There was a claim months ago (in the Alaska card thread) that BofA had eliminated online chat for mere mortals. (They had retained it only for an upper level of banking customers, called Preferred Rewards, though hot having anything to with a rewards program as we think of it.) But stupidly, BofA didn't explain online that chat was unavailble "to you", they just made always say "busy" for most people .

Why they didn't replace it with "secure message" (which they don't have to handle in "real time", and thus should be much easier to manage with limited resources than "chat"), I don't know.