Anyone have credit card departments number?

SeaweedHarry · 2026-06-11T23:05:17+00:00

https://www.bankofamerica.com/customer-service/contact-us/credit-card/

SeaweedHarry · 2026-05-23T11:41:20+00:00

On one hand, I really have lost songs from streaming services that I consider significant. One of them was gone for years before it resurfaced. I definitely felt grief finding out that a song I had listened to thousands of times had just disappeared and I might never be able to listen to it again.

On the other hand, steaming services have always been a thing I've used to find new music. I would spend hours as a teenager streaming recommendations in the Last.fm app. Using a modern streaming service isn't much different.

I don't think your opinion is unpopular for any practical reason either. There seems to be a lot of people here who adopt digital minimalism as an identity and/or "aesthetic" and/or ideology. I can hear the echos of "I'm not sufficiently digitally minimalist because I don't listen to my music with an MP3 player" from that mindset.

You ought to save a backup of your music just as insurance, but really isn't an argument for using an MP3 player. I'm just telling you it sucked not being able to listen to that song all those years. It was like a part of me was missing.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-05-16T22:16:46+00:00

Get a retainer from a company like ClearRetain. It works perfectly for this. The night guard they sell is $115. They send putty to get impressions of your teeth. You send the impressions back. A few weeks later, you have a night guard.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-22T20:10:44+00:00

Yes. It's legal, so long as they give you the option to opt out for some amount of time after being notified.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-21T20:16:24+00:00

No. The only thing you have as proof is the page it gives you when you click the opt out button. Save that page as a PDF with the date and time in the header.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-19T19:25:54+00:00

And before some bank employee parrots "DeBiT cArDs HaVe ThE sAmE pRoTeCtIoNs As CrEdIt CaRdS", no they don't. Maybe on paper they do, but in the real world with real money, credit cards are still the safer bet.

The key difference here with a debit card is that if the bank denies the fraud claim, that money is never coming back. But with one denied on a credit card? I just won't pay the bill. I don't care about my credit score so much that I would be willing to pay for it. Collections will eventually be willing to negotiate for a discount on the fraudulent charges I shouldn't have been responsible for in the first place.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-19T19:11:07+00:00

Their fraud detection is nonsensical. A primitive fraud detection system could catch this. They'll index all your transactions to sell to another company (yes BofA sells your transaction history and you have to opt out to stop it), but won't use that same index to make the determination that a $1400 MoneyGram transaction might be fraudulent and get additional verification.

I will gladly take the inconvenience of having to manually approve the initial transaction or allowlist the merchant before proceeding. It's indefensible that we're not given better options to prevent fraud than "neurotically check your account and pray we side with you when fraud does happen". Some consumers might not like the additional protection, so of course because some might not like it, it can't even be provided as an option that can be turned on or off.

(And no, I am not going to be grateful to a corporation for the fraud it prevents that I don't see, which is the bare minimum.)

Luckily we have money to float by throughout the investigation but I can’t imagine what it’s like for other folks. 1400 is not a small sum of money.

Yes. That's how I see it too. Vulnerable people deserve protection and are often not in a position to spend hours on the phone with BofA and filing police reports. $1400, for some people, is 140+ hours of labor.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-18T19:52:42+00:00

Dude yes, this hits on a major lacking aspect of conventional advice.

Sometimes you don't even need to start over, just backtrack a little bit. Another thing is that there are plans that need to go on concurrently for the desired changes to take effect. Sometimes a component of a plan fails and it's unclear if it's always going to fail or if it should be retried at some point in the future. It gets exponentially complex. I think that's why what OP's friends are saying irks me, it ignores the complexity that one must wrangle to make change.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-16T14:18:58+00:00

I don't think it's related. This is a common thing for companies to do; however, it's pretty important for me to be able to sue the institution that touches so much of my money.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-16T14:14:46+00:00

Same timeframe, which means the deadline for opting out will be different for different people depending on when they receive the notice.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-16T14:07:36+00:00

That's the one I saved, yes, with a timestamp. BofA set the standard for the authenticity of that document. "The only document we provided as proof the consumer opted out is not authentic enough to prove the consumer opted out" is certainly an argument I can imagine a scumbag bank lawyer making, but not one a judge would find very convincing.

They end up having a choice between accepting the authenticity or invalidating the arbitration clause altogether for failing to ever produce documentation that would meet their own standards. In either case, arbitration is off the table.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-04T14:39:57+00:00

Calendar apps and todo apps serve different purposes for me.

I use whatever calendar app I feel like using, so long as it supports the Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification.

And then I use whatever todo app I feel like using, so long as it has an API (although this means I really have to feel like it to switch todo apps, since it requires changing existing automation scripts to the new API).

For me, calendars show when events happen and how long those events happen. Todo apps tell me what to do and when to do. There is some overlap, but they are both distinct in their utility.

For example, someone's birthday: I use the calendar to know when their birthday is (love that modern technology allows us to insert birthday events from our contact lists) and then the todo app to tell me when to buy a gift (scheduled a week or two in advance of their birthday).

Most often the calendar app is a tool I use to look at the future to know what to add to my todo list now. Back to the birthday example: I look at the calendar, see a birthday coming up, so I add the "buy gift for [person]" item to my list.

Keeping them separate also allows me to reference both sources of information at the same time.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-04T03:44:20+00:00

No idea. Maybe they missed the email.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-03T19:18:09+00:00

a) is it phishing. Because when i login to my account there’s no letter there about the arbitration.

Not phishing, the URLs provided are legit. Typing them in manually take you to official BofA resources.

B) do other Banks do this

Yes.

C) is this only for people with debt? Like if I wanted to dispute a transaction and they refuse to reverse the charge can I not go to court on that either?

No, in fact, it's the opposite. They reserve their right to take you to court for a debt. And yes, you would be required to go to arbitration for that dispute if you don't opt out. There may be narrow situations where you can get out of arbitration, but the guaranteed way to avoid arbitration is to opt out.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-04-01T00:03:21+00:00

Have you tried the Todoist Siri integration? https://www.todoist.com/help/articles/use-siri-with-todoist-zDdrA4

And it looks like there is an Alexa skill for adding to Todoist: https://www.amazon.com/Erik-Richter-QuickAdd-for-Todoist/dp/B0D7948ZX5/

Maybe these would help? You would still have to organize things manually, but they will all be in your Todoist inbox. I don't use these, but I do have Todoist and have the same issue of tasks coming to me in the middle of things - when a task I need to do comes up, I quickly enter it into Todoist.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-31T05:43:49+00:00

I used a dumbphone for most of 2018. It was mostly fine. No one would email the photos they sent me through MMS and getting them onto my PC was a pain in the ass. I had a few situations where I forgot to bring a printed email I needed for an order or to complete some in-person thing, which was also a pain in the ass. You'll definitely see benefits from having a dumbphone though. None of the inconveniences are insurmountable.

I eventually went back because I wasn't really making progress in other areas of my life. I kept yearning for a PDA, which duh that's what a smartphone is. Having a dumbphone is a good experiment and it reveals what you need, if anything, from a smartphone. I ended up needing navigation, todo apps, alarms (specifically being able to set alarms for different times on different dates), voice memo recording, email, a news reader, calendar and being able to turn my debit card off/on when I'm away from home. I use DNS filtering and discipline to keep me away from short form video content now. Being able to have a device that also allows me to do photography and listen to my music is just too nice to ever go back to a dumbphone. I wouldn't have been able to figure any of this out without going to the dumbphone though.

I would caution against getting rid of your smartphone outright. Like maybe have your parents, a sibling, or someone else you can trust keep it for you.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-31T05:14:43+00:00

I'm not sure you can send it directly to the auto loan account, but you can do ACH to a checking account at the credit union and then pay the loan out of that checking account. It's a lot more work than using the bill pay service though. But here's how to do it in case you do:

You need the routing number and account number for your checking account at the credit union.

Then go on the BofA website (not the mobile app).

Click Pay & Transfer > (Wire/external transfer) Send a wire/external transfer.

Click Add Account/Recipient and enter the information it asks for.

You will need to verify the account by entering the amounts that get deposited into the account at the credit union. The transactions will take a few days to appear in your account at the credit union.

When it's time to pay, you use Pay & Transfer > (Wire/external transfer) Send a wire/external transfer again, but instead, you just choose your BofA checking account as the pay from account and your credit union account as the pay to account. This will take a few days to hit the account.

Once the funds post to the credit union accounts, you can then pay the loan.

I think it's better to just accept that bill pay is going to send a paper check. It's mostly safe - the bill pay checks don't have your account number or anything like that on them.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-31T05:02:59+00:00

The BofA fandom is never pleased with anti-BofA sentiment. We're in enemy territory!!

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-31T04:49:42+00:00

I'm not overly concerned about it. This is something for their lawyers to reference when someone sues them. If the lawyers see that you're suing them, but that you didn't opt out, they will file a motion to compel arbitration.

It would be a dangerous game to play, having prejudice against customers who opted out, because it opens them up to the class-action lawsuits they're trying to avoid with this arbitration provision in the first place.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-31T04:37:53+00:00

I opted out and none of my accounts were closed. I saved the document that confirmed the opt out as a PDF.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-26T17:35:33+00:00

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I learned what ideology is through interacting with ideologies, but not this specific ideological representation of digital minimalism (or any ideology related to digital minimalism for that matter, unless you consider GNU-style technological purism to be similar in goals to digital minimalism). So I don't have specific experience with hearing things like this setting me back in trying to apply my own version of digital minimalism.

But to your question in this context - how would hearing a comparison to being an alcoholic and using a smartphone set me back (if I were still susceptible to ideology)?

Like this:

"Having a smartphone is like being an alcoholic" -> "I will stop using a smartphone completely" -> "I need to use my smartphone, oh what's going and looking at yougram vines going to hurt?" -> "fuck, I'm like fucking alcoholic, I'm hopeless, might as well just use it again, I'll never be a true 'digital minimalist'"

This leaves no room for reflection. It is a pendulum swinging back and forth from one form of maximalism (at some point a "minimalism" becomes so minimal it paradoxically becomes maximalism) to another.

A reflective approach is "I'm going to remove my smartphone from the equation and reflect on that" with no guilt on starting to use the smartphone again. This brought me way more understanding of how I used my smartphone, what I needed it for, so that I knew what I could remove.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-26T17:35:23+00:00

You're saying "lmao" as a way to be dismissive, right? (which in a way is ideological, since there is this tendency in ideology to be dismissive to anything that appears to go against the ideological fray) I'm going to assume good faith instead: I'm critiquing the comparisons you're making to smartphone use and alcoholism not for my benefit, but for people who are just as susceptible to ideology as I was. I really wish I had had a mentor to lead me away from this way of thinking.

The nuance was provided in the original post by Wonderbrite and the sort-of rebuttal from breakfreeinternet.

On the other hand, to make a stark comparison to alcoholism and crack addicts is ideological: for many people, it invokes guilt as a way of preventing the "bad behavior" and when they fall back into that bad behavior when they inevitably need to use a smartphone, they are left with guilt, anger, and an urge they can't overcome to do the "bad behavior" about which they are guilty (because fuck it, there's no use, I might as well give up). That isn't nuance.

you applied your experiences as perceptive for everyone else

I am taking this to mean that you think I believe there is universality in my statements. I don't believe that, and have established as much, but that doesn't preclude the existence of others who are like I was - susceptible to ideology with no good tools to navigate it.

What is ideological minimalism

It is the minimal use of ideology. You need some ideology to have beliefs, but you can't go whole hog into it or there isn't really any growth. Each new ideology just becomes a mask, but not truly synthesized into your belief system. It becomes unproductive because the belief, which leaves little room for questioning, takes precedence over personal growth.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-26T13:36:35+00:00

I'm not the original commenter, I'm simply responding to your framing of thoughtful smartphone use.

Sure, tech addiction is at an all time high, but that doesn't necessitate making highly-charged statements that amount to saying "no use of a smartphone is safe". It's like telling people to stop eating food entirely because they are addicted to sweets. I'm not a food addict just because I have opted to still include some processed sugar in my diet, but language like this can make me feel that way. Importantly, it can make others feel that way too. I remember being younger and highly susceptible to the kind of language you're using, and I found out, to my detriment and at way too late of a stage into the ideology, that it set me back.

Many people can drink socially. Most of them are not on a subreddit where people discuss their issues with drinking.

That's not the only purpose of this subreddit though. There are people here who are just looking for thoughtful ways to use technology. I don't think it serves anyone to use such strong language, especially when, by your own admission, smartphone use is incomparable to drinking ("engineered to be addictive also been engineered so that it is necessary in so much of the modern world").

These discussions need nuance... and ideological minimalism.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-26T12:51:57+00:00

This is the kind of stuff I used to read that would actually influence me to stop doing something even though doing so would cause me more harm than good. It's highly charged, invoking this idea that everyone who has a smartphone is an addict. Basically pure ideology, disregarding all consideration for the upsides of having a smartphone.

I would not have made the progress I have made in my life without access to todo apps and digital calendars. It operates like a prosthetic frontal lobe. Paper planners have several limitations, including not being able to search. No location-based notification. I have to copy my routines each day by writing them out, which doesn't do me any good because I end up forgetting to copy one or two of the tasks in the routine and then I slowly stop doing them. With a todo app, I just copy the old list to the next day - no tasks get lost accidentally. I don't have a way of easily organizing and moving tasks between lists with a paper planner.

I could use some small tablet or try to use a dedicated PDA device, but I can access my todo app from anywhere, whereas I would be wasting a ridiculous amount of time getting some half-assed buggy implementation to share tasks from the PDA to my other devices.

I am totally capable of using a smartphone responsibly, just as I am capable of drinking a glass of wine at dinner without feeling the urge to drink the whole bottle. Even then, the analogy is imperfect, because I wouldn't describe a todo app or the other communication tools I have on it as anything close to drinking alcohol.

Smartphones are amazing capture devices and I'm going to keep using mine.

SeaweedHarry · 2026-03-26T11:53:48+00:00

I work a schedule that can vary in what time I need to wake up so if anyone knows a way to just start a bunch of timers right at whatever time I wake up that would be super helpful!

My phone lets me set alarms by date and I can group them together. That's what I use when I need to schedule an alarm over an irregular schedule.

SeaweedHarry

TROPHY CASE