Comment by crote
4 months ago
> The main difference is that the first call wanted me to give them information, while the second call advised only "go into a bank branch in person."
Unfortunately physical branches are expensive to maintain, so a lot of banks have been closing them down. There are even plenty of banks with zero physical branches now. All contact is via phone or email, so there is no scam-proof way for them to contact you.
They don't have to have a scam-proof way to contact me. They just need to give me a way to contact them.
That way, any phone call or email to me can be immediately ended with me saying "Thanks, I'll call the number on the back of my card," and hanging up.
Exactly this. Send me a call or text message that maybe I should go look at my account. If I log in through my normal trusted process and everything looks OK, then I can assume it's not legit.
Most banks seem to have some kind of internal message center within the application that is just for bank to client communications. That's the place to authoritatively tell me something needs to happen and what potential next steps would be.