I've read some of the other reports about Bank of America, including the incredible story of the guy in Seattle who lost $30,000. My story is minor in comparison, but I think that like a lot of companies today, BofA is all about finding ways to extract money from customers by using loopholes or rules designed to be broken.
Unlike the guy in Seattle, I did have a check fraud problem that was caught right away. Someone stole one of our checks from the mail (we think) and forged the account and routing numbers onto their own checks. They only had written two small checks for a total of $50 before BofA caught on and contacted us. So they get high marks for that part. But that's only the beginning of the story.
After learning of the fraud and having the account frozen, I went in to a branch to open a new checking account and get the money transferred, etc. Not long after that, I used their online billpay system to pay some bills, and had set up the source as the new checking account. However, the system automatically tried to pull the funds from the old account first, and we received notices of overdraft, with fees attached. Obviously, I was livid, and contacted them about it right away, and the fees were removed in all but one case.in that last case, the payment was made to Geico for car insurance. After trying to get the bank to cover it, or get Geico to refund the fee ($20) I finally gave up because it was costing more in time and frustration than the $20 was worth.
All in all it took dozens of phone calls and several months to finally get the accounts straightend out in the way that they should have been from the start. All because someone stole some of our checks. Mainly, I chalk this up to incompetence and lack of attention to detail. However, the way their rules are set up, it seemed to me that they are looking to get some overdraft fees from people even though it's not their fault.
By the way, we have three accounts with BofA: a personal checking account, a savings (money market) account, and a small business account. These accounts are linked together as to give us the best deal on checks, etc., and avoid some of the typical fees. So a statement came where there was a fee for "account maintenence" or something like that. I looked up their rules and account specifications, and found that we had more than enough in combined funds to waive this fee.
When I called them on it, I was told that the waiver was only in place for one year at a time (internal bank thing) and that it had expired, thus the fee. So they agreed to remove the fee. And I realized that another year later, we'd be going through the same thing again where they would charge this fee and I'd have to call them and get it removed and get the waiver reinstated.
Basically, what this appears to be is that they have mechanisms in place designed to take money from as many people as possible, and refund it to those wo notice and call them on it. And I'd guess that such policies net them millions of dollars just based on the fact that things like fees of this nature may not be noticed, or people don't take the time to call them and argue about it.
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