I'm a 25 year old female, married, with a professional job and on the crazy end of the spectrum when it comes to responsibility and getting the bills paid on time. My mother always tells me I'm the quintessential, Type - A first born. With that said, you can imagine the shock I had when I logged on to my Bank of America online banking account and saw that my husband and I were "in the red." Now, I'm not about to blame this overspending on debit card theft or forced purchases at gunpoint. It was just plain human foolishness and miscommunication. A mistake. Although we have two checking accounts with Bank of America, one we use for bills and groceries (all that not so fun stuff) and the other for spending, my husband had accidentally made a series of five purchases (all under $5 a piece and totaling $16.30) and thus overspent on the dwindling spending account. This overspenditure of $16.30 proceeded to cost us $175 in overdraft fees ($35 a pop). Sitting at my cubicle at work, I was shocked and frustrated to see that the account was in a deficit (and definitely a little angry with my husband who probably bought a small arsenal of junk food ultimately costing $175). However, despite the shock and embarrassment, I was not all that worried as I trusted Bank of American would surely be reasonable enough to reverse some of the excessive charges. After all, it was only $16.30!
I have been a Bank of American customer for 9 years (since I was 16 and got my first job). I opened my first checking account through Fleet Bank, back before Bank of America bought Fleet out. I have been a loyal, long term customer of Bank of America ever since. Direct deposit, online bill pay, credits cardsyou name it! We regularly used all.in my nave head, I was assuming there wasn't a possible way there were going to throw a 9 year customer under the bus for one chain of $16.30 mistakes. My problem was not with the fact that we had been charged overdraft fees. We deserved it. I never disputed that fact. What I had a problem with is the fact that, before we realized we have overdrawn once, we had overdrawn four more times and that $35 fee just wouldn't leave us alone. My request was that all but the initial $35 overdraft fee be reversed. If my husband had only realized that $1.30 purchase from Whole Foods had put us "in the red, " he most definitely would not have continued with the petty purchases.
Sitting in my car in my office parking lot, pressing the inane sequence of numbers before I finally got a live human being on the phone, I figured this wouldn't be too much of an ordeal. Finally Carol picked up the phone and I explained my plight to her. Carol was very pleasant to deal with, but she very pleasantly informed me that, unfortunately, none of those $35 charges could be reversed as they could not be attributed to banking error. I fully understood that. I could see just which purchases had produced each $35 charge. I knew the bank had not made a mistake. I was simply asking for an exception to be made for a one time mistake, ultimately costing the bank less than $20 and ultimately costing us close to $200. That's 1,000% interest! I explained to Carol that I would gladly pay the initial $35 charge for the first purchase, but believed each subsequent $35 charge was entirely unreasonable. When she reiterated her inability to make a change, I asked to speak with her supervisor. Carol politely obliged and proceeded to put me on hold while she transferred me to her supervisor. I waited on hold for 40 minutes. Never once was I informed that I would soon be helped. After 40 minutes of waiting, I hung up.
By the time I got home, I figured I would give it one last try before going to bed, hoping that this time I might actually get in touch with a supervisor. My husband and I huddled around the home computer and started an online chat with a Bank of America representative. Again, this representative, Allison, gave us the same unfortunate news. Regardless of our long time relationship with the bank and having never had a similar situation, we were again denied a fee reversal. This was, again, attributed to it being our error, rather than banking error. We tried everything. Regardless of the economy, regardless of the Holidays being three weeks away, regardless of our spotless credit history, we were still being forced to shell out $175 in fees for a $16 mistake. Allison kindly forwarded us to her supervisor, William, who kindly forwarded us to his supervisor, Dominic, but we heard the same story from each Bank of America employee. It was only when we had reached our boiling point and promised that we would close both of our accounts the very next day if we did not receive a refund, that somehow a $35 "courtesy" reimbursement was given to us. Still livid, we informed Bank of America, that this was absolutely unacceptable. We felt completely taken advantage of and disregarded. Not once, in our conversation with those four employees, did we feel we were given any consideration. It was the worst customer service I have ever received in my life. We thanked Dominic for his generosity in returning $35, but told him unless an additional $100 was returned, we would still be closing our accounts. He told us that was the very best he could do and that he was following bank policy.
Now, this is infuriating by itself, but the worst part of it all is that we were specifically told by all four Bank of America employees that going, in person, to a branch office and meeting with an associate in person would yield the exact same results. Everyone was forced to follow the exact same policy. Today my husband and I met at noon to plead our case one last time face to face with the banking manager at our local Bank of America branch. Our first contact was not the manager, but just the same a very competent, pleasant woman. She immediately sympathized with us and informed us that she would take care of this for us as best as she was able. Immediately we were hopeful as she looked up our information. She empathized with the poor service we encountered on the phone and was surprised that they were not willing to work with us. Her face fell, as did ours, when she pulled up our file and realized that we are already been officially declined for fee reversal. Hoping that this was something that could be overridden by management, we asked if she wouldn't mind calling her supervisor over to converse with us. Apparently the bank manager had better things to do than service a client because she sent the associate back and gave us the same bad news we had received four times over. There was nothing that could be done. But she mentioned that if we had only come into the branch instead of calling the Customer Service line, she would have been able to help us. It was only because we had officially been declined in the system that she was not able to override a decision.infuriated at this point, we argued that we had been specifically told that going to a branch office would not help our case. We had asked this several times! If we had been given any hope, of course we would have dropped our feeble attempts at a reasonable phone call and waited until the next day. The only consolation she could give us was that a report would be filed that we were displeased with the Customer Service. I'm sure that will go a very long way.
Needless to say, with several more attempts for consideration declined, we promptly closed out our accounts right then and there. We made it clear that we would not do business with a bank that abused its customers in this way and refused to take ownership for errant information given. We told them we would take our money and put it with a competitor who knew how to treat a customer as a human being.
Before this fiasco took form yesterday, I had always been a huge advocate of Bank of America. I had never had any reason to be displeased with their service and had encouraged several friends and family members (including my husband) to move to Bank of America. Never again will I advise anyone in that direction. The incompetence of the staff, partnered with their poor corporate ethics as demonstrated by their customer service, has only given me the incentive to write this article and make their true colors known.
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