Bank of America review: predatory overdraft 15

I've sent the following to my representative and senator. I've also contacted BofA and been rudely dismissed. I've even emailed Ken Lewis (ken.d.lewis@bank of America.com) trying to at least engage him in conversation. Would love your help in bringing discourse around this matter to a public forum….see the note below….and thank you…. I'm writing you because you represent my voice and that of my fellow Americans in government when we feel we are being wronged. At this time, Americans are struggling mightily to make ends meet. Your efforts to fix predatory lending practices (especially in sub prime lending) have been noticed and appreciated. To that end, I feel that another predatory practice by Bank of America needs to be discussed in a public forum and addressed soon thereafter. B of A currently charges fees of $35 per charge when one tries to charge more than one has in his or her bank account. At face value, it may seem that this is a fair practice. I can understand the practice if someone is passing bad checks and a fee has to be assessed. But with today's debit technology, an automatic decline should be easy and free to the public. When one digs deeper, one realizes that this is a practice purely designed to unfairly gouge the American public through deceit and obfuscation. So, here's the policy…A $35 fee for each time a charge over your funds is ATTEMPTED. As an example, recently I unknowingly was making charges on my debit card when I didn't have the money to cover it. The charges were numerous but only totaled $23. That's $23. One charge was for $.27 cents…for which I was charged $35. B of A charged me over $400.00 in overdraft fees for that $23 overage. I called Bank of America to try to find some relief for these charges and was told no. Seems counter to the "flexibility" and understanding for families that the new administration is trying to get in return for billions in bailout dollars. Look a little deeper and the practice is even more disturbing: 1. You can't actually just get an option for a decline on your charge without the $35 fee. So, even if you don't have overdraft coverage, you will still be charged $35. Since technology has allowed banks to simply decline a charge, I don't understand how BofA can justify charging a $35 fee for each charge versus just declining it for FREE. 2. BofA says the only way to protect against this is to link a BofA credit card or a savings account to your overdraft checking. So, an over-limit charge is charged to your BofA card or deducted from you savings account. In both cases, BofA makes money….either through interest on your credit card or from service fees on the savings account that you are required to have. And, by the way, the overdraft service also has another fee associated with it. 3. As if that weren't enough, BofA recently increased the allowable number of charges per day from 5 to 8. That a $105.00 per day increase, per cardholder. The bottom line is that I don't want my money back from BofA (though they should have at least treated me better considering I hold six accounts with them). I, like the many Americans flooding blogs with similar stories, want justice. I would like this issue explored fully and for Bank of America to be called to answer for this unfair practice. The fact that American taxpayers in the US now own a $50B TARP stake in BofA (which only has a market cap of $40B, by the way), only makes our voices that much more relevant in this matter. Lastly, I will say that I firmly support Obama's call for Americans to be more responsible with their money. I was less than responsible for letting my account go overdrawn by $23. Thankfully, my wife and I make decent money and can cover this amount. Just think how American's with lesser incomes would struggle with this. Then realize that this a core profit center for BofA.

Grrr... I realize I am a small fish in the sea of BOA customers, but I still count. I made a mistake and overdrew my account by paying bills online. A mistake that cost BOA $8 of their money. Inturn and in their transaction process they managed to charged me $140 for the use of their $8. What's the APR on that? The government can step in and regulate everything but cannot keep them from robbing me. This is highway robbery when I, in good faith, called immediately and deposited money into the account.

I am a single mother of two children, have 2 Bachelors Degrees, and am unemployed. If BOA wanted to help in this environment we are in (afterall their were made whole within 24 hours), they could have waived atleast some of the charges. Instead, they continued to charge me more. Their Wizard of OZ behind their red curtain is extremely insulting and uncompasionate. Even their brach managers are drones to the Wizard. The cost of their profits far outways any benefits BOA could offer - to the banking customer. Welcome to Big Business in Big America. I think I will forfeit my human equity and stay home on welfare, enjoy twitter, facebook, childcare, and cable. I think their tax obligation on my contribution to their profits will buy my groceries, healthcare, and student loans.

I had a small account that was not being used along with a debit card. I had a savings account and a main checking account. The small account apparently had some charges that were not authorized and I kept a minimum amount of funds in that account. All of a sudden I get these outrageous overdraft charges and contacted the bank which is directly accross the street from me. Well when I spoke with the lady there she contacted a [protected] number and allowed me to speak with a representative fromt he customer solution department. She went ahead and took the information and was to file a claim to resolve the issues of the overdrafts and charges which were wrongfully charged to that account.
Instead there was no claim filed and no paperwork came to me to sign so instead they drained my savings account and caused my main checking and savings to become charged over a thousand dollars and are continuing to charge my account because I have automatic deposit from my V.A. pay. Instead they are continuing to charge my account all because the claim was ignored and after calling again I spoke with a lady named Gracie and found that the claim I filed with her was dismissed and after calling again and speaking to another person. He was the one to confirm that my claim had been dismissed just like that. He then reactivated the claim and gave them my name and address so that they could send the paperwork to be signed to follow up on this he told me that they can only file a claim for the past 60 days and no further. When I brought up the previous claims he insisted that only 60 days can be claimed.
Now I received the paperwork with the wrong name and the almost partially correct address that luckly the postman asked me if this was mine while waiting for the mail.
Here they have left me without living funds and am not able to make my V.A. appointments and unable to buy groceries or pay my bills. I have no idea how to handle this and when I go to the bank to speak with them, it's like I am wasting their time and their money. Looks like they can turn on you like a poisonous snake without help.
I figure the only way to stop this is not to bank with them at all. Once I looked on the internet and found hundreds and hundreds of complaints against Bank of America I felt so stupid in even dealing with them. It's a real shame that after being with this bank for numerous years they decided it was an easy way for them to make money.
My name is Jacob Johnson and my email is scubabuddyshane@aol.com

After having a online banking account with Bank of America in VA & moving down here to Montgomery, AL I had to chg banks & not have overdraft protection which NOW I do not have to worry with Regions for they are much better but the three years that I had an account with BofA. I guess I paid them at least two thousand in charges just about everymonth I mean every month for three years I had about $700 taken out of my checking account. I called them in Stafford & they would NEVER help me. I had to get my daughter which was on the account to go to her branch in TN and they took some ($200) charges off ONE TIME. I could not balance my checkbook at all with BofA and now I can with Regions. I still owe BofA money but I am going to be slow paying them off. They took from me when I desperately needed that money. They didn't have a bank down here in Montgomery, AL I had to drive to GA/Al border to do banking. So I am happy with Regions I have not had one complaint against them. Just wish I could get ALL of the money that was taken out of my account at BofA. Does anyone know how we (ALL of US) can make them pay us back the $35 chg. PLEASE help. Mary Anderson

My account went $250 in the hole due to the bank holding charges they said had already cleared. As soon as I saw that my account was in the red I called there corporate office and explained what happened the person on the end of the phone told me to put money in to clear up the negative and call tomorrow and they would help out with the overdraft fees.

Day 2: I look at my account and they have charged me 3 $35 overdraft fees, leaving my account $-45.00. So I call and they remove 2 of the three fees. leaving $24.00 in my account. They put a note on my account to try to stop any more fees.

Day 3: So I look at my account first thing in the morning again and this time I am $-95.00, 3 more fees have come thru. These fees are for the items that bounced because of yesterdays fees that were refunded. So I call extremely upset and speak to a rep. who reverses two of the fees, but I asked to speak to a supervisor. She comes on the line and I explain to her whats going on and she reverses the last fee. Leaving $11.00 in my account. There was one pending transaction that I had already been charged an overdraft fee on, I asked the supervisor if another fee was going to go thru; she said if it did call back again tomorrow.

Day 4: The first thing I do is check my account and low and behold there is another overdraft fee. So I call again and the first person I talk to is rude and states they won't do anything else. My account is $-21.00 in the hole today. She won't let me speak and tells me this is all my fault. So I hang up on her and I call back. The next teller is the same and say again that no they can't fix it. I ask to speak to a supervisor and she does not connect me. She tries to tell me these are all new fees. I am looking at my account on line and this fee is for the same fee they refunded yesterday and then charged again.

So I am sure I will get another fee tomorrow for that same transaction. I refuse to pay it and I will be closing my account today. This is a scam they have refunded and recharged me for 4days on the same transaction. I am a single mom and can't afford to play this game. I suggest anyone who has an account with BoA TO CLOSE IT IMMEDIATLY.

Charissa Murray

My husband opened an account in FL, He told the rep. that he wanted it to be set up so both accounts could be used with the same card, we hadn't used the FL account until this pass weekend with him going by her word that when he made a purchase with his card the money would come out of the account with the money in it to cover the purchase, well it didn't work that way, the money came out of the account with the least amount of money, which caused overdraft charges on the other account even though he was told the two accounts would be attached. I have talked to 6 customer service people and a manager on their 800 number to get nothing but the run around and now it has to go back to the rep. that opened the account to try and remember the transaction, of course she is going to say she never told him that because it will look bad on her, but he knows what he was told..so does this bank care about us little people to put back the $175.00 we will see.

I've been banking with Bank Of America for 10 years. Since they accepted the bail out money I've gone to Bank Of Texas but still use Bank Of America as a spending account and have my merchant services deposits go in there. I keep a typically low balance, about $500 and transfer more money when needed. Anyway, I woke up to 6 $25 fees but I had not overdrafted. My account fell to $65 and then I transferred another $500. After arguing with the CSR for about an hour we broke down every single transaction and they had to admit they were wrong. What happened was a merchant (over a week ago) authorized my card twice, once for products without shipping and once for products with shipping but the authorization fell off the next day. But they deducted this authorization from my balance and hit me with fees 7 days later when I would have overdrafted had the transaction actually been paid. (I know, it's complicated, but it's highly fraudulent). After they corrected the six over draft fees of $25 each I wake up the next day and find TEN overdraft fees of $35 each! The first set of overdraft fees caused me to overdraft FOUR more times, which is true but why TEN charges? Nobody seems to know! After another hour on the phone this was taken care of. So I cynically wrote the bank an e-mail asking for $500 worth of credits towards my account for wasting my time. I made the point that if I had overdrafted by mistake I would not be able to deposit the difference and say 'I'm sorry' I would have to pay $500 worth of fees! They wrote me back with 'We've researched this account and found that you overdrafted blah blah blah'. I wrote back with 'apparently you didn't research this account because xxx and yyy'. They wrote back again with 'Oh. You're right. Sorry'. It just drives me so mad! First, they use a fraudulent fractional reserve system and create money out of thin air! The Federal Reserve is about as Federal as Federal Express and then they have the nerve to assess fraudulant fees on the public! Let me tell you how money is created. No, it's not backed by gold, it hasn't been in DECADES! The United States Government decides they need $10 million dollars. So they print up some fancy looking treasury bonds. Then they call up the Federal Reserve (who is a private corporation) and they print up some more fancy pieces of paper and give it to the US government. That's it! 10 million was just created! Oh but it gets far worse than this. The new created money has to have value and since the only thing regulating the value of money is how much is in circulation 10 million dollars has stolen value from the money you have in savings causing inflation! Now imagine 700 Billion being created out of thin air and given BACK to the bankers! And you wonder why gas is $2/gallon when a barrel of oil is going for $35 (it should be $.75 at the pump!) It gets worse! The fractional reserve system requires banks to only have 10% of their reserves in holding. This means they can loan out 90% of their reserve. So what happens to the $70 Billion of bail out money? It goes into bank accounts. Not $70 billion has because 7 TRILLION! Thus causing MORE inflation! And if you really want to realize how you're getting screwed let's factor in INTEREST! The US government doesn't just give the bonds to the Federal Reserve but the bonds are promissory notes that the US government will pay back the Federal Reserve with INTEREST! But if the Federal Reserve made the first dollar where does the money to pay back the interest come from? You got it! Print more money and borrow more money from the Federal Reserve! Causing a never ending cycle of inflation! Inflation is a tax on the people. Look at cars for a minute. In the 80's a new car cost an average of $7000. Now it's an average of $20, 000. Did things get more expensive? No! The value of the dollar has been chopped down to a third while wages have not even doubled! So you save a million dollars to retire on. When you retire that million dollars will have the buying power of $250, 000 if your lucky! And to top it all off.. they hit us with overdraft fees! We need to hit THEM with overdraft fees for bankrupting this economy and creating money out of thin air! And if you really want to hear the truth watch two movies on google video. America: From Freedom To Fascism The Obama Deception And speaking of Obama, lets take a look at the stimulus package for a moment. WE've already established the Federal Reserve printed 700 billion for the bail out right? OK. Well, we authorized the bail out money to be printed and we (the people) took responsibility for the debt, the interest and inflation. Then Obama writes a 700 billion dollar stimulus package. So what does the Fed do? They loan the US 700 billion dollars at INTEREST! AAAAAHHHHH! They're not even using Vaseline!

Bank of America paid back that TARP money last year, with interest. Also Ken Lewis retired...last year. If you don't know what you have in your account, don't use your debit card. I actually read that book of disclosures I agreed to when I opened my accounts...guess what, it says they charge you if you use money you don't have! You agree to it by signing the new account forms!

It is fair. If you can't keep track of how much money you have, you deserve to get charged a fee. It's called being a responsible adult

On June 9, 2011, I noticed I was in the red on my account page, in the amount of $18.35. At that time there was no fee assessed or on the record. I went to a local "stand-alone" ATM to make a deposit, and the door wouldn't open. I went home and called a local BOA branch office and reported the ATM to be inaccessible. They told me they would get someone right out there to fix it. I waited until the following morning to go back to the ATM and deposit money. This time, I got in. Before I left my house, I looked at my account page, and there was no fee assessed at that time, so I thought I was good to go. I made the deposit, and as soon as the deposit was made, a fee was added. Had I known about the fee being assessed, prior to my deposit, I would have brought more money. I have tried several times to have the fee reversed, to no avail. Each time I called to resolve the issue, I got a different story as to what happened, and it all amounted to lies! Luckely, I took a screenshot from my computer of my accounts page just before I left for the ATM on the 10th, clearly showing that no fee had been assessed at the time just before my deposit. Once I made the deposit, the fee was taken. Stolen I should say.

Even though Bank of America offers many options and benefits that most other banks do not, I find this company to engage in questionable practices to assess fees. The Customer service representatives "acted" kind, but were somewhat arrogant and stern. I wouldn't care so much if I weren't a disabled American, but I am, and money is extremely tight, month to month.

Unless you always have a lot of money in your account I would not recommend going to Bank of America. If you are disabled and run on a tight budget, stay away from Bank of America. These days, now that everything happens electronically, a $35.00 fee is very excessive, especially to the disabled. These people have no compassion, no sympathy, and just don't care about the hardships of people struggling to survive. They see it as taking candy from a baby, and that, it is. Fees for overdrafts should be based upon a percentage of the amount over-drafted, not a flat fee.

I would like to recommend that anyone experiencing this type of unfairness to write your United States congressman and senator and DEMAND that regulations be changed to a percentage of the over-drafted amounts, rather than flat fees.

Change banks.

Bank of America has done this to me repeatedly. They wait and hold charges in order to maximize the fees they charge. How can they get away with this? Is there anything/anyone who we can complain to or help us to be compensated? I am so angry, but I feel so disappointed in our system, that offers no consumer rights. I also dont remember signing up and approving this type of charges. Isn't that fraud?

First of all, Bank of America needs to get a hold of what they're doing. Too many times have I gone through the same situation where I check my bank as soon as I wake up to find overdrafts, and as more purchases come through incur more overdrafts as the original overdrafts (which sometimes take two days to clear) have pushed me back into the red. They've improved slightly lately, but they are nowhere near where they should be in order to call their practices "honest."

Secondly, they need to become more willing to help their customers. Every time I've met with a representative to resolve an issue, they always have all of this information not readily available to me such as a total of overdrafts both incurred and returned in the past year, not to mention that their record of my account activity is much more accurate than what Online Banking shows me. They can use all of that information to help the customer. What I think should be done is, as soon a customer's account balance reaches a negative, even if it's just based on pending transactions, cut off the card. Yes this may upset the customer, but so will letting them continue to spend and incur eight overdraft fees. To me, given all of the information that they have access to, it is negligent to do otherwise.

What I would really like to see in any bank is a sliding scale for overdraft fees. I'm sure before the time we all started using our cards for every purchase, back when everyone still used their checking accounts to pay for items of larger amounts, they would extend past their limit to much a greater degree than they do nowadays. Sometimes it's extremely ridiculous. In 2007, I received the standard $35 overdraft fee because my account was -$.044. Forty-four cents. Does it really cost Bank of American $35 to let me borrow forty-four cents for a couple of hours? I would doubt that it would cost them forty-four cents. I understand they have a right to charge an overdraft fee because people shouldn't be so careless with their money and that would be taking advantage of the bank, but a flat $35 fee is sometimes not justified by the amount overdrafted.

A great system to me would be a fee equal to half the amount overdrafted, starting at $5 for anything between -$0.01 and -$10 and continuing until they reach their arbitrary $35 standard. I'm sure the banks would never go for this since their idea of "overdraft protection" is to charge you $10 to automatically transfer money from your savings account to your checking account when it reaches a negative balance (and by the way, if your savings isn't enough to cover the negative balance they'll transfer the whole amount and charge you the $10 on top of the $35!). Since this is more than likely the case, I would be willing to accept a fee system equal to the amount overdrafted starting at $10 since they seem to fancy this "protective" denomination.

A perfect system to me, however, would be a fee based on the accumulated debt, not one given for each individual purchase. Even if the fee were to match the balance, imagine how helpful (well, relatively helpful) that would be. If you make, for example, seven purchases for $3 on an account with a negative balance (assuming they got through some hole in the system that there will always be) and accumulate a balance of roughly -$21, the old system would charge you $245 since you had seven separate transaction. My proposed transaction-based fee systems would charge you $35 (for the half-balance system) and $70 (for the matched-balance system) which are both huge saving over the current system. My perfect system, however, would only charge you $21.

Don't all of those figures seem much more reasonable? I know it will probably never happen at Bank of America, but shouldn't we expect more out of a bank instead of settling for what we already have? If you're going to get rich off of the people, you should at least provide a better service. If there were any bank out there willing to offer services like I describe, then I would be willing to consider calling them "fair."

I had a similar experience with BOA. I allowed my son to use my debit card for emergencies and meals(maximum $10.00 per day). At the time, I did not know about the five hundred dollar over draft allowance on purchases made via debit card. I assumed if my son tried to use the card when funds were not available, the transaction would be declined. I have all my bills set up for online payments and on several occassions a transaction for less than five dollars was accepted, while the larger bill payments were returned. I was charged thirty five dollars for each five dollar debit transaction, thereby causing a cascade of returned bill payments that were resubmitted and returned again, and each transaction cost me thirty five dollars. A five dollar fast food meal escalated to several hunderd dollars in fees. I called the customer service department to complain, and was told that the only solution was to disallow any over draft protection for my debit card. So, if I'm stranded on a deserted highway and need gas or a meal, I better make sure I have correctly balanced my checking account because my card will be declined if I am one penny short.

I've had constant problems with BofA.

I call and complain and they return part of what they purloin.

I filed a complaint with the better business bureau and The Office of the Comptroller of Currency. below are their web sites where you file a complaint electronically. I also found this organization and filed a complaint with my congressman.

everyone here should do the same.

http://www.bbb.org/us/Find-Business-Reviews/

http://www.helpwithmybank.gov/complaints/index.html

http://www.affil.org/