I've heard really bad things about Bank of America in the past. Even thought I've heard all of these horrible things I decided to give them a chance after relocating to a new state and had the convenience of signing up during new hire orientation at a new job. Well, being a customer of BOA (Bank of America) has been a horrible nightmare ever since!
I signed up with BOA in August of last year opening a checking and savings account. I was more or less excited by the "keep the change" match and thought, free money... That would be nice. After four months I recieved a letter stating my savings account was closed due to too many withdrawals. I thought this was weird since I withdrew funds only out of my checking account, not savings. They told me I'd have to open a new savings account. I asked the customer service rep about my "keep the change" match that BOA put in during the past four months and what would happen to all of that money. She said "unfortunately you will lose all of that money when you open a new savings account". What a joke! I couldn't believe all of this.
As time went on I would deposit money and it wouldn't hit my account right away. What would happen is they would hold my deposit then put transactions through which would make me accrue numerous fees. After confronting them on many occassions (every time this happened), they'd reimburse me a fee here and there, but not all of them. I'd also try to deposit money at the ATM, being that my BOA branch is hard to get to, but the ATM wouldn't take all of my money and spit most of the cash back out. I notified them of this issue as well, and of course they'd come up with an excuse as to why it wasn't their fault. One day I accrued over $500 worth of OD charges and they wouldn't reimburse any of these fees. Again they told me to look at the "balance history" report on my online screen and they'd talk me into believing I did something wrong. I'd tell them that I balanced my checkbook down to the last penny, yet they told me I screwed up. After these fees accrued IMMEDIATELY of course, more transactions bounced creating a bigger problem for me. My account went haywire!
Today is November 7 and after having to go on anti anxiety medication due to this constant problem I just spoke to a representative to find out the total cost of fees I've accrued in the past 12 months. Needless to say - there were so many I lost track. She said that the total ammount was $5,165. This is not a typo, BOA has taken $5,165 in just overdraft fees from me in the past year!!! This is why I've started to hunt around on the internet to see if I'm the only one going through this, and apparently I'm not. Most people that are reading this are probably wondering why I don't simply close my accounts and go to a different bank. My answer to that is I want my account open with all of the history so if a case is opened against them, and I have the opportunity to be part of that case, all of the information I need is right there. I think they want people they've screwed over to run the other way... Well I'm not going down without a fight.
What really upsets me is after speaking to Supervisors EVERY TIME I get these fees, not one of them mentioned I could link my checking account to my savings account for overdraft protection. I'm pretty sure this would have saved me some of these fees, and I would've made sure I had $50 in my savings account for safety reasons at all times knowing I just lost out on $500 in one day! My sister mentioned this to me, not one person from BOA mentioned I could do this. The only suggestion they gave me was to sign up for text message or email alerts which didn't help at all since the notifications were sent to me after they already took all of the OD fees out of my account!
Please help me if any of you have any suggestions on what I can do to get this money back. After being laid off in January of this year, and being out of work for almost a year I can't believe my own bank is stealing from me. The people I am supposed to be able to trust with my money. I'm appauled and I don't understand how BOA's top people (who are well aware of what they are doing to their customers) can sleep at night. After America is facing the worst recession ever, Bank of America is digging into their fellow American's pockets... This is shocking to me!
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