This afternoon I went to the CIBC branch below where I live to deposit a cheque. I slid my debit card into the ATM and punched in my PIN. The ATM said my card had expired and my card came sliding back out. I was surprised but as I looked at my card, the ATM was correct. My card had expired on the last day of August. We are in the middle of September. I normally don’t use my debit card very much. I pay for almost everything through credit cards that offer me rewards. So, this was the first time I had to use this card since it expired.
Since the bank was closed, I had no one to ask for help. Usually, a bank sends you a new card weeks before it’s supposed to expire but I had received no such card in the mail. I began to wonder if someone had intercepted such a letter and took my card. I recently had examined my bank statements online and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
When I returned home, I phoned CIBC to figure out what was going on. The bank representative was able to look at my file and told me that a “hold/stop mail” flag had been set on my file. It meant that CIBC has flagged me as a client that should not be mailed any correspondence whatsoever. This was a problem. I had not been told such a flag had been set. This flag also prevented me from getting a new card in the mail.
I was told I had two options: get the card mailed to me and wait two weeks for it, or, go to any branch during business hours and get the card immediately. I decided I’d get the card in person. The bank rep also was nice enough to remove the flag from my file so that I would be getting mail from CIBC again. They couldn’t tell me how long my account had been like that, so I’m curious how much mail I’ve missed from CIBC. How very odd.