Published Feb 28, 2006
There’s a Bank of America within walking distance; instead, I drive to Citibank. I hate Bank of America because they stole my money and were too incompetent to give me access to my bank account. Such thieves and incompetents should not be allowed to run a bank, but they are why Bank of America sucks.
I’m not good at holding a grudge, but a few companies have pissed me off enough that I would never buy from them again — Bank of America is one of these. Like most people my age, I signed on with BofA during college, because they were offering spiffy t-shirts and had ATMs everywhere. Unlike many people my age, I didn’t have a check-bouncing problem; I kept my account in the green for years and years. Meanwhile, of course, BofA was stealing from my friends by processing transactions in the order that would allow them to charge the most fees possible. They left the bank, but I was lured to stay by BofA’s ubiquitous ATMs and my lack of problems. That is, until one completely random day.
On that random day, I had run low on checks, so I called BofA to order more checks. I wanted a somewhat different address on the checks — I think I asked for a new phone number on them — and the phone rep set my checks up just so. I waited for my new checks, and waited some more. My last check went to rent one month, so I called up and was told my checks had shipped. Two weeks later, no checks, so I called and re-ordered, with rush delivery; the fee was debited to my account, but no delivery. Finally, with enough money in my account to pay rent but no checks with which to pay it, I bought a money order for rent and paid the fee to the post office. Then I went into a bank and tried to order checks there; I learned that BofA had a special, unique address field in its records to which it would mail checks only, and, in my record, that address was blank. Rather than generating an error, the checks were going out and being returned and I was not being informed. Another effort to get checks, another rent paid with money order, and I deposited my next paycheck at the CalFed across the street from my then employer.
I kept my BofA account open for a couple of months, since there was money in it, to make sure no checks out there would be returned unpaid; meanwhile, CalFed (since bought by Citibank) sent me new checks in a timely manner and I was soon paying my rent the normal way. Finally, I decided to close my BofA account. I switched all of my fees paid with my BofA debit card to other cards, waited a month to be sure, then closed my account.
But I’d made one mistake. I had one, forgotten online service that billed quarterly. Six weeks after I closed my account, they charged my BofA debit card, just $5.99. I got an overdraft fee, a closed account fee, then another overdraft fee since the bank took so long to inform me of the fee. The total charge was well over $30. I called BofA and, after pleading my case that they should simply have declined a charge on a closed account, finally talked one customer service rep into retracting all of the fees if I would just pay off the $5.99. Since there was no question I owed $5.99, I went to the bank to write them a (CalFed!) check. There, the teller told me to wait, please, then the manager came out and told me that I had to pay the whole sum, or the account would be sent to collections. I protested that the customer service rep had told me otherwise, but to no avail. This turned into a yelling match in the middle of the bank; I finally paid the check and left.
So that’s how Bank of America locked me out of my account through incompetence and then stole my money. I don’t even think I’d take a mortgage from them now. Bank of America sucks and I hate them and theyre incompetent thieves.
MBNA is about equally evil. I cancelled my Working Assets credit card because WA was somehow persuaded to run their Visa through MBNA. (Lower transaction fees, or something like that.)