Who Am I? Really, I mean really?

…I don’t really have time to do this, but I felt compelled to write the following note to the folks at Western Union.

Their online system is so unwieldy when you lose track of your username or password that you must effectively get a recommendation from your Senator to reset the password or have your username mailed to you.

Actually, although they have a system that allows you to supply the name of your first dog, or the secret pet name that only your mom called you — they don’t actually tell you what your old username was, they simply send you a polite little note that tells you that you can request that your account be deactivated so that you can create a new one.

To which I say….

———-
…thank you for your note.

I request that you deactivate my account associated with this email address. My telephone number is 6– — —- and my address is 650 —– St. / Suite —- / Mountain View CA 94041

Also please communicate to your management that the difficulty associated with my account is not an isolated incident.

I have actually created more than one account associated with different email addresses (due to the difficulty in recovering my password) and had similar difficulty with all of them. Additionally, I had a colleague set up an account and she was unable to achieve satisfactory results as well.

I deal with a variety of banking and financial systems, all of them highly secure, and I have never encountered this level of difficulty in dealing with forgotten usernames and passwords. (A common occurrence on infrequently used accounts.)

While I appreciate Western Union’s staunch stand for security and fraud prevention — the current online system is much more aptly described as a “commerce prevention” system as we have several times had to take our business to another vendor due to the difficulties we’ve had with online and over-the-phone identity verification procedures.

I welcome the news that Western Union has modernized its practices. I’ll be happy to take another look at being a Western Union customer at that time.