That was easier than I thought

[figmo]

I thought I was going to get bent out of shape selling enough shares of my old Oracle ESPP stock fund -- possibly all of them -- so I could pay all my bills this month.

No sirree!

Turns out they won't even let me have my money unless I give them "an alternate mailing address that is not a PO Box."

I do not give out my street address. Period. I am sick and tired of folks abusing it. These folks won't even let me have my money unless I give them a street address at least 24 hours in advance of when I want to pick up my check.

I chose to close out the account. They were insisting they were required to have this unnecessary "information" because of the PATRIOT Act. E*Trade doesn't require my street address. This is crap.

I will happily no longer be doing business with Smith Barney by the beginning of next week.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

My company has its 401(k) plan through Morgan Stanley. They informed us that they required a street address for the company because of a Patriot Act rule, and then they started mailing everything to the street address. Mike managed to beat them over the head with a stick until they started sending the mail back to the PO box (where it goes to a proper secured mailbox) as opposed to the street address (where the Post Office won't actually deliver mail to our office -- we have a non-secure mailbox in the building lobby for junk mail). I suspect if it were simple and there were no financial implications for the employees, Mike would have moved the company's accounts too.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

When I worked at WaMu, I had to give the meeting on the Patriot Act when it came out, and on how it applied to banks.

It *does*, in fact, say that financial institutions are supposed to get a street address on everyone. They weren't BS-ing you on that. It says that they are allowed to use a PO Box for mailing but that they have to have a physical address on file. Most institutions' systems are set up too stupidly to have two separate addresses and only send mail to one, though, so they end up mailing to the physical address as in the comment above, or otherwise abusing it.

The law itself is bad enough; the boneheaded implementation it tends to get is often worse.

I don't know what E*Trade is, so I don't know why they don't require your physical address. Perhaps they're some different classification of institution that isn't subject to the same rules. Or perhaps they're just ignoring it.

Anyway, it's still crap, it's just slightly different crap than you thought. :)

[gailg.livejournal.com]

Several years ago, I looked into getting a mailbox at a mailbox store (it was a sort of general stationery store, not a Mailboxes Etc type). One of their features was that you could send mail to their address and write the mailbox number like a suite or apartment number. I wonder if there are still places that will let you do that.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Yep. Those are treated as a physical address for almost all purposes, to my knowledge. (Places that won't deliver to a PO Box will deliver there, etc.)

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

It used to be that you could get mail delivered to "Joe Shmoe, 1234 Foo St" (where 1234 Foo St is a private mailbox business), but I thought there was a recent law requiring such addresses to be written as "Joe Shmoe, PMB 17, 1234 Foo St." The private mailbox companies were up in arms, because it makes such addresses much less useful.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

PMB is in fact the law. Compliance is spotty for obvious reasons. The Postal Service occasionally goes up in arms over the subject, but doesn't quite drill down to screwing up people's mail. Usually.

UPS, FedEx etc. would deliver to a P.O. Box if the Postal Service would let them. Yay psuedo-governmental corporate monopolies!

There's always General Delivery, the use of which is legal but makes certain companies real upset.

Your Name
C/O General Delivery
City, State 5-Zip

(Present photo ID and pick up your mail at the listed post office every week.)

As for a governmental P.O. Box, they are supposed to have your real address on file, which can be obtained (by anyone!) for a small fee by mail. So a PMB is actually less useful than a P.O. Box, but (especially in stealth mode) more likely to be accepted for Patriot Act compliance.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

They've changed that so your address has to say "PMB" instead of looking like an apartment. :-(

I'm planning on using 211 Hope Street. That's the address of the Post Office.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I have nothing at all useful to comment except to say that you have a wonderful icon. (I collect masks, so I'm drooling.) Absolutely gorgeous.

[gailg.livejournal.com]

Check my user info for an attribution.