USAA responds to Fidelity Observer with a playground insult
A few weeks back, Fidelity Observer criticized USAA for its expensive marketing campaign touting the supposed convenience of using the UPS Store QuickPost to mail in deposits to the USAA Federal Savings Bank. I didn't see any added convenience -- in fact, driving to a UPS Store to mail a deposit envelope is very inconvenient for most customers, as they are not nearly as common as post offices or mailboxes.
However, a reader named Jason pointed out an actual benefit of the USAA/UPS Store partnership:
The major advantage seems to be the option having your money post to your account the next day if you needed the money in there or just wanted the extra days of interest.Jason's right. This indeed may be helpful to some customers who have a big check that they need to clear ASAP. However, this wasn't stressed in the original message (see text here). Even if it were, it didn't deserve a glossy, expensive mailing to the many thousands of USAA banking customers.
In any case, yesterday afternoon I was surprised to see this new comment by another poster. It echoes what Jason said, but ends on a nasty note:
One benefit of the QuickPost system is that it sends your checks next day air to the processing center, meaning they clear faster. Might be worth reading the info you get in the mail next time. Next time, ask for an info packet with fewer "big fancy words" and more pictures, perhaps your small brain will understand it better!The immature tone of the comment is typical fare for online discussions, but I was quite suprised to see who made it. The person didn't leave his or her name, but left an electronic trail nonetheless, which showed up in the website visitors' log. The trail leads to San Antonio, Texas, and one of the corporate servers of USAA. Here are the details:
Referring Link: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=usaa and QuickPost&safe=active
Host Name: poplar.usaa.com
IP Address: 167.24.104.150
Country: United States
Region: Texas
City: San Antonio
ISP: Usaa
This tells me that someone with access to one of USAA's corporate servers -- probably a USAA employee -- didn't like Fidelity Observer's negative evaluation of the QuickPost service. He or she explained the next-day benefit of the service, which is fair enough, but the "small brain" comment is out of line. After all, I'm a USAA customer, and expressed some legitimate complaints about the service and how it was marketed. Yet the company has to resort to playground insults to show its displeasure?
Update:
There has been a response to my posts about the playground insults and the fee increases from an anonymous USAA employee at the following link:
http://fidelityobserver.blogspot.com/2006/06/usaa-responds-to-fidelity-observer.html#comments
I have also responded at that location.
Related Posts:
What The USAA Ad Didn't Mention
A corporate partnership that's useless for consumers
Bait and Switch: USAA Federal Savings Bank
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