Bank Of America
Balance Transfer Fee Treated as Cash Advance at High Interest

I just discovered the latest and greatest credit card scam. Bank of America offered me a 0% balance transfer rate til 04/06 with a 4% fee and a max. fee of $75. After 04/06 the interest goes to 7.9%. Not a bad deal??? Well read on.

So, when I took them up on this great offer and received my statement, it showed the $75 as a finance charge, but they treated it as a cash advance at 22.24% interest. I called Bank of America about this and they said that that was part of the agreement for the 0% transfer. The fee of $75 is treated as a cash advance.

What a SCAM. The $75 fee posts to your account as a finance charge. Then in the breakdown for interest, a cash advance balance for that $75 fee shows up under the cash advance finance rate (in this case at 22.24%) and thus a finance charge is billed.

The rip-off is that you can't pay off this $75 fee because that fee is handled as a cash advance at 22.24% and all payments are applied to the lowest interest balance first. So, as you are making payments at 0% on your original transfer amount, this $75 cash advance balance keeps racking up interest charges at an exorbitant rate until you pay the whole mess off.

Company: Bank Of America
Country: USA
State: Arizona
City: Phoenix
Address: PO Box 53132
Phone: 8007329194

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