I'm a fulltimer and I bank with USAA. My credit card got stolen recently and I had to get a new one. They were going to send it to my home address, to arrive in a week or so, but I said I was traveling and needed it sent to a different address, and I needed it to be quick.
But I was traveling--what address could I use? A business agreed to let me have the card sent to their address, and I was very specific with USAA about how the shipment needed to be addressed because I'm not an employee or anything. They sent it without the street address on the label, and they mangled the business name. Kind of hard to receive packages when they're addressed to a non-existent business name with no street address.
I had a similar thing happen a few years ago. (Which is why I was so specific with USAA about the address this time, to no avail.)
The previous time my credit card got stolen, I again needed an address to have it sent to. (Such is the life of a traveling fulltimer.) A guy at a community college said I could have the replacement cards sent to him there. I told USAA not to put my name on it (since nobody there knows me), and instead to use the guy's name, with the name of of the community college and the street address of the community college. What did USAA do? Addressed it to me, not the employee, and left off the community college's name. So it was addressed to Bob Smith, 123 Main Street.
It got delivered to the community college's main office, and someone opened it and saw that it was credit cards, but of course had never heard of Bob Smith. Fortunately, she stuck it in a drawer for safe keeping, and the community college employee I knew was able to call around enough to track it down.
And, my favorite USAA anecdote: I don't know if they still do it this way, but several years back, USAA limited the dollar amount of online transfers; over a certain amount, you had to do it by phone. I challenged it, and they said it was for my protection.
(I don't know the current policy because I figured out to initiate all online transfers at the other financial institution to get around USAA's rule--USAA will readily send any amount if it's done that way.)
And the thing is, not only did you have to do the transfer by phone, they would ask you why you were transferring the money! I always said, "It's none of your business."
(They also used to make you cash out certificates of deposit by phone only, and again, would ask you why you were doing it. I guess enough people complained, and they started allowing you to do it online.)
So one day I was doing a transfer by phone, and sure enough, the rep asked why I was making the transfer. Instead of my usual "none of your business," I said, "A nice young Nigerian man has asked me to lend him some money," and the rep didn't say a word about that and put the transfer through.
