An old friend of mine had a business partner/mentor who was pretty successful.
His daughter had authorized access to one of his accounts. She was going on a trip, and she stopped at the branch bank at the airport to get some cash; I think it was a thousand or so (this was around 40 years ago).
The teller told her that her account didn’t have any money in it so she couldn’t make any withdrawal. The daughter had never been told this before, so she got her dad on the phone.
He talked to the teller and then the teller’s supervisor. They didn’t know what a “zero-balance lockbox account” was, so he had to explain it to them. It was an account that kept a zero balance, but payouts from the account would automatically trigger a transfer of the required amount from a backup account in his own name. He further explained to them that he kept an average of $750,000 in the backup account, and if they didn’t get their act together on the spot he’d pull all his finances from that bank.
After calling “downtown,” the teller and her supervisor finally came to Jesus, and gave the daughter her cash.
Fortunately I never had my personal account at BOFA. Only my corporate account. Every Friday I used to pull up to the drive in window and cash a check for the weekend. I made it out to myself and then signed the check and then endorsed it on the back. The tellers always looked at the check with that deer in headlights look and then they would ask me if I had an account with their bank. It never failed. I always had to tell them it was my account.
Unfortunately BOFA has been nearly insolvent for about 5 years. One day the govt will finally let them go under like they should have a long time ago. Chase and Wells are not much better.
“They didn’t know what a “zero-balance lockbox account” was,”
I’d never heard of that type of account. Are they still around and what is the benefit?