In May I received a notice from Bank of America that they had withdrawn $655 from my bank account to correct a deposit made in error in February (no, the date is not a typo!).
When I called Customer Service to inquire about the reason for the debit I was told that the deposit had been made in error and that the Bank could/would not give me any substantiation as to this error because of privacy reasons.in other words, I just had to trust them. The only way for me to get the money back was to submit either a bank deposit slip or a cancelled check, showing the deposit.
To complicate the matter, the alleged erroneous deposit had been made in an account which I had closed about 3 months later in response to another screw-up by BoA and I have only kept the monthly statements. The correcting debit was made in another account I still had at BoA.in any case, who keeps bank deposit slips for 15 months on an account that has been closed for a year?
Submitting a cancelled check makes even less sense. Firstly, if I had deposited a check from someone else, THEY would have received the cancelled check, not I. Secondly, BoA does not send you the cancelled checks back. You can view an electronic copy on line but only for a limited time and certainly not on a closed account. So much for that one!
As the next step I wrote a polite letter to the Kenneth D. Lewis, the Chairman of Bank of America to complain and ask for a reasonable solution of this matter. I did get an equally polite letter back from the Banks Customer Advocate. The response came down to the fact that
- He had researched the transaction and found everything in order
- The Bank could/would not provide any substantiation because it had to protect the privacy of the person for whom the deposit had been intended
- They regretted my inconvenience and that I felt disappointed by their treatment but there was nothing further to do
If you check the account agreement with the Bank, you will see that they have almost absolute rights. Most banks have similar agreements. Having said that, we have lived in 8 cities in 7 states where we have had relationships with different banks. Never have we encountered any problem with any of them, except with Bank of America multiple times!
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