Why You Shouldn’t Choose Bank of America
So a few weeks ago, I decided to go online and setup a new checking and savings account. I ended up going with Bank of America since they are almost everywhere, plus I have a loan through them so I wanted to use automatic bill pay.
Anyways, I created the account online and everything went smoothly. I received a new debit card in the mail and activated it as soon as I could. The savings account showed up shortly after, and I was surprised at how easy it all was. The only thing I had to do on paper was sign a form they mailed me and return it to them.
The Problem
The problem I had was when I decided to start using direct deposit to that account from work. I wanted to send some money to my old account, and some to my new account.
So I logged on to my work website, updated all of the information I needed to, and submitted it. I even called Bank of America to get my routing number since I did not receive any checks with that information on it.
Payday came up this past Friday, and my stub showed that some of the money was deposited to my old account and the rest was sent to my new Bank of America account. So far, so good I thought. But I was totally wrong.
The money that was sent to my Bank of America account just straight up vanished. It wasn’t in my account, and it sure wasn’t in my old account. So I got on the phone with my HR department here at work, and asked them about it. They said they would call me back shortly with a resolution.
About 30 minutes later, someone called me back and said everything went through from their side. The paycheck was successfully sent out as planned and I should just give it some to see if it shows up by the end of the day.
End of the Day
Friday came to an end at work, so I took off and headed home. Once I got home I logged on to my account again and still, no money to be found. I called up Bank of America, but could not get someone on the phone to save my life. Voice machine after voice machine, I just kept getting put on hold listening to some crappy ass music.
I thought I would trick them by calling one of the Bank of America’s right by my house. But guess what? Even that number gets redirected back to the same 800 number I had tried calling previously. Once again back to the crappy ass music.
Time To Go To The Bank
After I got sick of all that, I decided to physically go to a Bank of America to talk to someone. So I walked in and gave the teller my information. After a few minutes of silence, the guy responds and says he doesn’t see an account for me anywhere.
I told him I knew for a fact I did and showed him my debit card. I told him it was rather new, and that I just logged into it a few minutes earlier. He then started looking some more but still did not find anything. He turned to me and said:
What State Are You From?
This was the question he asked me after looking for my account the second time. “Arizona”, I told him. “Seriously, where else would I be from, I am standing right here.” He asked me about logging in online and asked what state I had to choose from the drop down menu. Once again I told him Arizona, and that my street address on the current account was also from Arizona.
The Problem Was…
The teller finally found my account, but said it was registered in Virginia! I told him it wasn’t, and that I had never even been to Virginia. As it turns out, any account opened over the internet automatically get registered as a Virginia account. I thought this was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.
When signing up for an account, it even asks you which state you bank in along with your zip code. So from now on, I have to use an out-of-state deposit form to cash checks there. And If I want to move it over to an Arizona account, I have to completely redo the whole account. UGH!!!
What About The Direct Deposit?
As it turns out, the routing number was for an Arizona account. Apparently I have to route my money to Virginia now which takes a different routing number. The thing that really bothered me, was the fact that I called Bank of America and specifically asked which routing number I needed for my account. They asked me what state I was from and I told them Arizona. How was I supposed to know my account was listed under Virginia?
Plus now I am stuck trying to figure out where a good portion of my paycheck went. Not exactly something I want to spend doing with my free time…
***
My advice: find a local credit union that offers great customer service, you won’t regret it.
This post was published on July 22nd, 2008.
PS. Don't forget to check out Life After the Cubicle.
Update: I decided to send this link to a few people over at BOA, let’s see if I hear anything back…
Added. Nice work on this one. Btw, my blog is dofollow, stop by and grab a link. Walter
I’ve found that anytime I try to do anything over their website (other than to pay bills or check my account balance), I always have problems. That’s why I just go to the bank itself. In the long run, it saves a lot of time and headache.
Believe it or not, the e-mail I sent managed to get through to someone. I received a voicemail from someone over at the executive offices. Let you know how it goes…
I think the bank need some good management and also need to read your this post.
Thanks for the link. Sounds like interesting read
I have had so many problems with Bank of America. They’re horrible to deal with and honestly, in Phoenix at least, 1/2 of their representatives barely speak english. I sat down with a personal banker that I couldn’t understand and it only pissed me off more. I couldn’t explain the issue I was having and get it resolved because we couldn’t communicate. It’s not that I’m against someone that’s from another country, but if you’re in the service industry you should speak english and comprehend the frustrations of customers.
I was just Googling long trying to find a bank that does NOT require me to choose English.
I found out today that a Bank of America employee accidently deleted all my personal financial data stored under “My Portfolio”.
When I called and asked for help (it has links to my remaining retirement funds, passwords, and account numbers), I was told they will instruct the employee not to do it again.
When I asked to have the data restored, they told me, “maybe – it will take 7 to 10 business days to see if the data is available.”
Do I have any rights or expectations to this data? it is a multi-year history of my financial transactions and is valuable to me.
these guys are fucking pricks
Well, BOA will do well to outlive the crunch
I MADE MY CREDIT CARD PAYMENT THE DAY IT WAS DUE AND THEY MADE THE DATE TO BE POSTED THAT MONDAY AND SO THAT MADE IT LATE. ANY OTHER CREDIT CARD PLACE YOU CAN MAKE THE PAYMENT THAT SAME DAY.AND IT WILL BE POSTED WITH THE TIME … IF THERE NOT OPEN YOUR PAYMENT WILL BE LATE EVEN IF YOUR PAYMENT IS DUE ON A SATURDAY AND WE DON’T GET PAYED UNTIL THAT EVENING IF YOU SHOW UP FOR WORK.
I’M NOT HAPPY WITH THEM
Their online customer service is HORRIBLE. They promptly transferred my credit card to a new account when unauthorized charges appeared last March, which was fine. They issued me a credit for one large amount, which then got duplicated when the originator of the charge also issued me the same credit amount. Now, in the new account, which I haven’t even used, is an extra credit for almost $700 which I have been trying to get BOA to take back since March. I’ve sent over a dozen e-mails, and I keep getting canned responses which tell me that they don’t understand me whatsoever. I finally got one reply nearly 2 weeks ago from someone who said the credit would be removed in 3-5 business days, 13 days later it was STILL there, and when I sent another e-mail telling them, they replied to say that it was being REVIEWED by their Billing Disputes. WHY? It’s THEIR money. So, I replied AGAIN, telling them that, and what do I get for a reply? They ask me if I want the credit mailed to me or transferred to another account. 90% of the replies are from employees with foreign names, which I have nothing against, but it’s obvious they don’t understand English. All I want is for them to take back their own money, give me a zero balance, and be done with this. 2 months, about 14 e-mails, and they still don’t understand that there’s an extra credit in my account that they need to take back. What planet are these people on?? I’d never recommend them to anyone after the nonsense I’ve been dealing with. I worked in a bank for 21 years before I was laid off, and our customer service wasn’t even this bad, at least we understood what a customer was saying and didn’t give them a runaround for 2 months. It’s a good thing I have another card with another bank that I can use, because I have no intention of using the BOA card unless my other card gets compromised, and at this point, I don’t think I’d even want to use BOA’s card anyway, after the way they’re handling a simple request to take a credit back. My only consolation is doing an online search and finding out that I’m not the only one having problems with BOA. Sounds to me like they need to get their act together!
I too am a VICTIM of these LIARS!
How they re-arrange items to fall after other charges is amazing.
I had money to cover 6 charges, I knew two days later a check would go through and bounce, Things I paid for on the 9th and 10th ended up posting on the 11th. If I pay for something at 7PM it goes through at midnight, not pending for days and be placed to be done on a later date, so as to benefit BoA’s income.
These people are so illegal and incorrect and even discussing it with a CS person yesterday, she had NO ANSWER for me, was silent. Like I’m supposed to just accept it
PLEASE PEOPLE, these are not made up stories by any means!
AVOID BANK OF AMERICA AT ALL COST!
OMGsh! All I want to do is PAY MY BILL!!! Are you kidding me that the website is down and so I tried to pay it over the AUTOMATED phone system and they want to CHARGE ME $15.00 to make a PAYMENT to them?!!!!! That is silly nonsense they’re gonna CHARGE me to give them money?? So I finally (after 10 mins on hold) get through to someone and she said that the internet division which could help me is closed and she could take my payment over the phone, but it would still cost me $15. RIDICULOUS! I asked her if she could tell me why they would charge customers to take their money and she said “Well I guess it’s like any other business just trying to make some money” (OH NO SHE DIDN’T!!!!)OK, so I’ve had companies charge me to have a real person take my payment over the phone and that is slightly understandable because they have to pay that person a wage, but an automated system??!!! COME ON! Now you’re just being greedy….D.U.H!!!
Boy does your story ring a few bells. Add about 50 more problems to your story and you have more story. Only problem is, I’m not sure any other bank is better than Bank of America, or Banc of America it’s investment services branch. They all make mistakes. I’ve had the most problem over the years with Wells Fargo, they lost, for a while, a very large safe deposit box of mine that was full of collectible coins and bullion when they moved a branch. I about had a stroke over that one. They were rude to me! That was in Visalia, California. Back to the subject, online with Bank of America has been an absolute nightmare. There is some kind of problem with their website. I could write a book about it, and many dozens of phone calls later it’s not any better. If they are so incompetent, and we have to struggle to get things straightened out, just imagine how hard this all is for your parents or grandparents, it’s really unfair to our seniors. I wonder how many people just give up?
We should run “Click BofA ads” campaign. Each Google ad cost them a few dollars. More you click, more they pay.
Instructions:
1. Open http://www.google.com
2. Make a search related to Bank of America. Something like “Banks in America”, “Banking in America”.
3. When you see their ad on the top or right side of the search page, click it.
More people click, more they pay.
Bank of America sucks! Make them fail.
Well, lets discuss this problem in more detail to yield understanding, because it is detrimental to lobby for “make them fail”. In my opinion, Bank of America has a great payment morale when I use my credit card, because they have one of the best IT to detect fraud, while other banks tend to block transactions. But clearly, Bank of America has the problem that customers still think in the old fashion. Because Customer Service is so expensive compared to the few cents they make on the individual transaction, they tried to automate it which is not customer friendly but a compromise to retain customers who only look at the charges. One of the security features to log in is the State. And here you have people in this blog who reveal openly where their account is maintained. Fraudulent people take your SSID and call in to transact from your account after doing a web research. The trick against that is that banks delay the processing of address changes and account locations, which will block fraudulent behaviour because thieves are under time pressure to collect, transact and go to the ATM. So actually it is in your interest to complicate such transactions to avoid being scrutinized by thieves which log in from all countries. You might be surprised but i have had trojans who loged in and charged my card from transactions I made with Travelocity and Continental Airways, charging me bogus agency fees of several hundred dollar attached in the same time frame of the transaction. So it is better if we try to understand these security features which protect our hard earned money.
I hate bank of america.Was given a due date that fell on a holiday.At this time I did not realize this was a holiday.Went online made payment after 5:oo pm day before due date.Next statement was charged a late fee because bank closed on due date(holiday).Called and did however get fee taken off. Had another issue with them,after going thru all the recordings,I finally got to speak to a real person who transferred me to another person who then transferred me to another person.Finally got someone who knew what they were doing.All I wanted to know was why my payment had not posted and why my charge was greater that month than month before even though balance was lower.Could not give me an answer.I did however have one representative to tell me a website which post your payment up until 12:00 pm.Why didnt we know about this in the first place.www.myeasypayment.com.Lets see if that one works.Good luck with any of these banks.Chase once posted a payment that I had made 10days before due date,and posted it on the 11th day and charged me a late fee.It will come back on them.I hope.
I called these idiots and spoke to 12 of their reps. No one was able to figure out how to combine 3 credit cards under one online account. I got transferred all over the country and some of them just dump transferred the call to others after I explained that I need to combine my 3 accounts lol. A BUNCH OF MORONS. I requested to speak to the 13th person, a manager, to get things done. The manager took care of it in less than 2 minutes. BOA, hire people with some brain who know how to do the job instead of a bunch of retards. Otherwise, the next thing you know you will be a in a worse situation than your sister banks.
Bank of America Scams.
Recently notified by BOA that my BOA Chrysler Rewards Credit Card was being switched over to a BOA worldperks credit card. Called customer service as I had over 22,000 reward points on my old card and didn’t want to loose them. I was assurred that the new worldperks points were as good if not better and could be used in many more places than the old Chrysler points which could only be used to purchase Chrysler goods or services. Next month my new BOA statement arrived and the was no record of any reward points. Another call to customer service and was told not to worry it would show up on next months statement. Received the statement today and still no reward points. Another call to customer service and after anoying hold time,horible music, and stupid advertising I finally talked to a real person to find out that my points were converted but expired October 31 and there is nothing they can do. I was never notified of this and will never do business with BOA again and do not plan on paying the $600 I owe them on this months credit purchases, to hell with my credit rating I will just start paying cash for everything as this is no problem for me but feel sorry for those not in my position who have to submit to those unscrupulous bastards at BOA.
guess what???
you all should bank at a local community bank!! they not only answer the phone, but they know your name and sometimes ask how your family is doing…just a little plug for community banks (as I am involved with one)…their rates may or may not be higher, but what you get back in customer service is worth it
Bank of America is too big for the little person!.
I had the great idea of putting a little extra on principal of
my morgage. Well it turned into a wk of phone calls and total frustration.
They took a extra morgage payment and the extra principal money out of my Bank account.
I was on the line with a bank rep helping making the transaction..she said yep you did it right!
I lookes a couple of days latter and there it was 999.27 taken out of my acc.
Try to get it back that was the problem
It took me ONE wk of phone calls complaints. They told me it would take 24-48 hrs. THAT DID NOT HAPPEN!! I was persistant got it back in my acc this AM
I guess I will not do that again.!!
Bank of America is not for us little Americans. Under the mattress is looking good to me.
Stand up People Get Some Back Bone and speak out for your rights!
Our country is falling apart. But thats the plan to work people to death so they are too tired to do anything.
Not this girl of 59 years. I believe in what our Old Fathers Stood For….Freedom. America is being taken over and we are setting on our duffs watching it happen.. Watch the Patriot (movie) we have gone back. The Red Coats Are Comming.!! Taxes Taxes Taxes..
Stand Up For You Know One Will Do It Only You!!
Please God.. Bless This USA and get us back on track.
Regards to my last comment… I made some typ 0s sorry about that. I guess I just got to excited about telling people what I thought. I hope they fix it for me.
No worries Linda, we all make typo’s : )
Thanks a lot for leaving your thoughts so everyone else can read them and learn from them.
Bank of America will take any opportunity to charge you! Do not sign up for a new account if you are thinking of doing so. I am currently looking for a new bank and will transfer and close my account as soon as possible. They have no overdraft protection, unbelievable! I just spoke to a customer service representative to see if she could take the charge off and told me i was overdrawn (I was overdrawn by $15 for about 3 hours before another check was supposed to clear)…she hung up on me! Nice huh.
March 11, 2010
My husband and I recd a check and split it in his and my account with two different deposit slips. On line it showed up that night as pending but was added into the balance. The next day we both looked at our bank account
on line and the deposits had vanished. We both did a chat on line with Bank of
America and were told they would have to file an investigation and it would take
two business days. My husband called the bank manager the next day and he told the manager if it was not back in our accounts that day he would call the different news stations and have them investigate for us. That afternoon it was
back in our accounts and the manager said it must have been the coding dept had a problem. No other explaination.
This is our first experience with BofA. EGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGads, we are trying to get an FHA home loan thru them. It has been unbelievable.
The last straw… we were planning to get the home owner tax credit of 8500. to offset our 2009 tax bill. They won’t even consider letting us use the credit—- they have decided we have to PREPAY the tax bill or they won’t loan us the money. They are telling us we have to wait to get it back from the IRS, which—-actually means the IRS won’t give it to us,because it’s a credit that carries forward to the next year. How lame is that, we can do that, but the icing on the cake is that they are whining because we don’t have enough cash reserves… DAHHHHH, they just took our reserves to use for the tax credit. It’s insane and we’ve been dealing with this for 3 weeks, we see our house going down the drain because of all of this. The irony is that we have the downpayment, way more than enough money to qualify and decent credit, and it’s an FHA loan….
Do not get a mortgage with BOA, run…run… as fast as you can away from these people. They are greedy mongrels who will lie, cheat, do whatever to suck you dry…If you don’t believe me…just start googling “problems with my BOA mortgage”. It’s not just me
Have BofA billpay and can’t for the life of me figure out why i cant use it. have been on the phone with their customer service associates many times. have changed my logon info, let them resign me up for billpay, and many more things. nothing works. i have had bofa in the past and have had no problems when i was with them. any suggestions as to why it doesnt work. since i can’t use this service, is it enough of a reason to switch banks? am thinking of umpqua bank, good, bad, whatever any thoughts? thanks
WHERE IS MY LOAN MODIFICATION BANK OF AMERICA?
If it walks like a piggy, talks like a piggy, by golly it’s a PIGGY!
BofA and it’s CEO Brian Moynihan reminds me of that song by John Lennon and George Harrison titled “Piggies” I invite you to listen to this song on youtube and see if it appropriately fits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTmeHM-Hojg&feature=related
Have you seen the little piggies
Crawling in the dirt
And for all the little piggies
Life is getting worse
Always having dirt to play around in.
Have you seen the bigger piggies
In their starched white shirts
You will find the bigger piggies
Stirring up the dirt
Always have clean shirts to play around in.
In their ties with all their backing
They don’t care what goes on around
In their eyes there’s something lacking
What they need’s a damn good whacking.
Everywhere there’s lots of piggies
Living piggy lives
You can see them out for dinner
With their piggy wives
Clutching forks and knives to eat their bacon.
John Wright vs. Bank of America Lawsuit at http://www.unitedlawgroup.com or at:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3766544.htm
When I filed my lawsuit against Bank of America, myself and United Law Group thought of the many others out there in the same situation. It was then that we decided to educate the public on what these piggy banks are doing, as well as unite us all together as one voice. Please help me turn this David vs. Goliath modification process, into a Goliath vs. Goliath.
Please stand with me and United Law Group and send an email to Bank of America that states that we will no longer tolerate their potentially illegal, fraudulent, irregular and abusive business methods.
One blogger named Terri sent me an email stating: “You won’t believe it but while I was at work today I had a voicemail from an advocate from BofA. What do you think about that? No calls all this time, I respond to your email and I get a cal!. How do you like that one?
So please send your email directly to Bank of America and include the following:
1. Your name
2. Your complaint concerning your experience with Bank of America.
3. Please end your email “I support John Wright vs. BofA Lawsuit!”
4. Please send a copy of your email to johns-wright@hotmail.com
5. Please send your email to both BofA link below and the CEO email
CEO Brian Moynihan:
brian.t.moynihan@bankofamerica.com
BofA Linked Email:
https://www3.bankofamerica.com/contact/?lob=general&contact_returnto=&state=VA
Patricia Barbosa – 818-713-2886
Assistant Vice President Office of President at Bank of America:
Call Patricia Barbosa if you want to complain about your modification taking so long.
It is my understanding that she is a CEO and has authority. She would not work with because
I am in litigation with BofA. But she might work with you.
Divided we might have fell America, but united we must stand!
Sincerely,
Johns-wright@hotmail.com
I have accounts with the local credit union and a Branch of Bank of America. Last month I wrote a 600 check from my credit union account to my Bank of America account thinking an insurance refund would be credited. It did not and Bank of America bounced the check and called the Credit Union saying I was “kiteing” checks. Now both accounts are frozen. The credit union will not take my calls to rectify the situation and bank of America has frozen everything. I will never deal with them again once I am out of this mess!
I will never do business with them Bank of America again. The managers think they own you. Constantly talk down and belittle you.
Just last week I decided to open a checking/savings account with BOA because I liked the round your dollars program, adding a little to your savings account over time. I had heard others who use this program and love it. But since I was newly moving to a new area, and at that point out of the state, I decided to sign up online. I don’t know much about BOA except this, don’t sign up online. Go to a bank branch and sign up. In my situation everything went smoothly as far as I could tell, received my approval notification, received my notification of deposit, and when I got home I received my atm card. Was thinking about setting up my direct deposit next week, when I picked up the mail and found out that my accounts had been closed. The letter indicated that they could not verify information. Ok, so you close the account?!?! So I immediately contacted the closer department, a very rude agent stated that I could not get that account back. I said so why was it closed. We couldn’t verify your information. Ok so what information could you not verify? I don’t know. Does anyone know? No. How can I find out? You can’t. Can I speak to someone who might know? No, they know the same things I do. How come you were able to take money out of my other account to deposit into this account? Because you authorized us to. But you couldn’t verify my account, why could you take money out of another account? I don’t know. Can I speak with your supervisor? Not unless I haven’t given you information you need. But you didn’t give me the information I need. I won’t keep going around around about this with you. And on and on and on. They refuse to let me speak with a manager, they refused to let me talk to anyone but this person who didn’t knwo what was going on with my account and stated if they knew they wouldn’t be able to tell me. What?!?! Not to mention in the course of my conversation he indicated that it cost me $40 to have them run a verification on my information, when I don’t even know what the result of the verification was. And they still have the remainder of my money locked up until who knows (suppose to call back tomorrow). I know companies have policies but I wouldn’t have been nearly as upset had they just told me what the problem was..did I enter the wrong zip, did I not put my full middle name…what? So that is my tip for today. Needless to say after reading some of what you all have been through and my own experience I’ll stick with the bank I have been using for several years, even though it is in a state 1800 miles from me. Good luck!
Like everyone else in my same situation, I lost my job 1-1/2 year ago and since then I been struggling to make ends meet. I have a mortgage loan with Bank of America and after losing my job a started working with them for a loan modification program. I went thru their entire request and they sent me a letter notifying of a trial period of three months payment an amount lower than the original paid. Three month went by and nothing, I called and they said they were still working on that. Well, to make this story short, more than eight months have gone by, me paying them the amount assigned for me to pay, me calling and sending letters to be informed of the status of my modification program, and always the same answer, “keep on paying the same amount we still working on your modification” (which I never missed a payment and always on time). Yesterday they called me requesting payment of more than $5,000.00 that I owed them and letting me know that my modification was denied and that a foreclosure will be issue by August 25, 20010.
Know I am in a desperate situation; this has been my home for the past 18 years. I have a new job, but I do not have the money they are requesting. I think Bank of American never had the intention of helping people. They know I never missed a payment and still don’t want to help. Does someone know what they are trying to do? Do they care about people (especially old people).
If someone is going thru the same situation and know how to solve this problem, please let me know.