable with their privacy rules. You cannot easily pay a bill on a website even though one would think that a bank would want to make it as easy as possible for a customer to part with their money.

I'm suddenly feeling better about the health care industries chances of implementing health care reform.

What my Mortgage Refinance experience will teach us about Health Care Reform

Both of my dedicated readers (Hi Mom and Dad) may remember my experience refinancing our house and the lack-of-value-chain that the participants created. One link that I forgot to mention was the assessment process. Previously, the assessed value of the house always seemed to be exactly what the lender needed to justify the loan. Now, there is a third party system that schedules the assessments and keeps the lender at arm's length. This system was created per regulations by some entity to address abuses.

Apparently, it doesn't work that well. My lender complained about it and I wound up having two assessors call me to schedule times and some confusion was created. Further confusion was created when one of the third parties that scheduled the assessment told me that they hadn't been paid yet. However, I had been charged for the assessment by a different entity and my lender said they would figure it out. Based on the confusion from two assessors calling me, I actually think the wrong third party got paid. However, the technical term for that is "Not my problem."

A new regulated entity usually has some problems in the beginning that need to be worked out. Unfortunately, there is never a honeymoon period with new regulations where the impacted parties snuggle in bed together until the early afternoon. Even programs that involved giving away money like cash for clunkers or the first home buy tax credit had complaints about processing and turn-around times.

This is a long of making the point that when health insurance reform smacks us all across the face in 2013 or 2014, there will be an adjustment period. Someone will think they should have their dental implants covered and won't get them. Others will think that they should be paid for services and won't get paid for a while. The Health Care Exchanges that will open the much anticipated market bazaar for small groups and individuals will probably have the purchasing experience of a bizarre bazaar. The Exchanges are where previously uninsured individuals can use their government subsidies to buy insurance for the probably the first time in a long time so difficulties with navigating the Exchange will be heard loudly. Frustration is the gap between expectations and reality and expectations will be high. Reality will be lower and it will sound like long awaited health insurance reform is a clunker.

Therefore, we need to adjust our expectations about health care reform and give it time to work out the kinks. The last large government-pushed health care reform was the Medicare Modernization Act that brought seniors Part D or prescription drug coverage that was implemented in 2006. Today 90% of seniors are satisfied with this plan. This is up from 80% the year after it was first launched.

Despite a higher satisfaction rates than most Apple products have, the initial launch was almost a disaster. There were long wait times on the phone and confusion about whether drugs were still covered by Medicaid, the state program, for low income seniors. I was working overtime as a Spanish interpreter helping Spanish speaking seniors and health plan customer service speak to each other about prescription drug coverage. These calls involved my interpreting a long list of drug and dosage to help seniors find the drug plans that worked best for them. Try figuring out how to say Atenolol in Spanish or English. These calls were long (45 minutes) and painful to all involved. Although the start was as inauspicious as some new reality TV programs, the program was ultimately successful.

Health insurance reform is likely something that will be my problem and I'm getting ready for the disaster of a launch. However, it will be better than our current system.

Buying a House or Car: Considering how much your soul is worth

This year my wife and I had the fortunate yet-gut-wrenching-experience-that triggers-doubt-and-doomsday-thoughts experience of buying a house and a car together. These are the two largest outlays of money that any couple is likely to make besides education, a hip replacement, or that last kilo of cocaine before you retire and go straight.

Our circumstances are very fortunate, we were conservative, and I knew that if our mortgage and car security were sold individually, pension funds would even buy them. If worse came to worse, I had sold my bodily fluids before so that wouldn't be new. Therefore, I was able to ponder how homes and cars are bought and sold, the parties involved in the purchase, the business model, and purchase experience.

The housing market still seems as unstable as a Southern California hill side during the raining season. Transparency has improved but is not completely there. The biggest problem to me seemed like those who work in the housing industry are either overwhelmed or aren't the brightest candles on the menorah too begin with.

We were refinancing the house (which still felt like buying it all over again with the financial paper work). I started with my current lender, Wells Fargo, which was able to give an easy trade in from a 6% interest rate to a 5.5% with no closing costs. We didn't find anything better so accepted and attempted to sign, initial, and notorize their tablet sized closing book. Wells Fargo has an "easy" 1-2-3 Do It Yourself (DIY) closing process where they give you instructions on where to sign and initial. Of course, we missed on signature somewhere on the back of page 8A, Section G. Wells Fargo didn't tell us until I call them asking for an update, and that offer had already become null and void. They offered to resend us the closing book so we could try the DIY process again. I told them what they could Do It Yourself with their closing book that involved physically impossible acts. They didn't really seem interested in actually helping us with the process.

I had also sent my information on Lending Tree prior to accepting Wells Fargo. Looks like the mortgage business was doing better since I got flooded with so many calls and emails that I felt like Lending Tree was run by a Turkish bazaar. The offers were better then the month before and I was now looking at 5% interest rate. Our main criteria was a lender with a local presence to prevent the DIY disaster. This narrowed it down to 2 lenders.

One of the lenders, Arivian Financial, put together a very accurate estimate with the right amount of days interest, months of state taxes, and other factors based on actual state laws and lending requirements. The other broker underestimated those factors to make their offer look better and included his photo in the email signature with his hipster soul patch and side burns. Arivian Financial not only had the best deal but was able to send me state legislation to support their terms. Finally, any documents that they sent us clearly showed me where to sign.

The final piece of incompetency in the mortgage lack of value chain was the Title company sent me someone else's initial estimate. The inability to handle personal financial information combined with inability of some banks to handle their work load, the Turkish bazaar atmosphere, and the ability to still misrepresent closing costs makes me understand the mortgage disaster even more.

On the other hand, the car market is remarkably clear and transparent with access to easy to compare information. The last time that I had been involved in a car purchase was during the Clinton administration so I felt like a cave man entering the Bronze Age. Car features were clearly outlined as well as the dealer price and the sticker price (although it was no longer actually on a sticker so it didn't leave glue on the windshield). The dealers told us their profit, their incentive plans, and how they got paid. I can't think of any other purchase where you know this much about their compensation and business model.

The sales force had some interesting approaches. At the first car dealership, the head sales guy came out with a piece of paper that had the dealer price. We talked about this family, my family, and my favorite cars. At one point, I thought that he was going to look at my teeth as part of the horse trading. Finally, he wrote down his profit next to the dealer price, added it up, and told me the total price. He told me that he was giving me the same price as his father-in-law which could mean he really liked me or really hated me, depending on the relationship with his father-in-law.

Ultimately, I bought a car from another dealership. After I agreed to their price, the sales person told me that part of their compensation ($25 per car sale) depended on their performance in a customer satisfaction survey that I would receive in the mail. They showed me the survey, explained it, and emphasized its importance to their compensation. As a result, it ceased to be a customer satisfaction survey but turned into a customer compassion survey as in how did I feel about the sales person receiving full compensation for their work. My satisfaction was irrelevant as I realized that my influence on their compensation did not stop with my decision to purchase a car from them.

Personally, I would rather have that influence on how much the participants in the mortgage business get paid.