Anyone a Charles Schwab customer who opened their account after going nomadic, who uses a mail forwarding service as their address with them? How'd you get around their verification process?

I am being denied ability to be added to my mom's account as a power of attorney because they can't verify a residential address for me. They won't even let me use a family member's address (such as my mothers), unless I also have utility bills there and prove I actually live there. 

I have now talked with the verification office and a manager at Charles Schwab, and they are completely inflexible in this policy - even after explaining the situation to them.  This is of course all related to the Patriot Act, that in 2010 required financial institutions to have physical address on file for all customers. There is no requirement that the address be residential - that is an internal policy of institution that they have chosen. 

A few notes:

- I am domiciled in Florida, and use St. Brendan's Isle as our mail forwarding & legal address. I have spoken with them, and the extra requirement of needing a utility bill at the address I give them is 'above and beyond' any similar case they have heard of, and have no answers to this particular situation. 

- Everything I have uses my SBI address as my legal and permanent address - driver's license, bills, taxes, businesses, vehicle registrations, etc. 

- This is for an existing account that my mom wants to add me as her power of attorney on, as my father recently passed and I'm designated to handle all her affairs 'just in case.' This isn't even me being added as a joint owner - just power of attorney. If this were me trying to set up my personal accounts, I'd just move on to another institution and take my money to an institution that values my business. So moving the accounts is not an easy option, but one my mom might have to consider to have her wishes fulfilled. Coincidently, I *have* been added as a full joint owner on other accounts she has at her local credit union - they had zero problem with my address. 

Charles Schwab did tell me that I could use a 'RV Lot Lease' to meet the qualification. However, in all of our 7 years of full time RVing travel only once have we ever had an actual lease/rental agreement - and that was when we were staying in a mobile home park for a couple months. Campgrounds just don't do lease agreements! And even so, for the next 6 weeks we are on a cross country repositioning, and will not be stopped anywhere for more than a couple nights. And nor do I want to risk being considered a resident in any other state than Florida by having another address on a banking account, without very consciously considering the potential ramifications for taxation, vehicle registrations, etc. (We won't be back in FL until later this year.) It seems silly to me that a RV park campground who only knows me as a short term tenant has more authority to verify my identity, than the state of Florida who just issued me a driver's license after doing a full verification check!

We have encountered a similar situation before with our own personal accounts at other institutions - and all of them have been happy to just have us use a relative's address to plug into the residential address field of their database. But with Charles Schwab insisting that I also have to have utility bills with my name and address proving I actually live there, that's a pretty big hoop to jump through just be added to my mom's account as a power of attorney!  (Not to mention she lives in a restricted gated community, where having me on a utility bill could be a violation of her lot rental agreement.) 

I also know that members of Escapees out of TX have had less problems with this as they tackle this stuff often and have fought to have their address recognized (SBI just confirmed with me they have battled the state of Florida on similar issues too, and won), but do encounter it as well. Moving everything to TX is not a realistic option for us anyway (we just legally 'moved' to Florida this year - which makes sense for us, as we have lots of ties there.) So please, telling me to just become an Escapee is not a practical solution. 

Any one else encountered this with Charles Schwab or other institutions? 

At the very least, it's sounding like Charles Schwab has adopted some policies that are not full time RVer friendly. So hopefully I can save someone else some heartache by avoiding them in the first place. 

 - Cherie

-- Edited by Technomadia on Thursday 30th of May 2013 08:21:24 AM