Student Beware of Bank Of America free checking. I understand the problems with checking accounts, however this one is hard to swallow. I have a college student who opened a free checking account with BOA, and he had payed a bill and he did't have enough funds to cover several lunches he purchased at the school cafeteria. He was using a debit card, and the total charges was less than $25.00. I understand he is responsible to keep track of how much funds he has in his account, but since it was getting toward the end of the semester, and he was studying for finals, he lost track. We were notified after he had racked up a total of $445.00 in charges (most of them in fees and overdraft).
The Bank Of America "check card" allowed him to continue to use the card even though he didn't have any funds in his account to cover the transactions. This seems to be indactive of the current electronic age where transactions are almost Instantaneous. Bank Of America (BOA) did not do the best job it can to protect the customer in this situation, once the account was overdrawn it (BOA) should have stopped any further transactions associated with the card. I know they can do this, in the event a card is stolen they can shut down the card in a matter of minutes. But their practices allowed the changes to go on and continue to rack up the fees. This is the way they have paid back the billions of dollars in bail out money, with the unfair fees they apply to accounts. I contacted them to have the card frozen and stop any more transactions to be made on the "check card". They (BOA) would not let me lock out the card since it was not in my name, it appeared to me that they wanted him to continue to use the "check card" even though the account was overdrawn.
I had to call my son and talk to BOA to freeze his card. My name was on the account and they still would not freeze his card, (by the way this is the only way I found out he was overdrawn, I try to keep an eye on his account). I have since put funds into the account to cover all fees and Penalties, and extra (for emergency). I'm lucky that we (my family) had enough extra cash on hand to cover the account, (it still hurt as I'm not a wealthy person). I know that many families do not have this kind of cash, and it would have destroyed them and in some cases cause the student to drop out of school to pay for the unnecessary fees. I have done some research and this is a frequent "ploy" of many banks to rack up service fees and charges. Please do the research, and talk to your student prior to opening an account with any bank. I have since found one (Bank) that would tie his account to mine to cover any overdrafts, and yes I still keep a close eye on his spending.
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