I have struggled through the 3 years that I've had accounts with BoA, and finally decided to give up during this economic recession. I never realised until recently that a "FREE Student Checking Account" could cost so much! It's simply ridiculous and something needs to be done by someone to stop BoA from practically stealing hundreds of dollars from the struggling college students!
The biggest mistake I ever made besides opening a Checking acct and Savings acct with BoA was to get direct deposit to have my paychecks deposited into my Checking acct automatically. Before being laid off, I was making an average of $400 weekly. Of the $1600 i brought in per month, at LEAST $300 went to paying absurd overdraft charges every month.
The worst part is: every time I would contact BoA through a phone call to get an explanation of my being charged, I would be given a ridiculous run around basically stating that I was stupid and need to pay attention to what I spend my money on.
One agent told me that I can never go by what my online statement says, and that the ONLY way to ensure that I have enough money in my account to cover my purchases would be to write everything down in a check book... But isn't the online statement supposed to be my check book...?
I set up Overdraft Protection. It was recommended after I spent almost an hour on the phone with an agent yelling at her to refund my money. She said I would be able to receive emails and text messages when my acct hit a low balance. I'm still trying to figure out how to get texts sent to me. I found it hillarious that the only time I received Low Balance emails was AFTER my account was overdrawn. Smart right?
I also came to realise how this crook of a bank works. Say you have $200 in your FREE checking account. You make purchases for $5, $10, $100, $5, and finally, $80. That equals $200. Right? Ok. So you should have an available balance of $0. But... What BoA will do is HOLD a past purchase (according to an agent I spoke to, they can hold a transaction for up to 1yr). The bank will wait till you've spent all your money, and finally clear a past transaction, deducting it from the initial $200. THEN they will post the new purchases, reordering them from biggest to smallest. That way, they can get the most money out of you.
I had to pay almost $300 in overdraft charges because BoA waited almost 2 months to clear a debit purchase of a cup of coffee for $2.12. Seriously?!?
And don't EVER let them fool you. If you check your balance and see that you are in the red, you WILL be charged an overdraft fee of $35. It may not be the next day after the purchase. Or the next week for that matter. BoA was so money hungry, they attempted to charge my an overdraft charge of $35 almost FOUR MONTHS after they were supposed to have. Wow. That's just low.
I know all banks are crooks in one way or another. But BoA is totally off the wall.in these hard times that we're in now, not only have I been laid off from work, but I owe BoA a lot of money between charges they cleared when they shouldn't have and overdraft charges.
It's sad really.
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