Hi,
I'm no longer using Bank of America and I'll tell you why.
I have been using a "secured credit card" service for over a year. This Mastercard is offered out of a bank based in Utah, and the way it works is very, very simple — my credit limit is how much money is in the account. I have my employers direct deposit it into the account each pay period and then just use the card for all purchases. Whenever I make a purchase, it just subtracts the amount until I get a zero balance. Simple. Easy to deal with. (And with each purchase I get a text message sent to my cell phone telling me the new balance.)
So, let's say I have $500 direct deposited onto the Mastercard. I make a purchase of $50 at the grocery store. I then receive a text message IMMEDIATELY after the purchase that says I now have $450 on the card. If I try to make a purchase of $451, the card is DENIED. Again, simple. Easy.
The benefits of this system are that I get to make payments via credit card online, I don't have to carry cash around, and I get an online downloadable (into Quicken) statement of literally every transaction I've made. Gret for tax purposes.
Now, here's where Bank of America comes in. The one complaint I have about this "secured" Mastercard is that the direct deposits often come late in the day on pay days — defeating the whole purpose of direct deposit because I could get the check faster just going to my workplace and picking it up. A co-worker mentioned that he uses Bank of America and gets his money as much as three days earlier than our actual payday.
Coincidentally, I got a junk mail from Bank of America a few days after that conversation with my coworker that advertised a "secured" Visa from Bank of America. I assumed it would work the same way as my Mastercard. Boy, was I wrong!
One day I found that this Visa "ate" over $300 dollars of my $600 paycheck because of overdraft fees. It turned out (after calling to inquire) that, unlike the Mastercard, Bank of America will authorize a transaction even though there isn't enough money in the account to cover it.
The real insult to injury of the situation is how the overdrafts occurred in the first place.
Because this Bank of America card doesn't send text messages immediately after each purchase with the adjusted balance the way the Mastercard does, I needed to check my balance at an ATM. I wasn't near a Bank of America ATM, so I used a generic one at a convenience store. Everytime I swiped my Visa, I got an error message telling me there was a problem with the line and to try again later. I did this four times before finally giving up. What I discovered later — to my horror — is that this ATM was charging me $1.60 for each time I swiped the card, even though I never connected! So I ended up losing half my paycheck because of $6.40 in ATM usage fees.
When I called to complain, I was treated rudely at first and patronizingly lectured about "being careful." I explained that the card had been marketed to me as a secured credit card — not as a check/debit/ATM card — but I was still treated rudely.
I called back a day later and got a much nicer person. I explained my mistaken assumption about how the card works — based on how it was marketed and how my Mastercard works — and this time the guy said he understood and promised to waive all the fees and told me that all is fine now, but to be careful from now on. He also added that there weren't any more charges waiting to be cleared.
Well, he lied. I had immediately stopped using the card out of fear and started using cash only. But when I checked my balance, I had nearly $300 MORE in overdraft fees — that the guy told me weren't coming — and the original $300 in fees were stil there. He lied, plain and simple.
Bottom line is — forget Bank of America. They want those fees and they want them bad! They will steal it right out of your account.
Cliff
Dallas, Texas
U.S.A.
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