USAA’s phone app has a Zelle money transfer bug which accidentally discriminates against members who may be foreign or who speak or are studying a foreign language | GabrielStaples.com home

TLDR; (Summary)

https://gabrielstaples.com/usaa-and-zelle/

Years after experiencing the bug, USAA finally acknowledges its existence!

So, after perhaps 7 years of USAA blocking members from using Zelle, 4 years of it blocking me specifically, and 1 year of me talking to USAA about it again and again and again and again and again until I'm blue in the face (probably about 8 hrs on the phone total with them regarding this issue alone over the last year), they have finally acknowledge the existence of this bug! Whew! What a relief! I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me now that they have finally acknowledged the bug even exists!

About a week ago, Lila, of USAA called me "from the office of the CEO" to talk to me about the issue I reported. Most USAA customer support representatives are unfortunately not allowed to be USAA members (USAA only allows military members or their immediate family to join), so they cannot verify themselves anything I tell them about the app being broken. BUT, thankfully Lila IS a USAA member. So, I asked her if she would "please humor me and try to duplicate the bug herself on her own phone so she could see it herself," and thankfully, she did! At my suggestion, she set her phone's system language to Spanish and she got the same error as I did!

Note that at first she was very reluctant to try getting the bug to show up on her phone, as to her the word "bug" seemed to imply "virus" or something and she was afraid it would permanently damage her phone, but after I explained that changing the phone language back to English would instantly fix it, and that the problem was not permanent, she agreed to try it on her phone.

Anyway, she said she'd elevate it to the proper team, and she did!

A few days ago (several days after that incident), on Friday 1 July 2022 I believe, Lila, of USAA called me again "from the office of the CEO" and said that she brought the problem up to an internal software team of some sort, and they identified the problem! She sent them screenshots from her own phone, as well as my PDF document I had sent USAA, which was basically just a printout of this article with some notes on it, and the USAA digital technical team was able to duplicate the buggy behavior on their own phones.

She told me she didn't know what this means, but she was told I'd understand since I am a software developer. The problem has to do with this:

European regions use commas, not periods, so the API does not recognize the location.

That's it! When you switch your language from English to a foreign language, the geo-location latitude and longitude strings in the phone get their commas and periods swapped, apparently, causing the parsing of the location string to fail. This told the app you weren't in the US, and you'd get the error from my article above!

The person at USAA working on the fix, who she spoke to, is the "Lead Digital Technical Product Manager", a USAA employee. She did not have an estimated fix date.

So, how did I report this bug? What finally worked as a means of reporting it?

USAA has one of the least effective and most convoluted means of reporting bugs that I have ever confronted in my life.

Calling USAA customer support is utterly futile. Don't do it.

Do NOT call USAA. Neither their banking nor their web support nor their technical support team will do any good. Most USAA representatives you will reach through the normal means are unfortunately not allowed to become USAA members, and they cannot check anything you say on their own to verify your bug report. They have neither the means nor the permission to attempt to verify anything you say.

If you try to produce screenshots to send to them, they have no way of receiving them. If you try to direct them to a GitHub issue or repo where you have documented it, they cannot access it on their work computer because they are completely blocked from accessing the normal internet, and they will not try to access it on their personal devices either because they are not allowed to.

If you write a website article to give to them, like I did here, they cannot access it. If you ask them to open up the USAA app on their own device to see the bug for themselves, they cannot, because USAA doesn't even let them join USAA so most of them aren't even members! And, USAA has no mock devices they can use or test to see it for themselves.

In other words, you're screwed, they cannot help you, and it is a total flippin' waste of your time to even try to call them for help. Don't do it.

Using the USAA community forum (https://communities.usaa.com/) is also futile

...and a total flippin' waste of your time. If you try to write a bug report there, you will end up writing bug reports for the forum itself instead, as I did here and all over the forum (ex: here)--and these reports are likely to never be addressed by USAA either. So, stay out of that rabbit hole!

>>> Here is what was effective for me, and here is what works <<<

This is an undocumented process I figured out on my own. You should follow this same process if you know you're correct about something and have a legitimate bug to report:

Do a writeup of the bug report and save it as a PDF.
1. I encourage you to write your bug report as a GitHub issue in my "catch-all" bug report repo here: https://github.com/ElectricRCAircraftGuy/bug_reports/issues. I will then tag your bug report issue appropriately with the USAA tag.
2. To save it as a PDF, just print it from your browser as a PDF.
You need your bug report to go to the "office of the CEO" at USAA, so, in your bug report, appeal to the USAA CEO or to the office of the CEO directly. I did that by using the free (no-cost, not open source) version of Foxit PDF Reader to add this blurb highlighted in yellow into my PDF directly:

Notice my appeal I added in yellow, using Foxit. I said:

Please...ask the USAA CEO to change his or her phone language and try to use Zelle in the USAA app.

Apparently, that appeal was sufficient to cause my document to be routed to the "office of the CEO" where someone can actually make a difference because:
1. They are more-likely to be eligible to be a USAA member, so they can verify the bug for themselves, unlike most USAA representatives, who cannot become USAA members, unfortunately (that's really dumb, USAA!).
2. They can access the real internet.
3. They have contacts to hopefully reach out to people who actually write or manage software at USAA.
Note that you can just add your appeal to the office of the CEO from the start, instead of using Foxit to add it to the PDF later.
Send your PDF to USAA:
1. Note: as a reference, you can see my PDF I sent them here: USAA bug blocks using Zelle in USAA app if your phone system language is set to non-English.pdf
2. Log on to USAA on your computer.
3. Click your initials at the top-right --> click "Documents" --> click the little "Send Documents to USAA" link at the top (direct link here) --> click "Upload Documents" --> choose "I'm not sure" as your "recipient" --> click "Next" --> attach your PDF bug report which appeals to the CEO, and finish the steps to send it to USAA.
4. From this point on, it's just a waiting and hoping game that 1) your bug report will be routed to the office of the CEO, and 2) they will call you. If you are lucky, they'll call you in 1 to 4 weeks. If they don't call you within 1 week, I recommend sending it again...and again...and again...once per week, until they call you from the office of the CEO.
5. If you are still stuck, and have written a detailed report in my repo here, then I can help you by providing Lila's phone extension and you can reach out to her directly yourself in hopes she can help.

Best of luck!

My recommendations to USAA to improve this horrific process:

Allow any and all employees become USAA members as a perk of being an employee.
Empower customer service employees to verify bugs.
Unblock GitHub and allow them to access GitHub to read bug reports written by people like me.
Create a centralized GitHub repo for bug reports, or monitor my repo here: USAA bug reports, and direct people there to write bug reports.

Example of an utterly useless response from USAA which shows a fundamental lack of understanding, to even the slightest degree, of the problem

...and my scathing remarks regarding this consistent problem with USAA's customer "support".

FYI, here is an utterly useless email I got from USAA on 9 June 2022 at 10:38am. You can tell the person has absolutely no understanding of the Zelle issue, has not read my article or bug report, and has not tried it themselves.

It blows my mind that people can be so ignorant. All they have to do is:

Actually read my PDF I sent them.
Change their phone language to non-English and then try to use Zelle, so they can see it themselves. Yet, they didn't and wouldn't.

Based on this part of the response, the person seems to think I was banned from using Zelle, not that Zelle has a bug. I'm mind-boggled:

...stating We may terminate or suspend the Service, or terminate, suspend, or limit your access to the Service, at any time for any reason without prior notice to you.

And this part indicates they don't understand the language concern, which has nothing to do with the language of the app nor the notices. Rather, the language problem is that when your phone's system language is non-English, the Zelle feature in the USAA app just doesn't work!:

...notices will be provided in English only

Anyway, here is the response in full. It is these types of responses which utterly destroy my faith in USAA's ability to even understand their own services, let alone help others understand or use them. These types of responses seriously harm USAA's credibility as an institution. Note that spelling errors are left exactly as I received them:

From:

USAA USAA.Customer.Service@mailcenter.usaa.com

Email subject:

Response to Your USAA Concern

Email body:

Follow Up About Your Concern

Dear GABRIEL STAPLES,

USAA is committed to providing you with exceptional service. We are writing in response to your concern regarding a service experience which you outlined in your email.

Our records indicate that you posted concerns regarding three separate issues of not being able to use Zelle while phone setting is in a language other then English, not being able to view the full bug report and not being able to access the USAA comminity site in a browser other then Fire-Fox.
Research has found that USAA has acted in accordance with the Send Money with Zelle Terms and Agreement that were provided to you at the time you acknowledged the service, stating We may terminate or suspend the Service, or terminate, suspend, or limit your access to the Service, at any time for any reason without prior notice to you. USAA policy is that all written communications from the Bank, including account agreements, statements, and notices will be provided in English only. Also, per the USAA Site Terms (which can be found on usaa.com) Our Right to Publish: By posting a comment on this Site or on USAA-sponsored message boards, discussion forums or other interactive content on third party sites, you agree that USAA may publish your comment in whole, or in part. USAA does not agree to post all comments received. USAA reserves the right to remove or modify any posting that is false, offensive, violates any law or the rights of third parties, violates these Site Terms, or is defamatory or duplicative. As well as This Site is provided by USAA on an 'as is' and 'as available' basis.

We value your feedback regarding your concerns outlined above and your feedback has been submitted.

Mr. GABRIEL [middle initial removed] STAPLES, we appreciate the opportunity to review this matter and respond to you. Should you have any additional questions, you can reach me at [phone extension removed].

USAA Federal Savings Bank has issued the final resolution on this matter; however, if you have additional questions, we invite you to contact us.

Thank you for allowing us to serve you and your banking needs.

Sincerely,

J[name removed] [middle inital removed] W[name removed]
Member Advocacy
USAA Federal Savings Bank

Here is a screenshot showing the main part of the email message above:

Seeing this line only further exacerbated my feelings of frustration, because it tells me they will never fix the issue because them "submitting my feedback" was the end result...but what in the world can they submit feedback on when they can't even understand the basic problem at hand!?:

We value your feedback regarding your concerns outlined above and your feedback has been submitted.

Anyway, exacerbating beyond belief--that's my experience dealing with USAA's support team when I have a genuine software bug report. They begin with the assumption their software doesn't have bugs, and they operated that way for 7 years with me until Lila finally called me, tested it on her own phone, and then escalated it properly, as I described in previous comments above. Thank you Lila! I hope you get a 25% raise! Honestly, I do. You are the first USAA employee in the history of USAA to ever acknowledge even the existence of the USAA and Zelle phone system language bug! Thank you!

As a general rule, I'd rather talk to a brick wall than call USAA and talk to their customer "service" regarding bug reports. The conversation with the brick wall is more fulfilling.

It works!

I just checked the USAA app today and Zelle works! My phone is in French and it works! Yaaaay! The bug is fixed!

It took somewhere around 7 years to get it fixed. Persistence. Persistence is key, I guess...that and opening a new bank account and moving all your money to SoFi. 😛 Nah, just kidding, moving nearly all of my money to SoFi isn't what did it. You should check them out though. USAA + SoFi = great! And yes, I really did move nearly all of my money to them. Their investing and crypto works great, and in their investing side you can buy fractional ETF shares as little as $5/purchase for manual purchases or $1/purchase for recurring purchases, and they currently give 2% interest on all cash in checking and savings, which is ~0.02/0.0001 = 200x more interest than at USAA!

Update 13 Nov. 2022: SoFi is now giving me 3% interest in my Savings account and all "vault" accounts held therein.

ElectricRCAircraftGuy / ElectricRCAircraftGuy.github.io

https://gabrielstaples.com/usaa-and-zelle/ #32