I live in a sort of love/hate relationship with BoA's fraud-detection system.
On the one hand, I had a number genuinely stolen a while back in the PSN hack, and a case where someone tried to use my debit card in a hotel in Tennessee. In both cases, I got a phone call almost immediately, was out zero dollars and had a new debit card number within 24 hours.
On the other hand, I travel a lot. Emphasis on a lot. And I have begun simply planning trips around the expectation that at least one of my BoA cards will be frozen every time I do so, because their systems don't seem to actually work off usage patterns. Instead, use of the card beyond a certain mileage radius from home address triggers a fraud alert. So even though quite a bit of my travel is to a small number of cities, I still have to deal with occasional random fraud alerts freezing my cards (example: I've been to Washington, DC around six times in the past year. Despite that -- and despite making the booking in advance, including the card number -- I still had one of my cards frozen when trying to check into a hotel there a while back).
Their customer service people have confirmed that it's just mileage radius, and anecdotally it seems that the radius is around 600 miles (I am based near Kansas City, and can safely use BoA cards in Denver and Chicago, but has a problem once in Austin, IIRC). Which probably makes sense for most people, but I am more than 600 miles from home at least a couple times every month. And there seems to be nothing for it aside from calling their fraud-prevention department every time I'm about to go somewhere, which is equally impractical.
For what it's worth, I found out that you can inform BofA about your travel plans via online banking. A lot faster than calling the fraud prevention line.
On the one hand, I had a number genuinely stolen a while back in the PSN hack, and a case where someone tried to use my debit card in a hotel in Tennessee. In both cases, I got a phone call almost immediately, was out zero dollars and had a new debit card number within 24 hours.
On the other hand, I travel a lot. Emphasis on a lot. And I have begun simply planning trips around the expectation that at least one of my BoA cards will be frozen every time I do so, because their systems don't seem to actually work off usage patterns. Instead, use of the card beyond a certain mileage radius from home address triggers a fraud alert. So even though quite a bit of my travel is to a small number of cities, I still have to deal with occasional random fraud alerts freezing my cards (example: I've been to Washington, DC around six times in the past year. Despite that -- and despite making the booking in advance, including the card number -- I still had one of my cards frozen when trying to check into a hotel there a while back).
Their customer service people have confirmed that it's just mileage radius, and anecdotally it seems that the radius is around 600 miles (I am based near Kansas City, and can safely use BoA cards in Denver and Chicago, but has a problem once in Austin, IIRC). Which probably makes sense for most people, but I am more than 600 miles from home at least a couple times every month. And there seems to be nothing for it aside from calling their fraud-prevention department every time I'm about to go somewhere, which is equally impractical.