Why Is Bank of America Blaming the Financial Crisis on Dead Mothers?

[KoKo]

by: ZP Heller
Sat Feb 07, 2009 at 19:49
How do you know when your bank is standing in the way of economic recovery? Well, take the following quiz. Your bank took $45 billion in bailout funds and:

a) Blew it on an overseas bank investment, DC lobbyists, corporate jets, executive bonuses, and a lavish Super Bowl party worth $10 million alone.
b) Announced it would lay off 35,000 workers while refusing to provide adequate health care for the rest of its 212,000 employees.
c) Asked participants on a conference call to donate large sums of money to vulnerable anti-union Senatorial candidates in order to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act.
d) Blamed the financial crisis on dead mothers.
e) All of the above.


Sadly, for Bank of America, the answer is "e" as in "egregious." TPMMuckraker had a story Friday about Theresa Hatt, a Bank of America customer who died of cancer last month at 52. When her son, Paul Kelleher, called Bank of America to let them know, an estates representative asked if Kelleher intended to pay off the balance of his mother's credit card. When he said he wasn't obligated to, the representative said, "I know that if it were my mother, I'd pay it. That's why we're in the banking crisis we're in: banks having to write off defaulted loans."

Apparently, Bank of America instructs representatives from its collections unit to deceive customers intentionally, both about the legality of paying off balances and obviously about the morality of it as well. Not only that, but the bank also rewards its reps who do bring in "collectible money" with fat bonuses of upwards of $5,000 a month. This is a business practice so sickening it ought to have every Bank of America customer shredding their ATM cards in disgust.

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[4 t 4]

1. In this meldown BOA

is by far the worst in everything they have done. They need to be taken down- taken down to China town

[depakid]

2. Of course they attempt to decieve people- there's no real incentive NOT to

Thanks to the DLC Dems who, along with their Republican allies have either gutted or blocked necessary consumer laws for 20 years.

And people wonder why Nader and the Greens' contituencies grew so rapidly during the `1990's.

[Democrats_win]

3. Dead college students too. 20/20 did a story about students and credit cards.

They'd overspend and since they didn't have jobs yet, they couldn't pay. Then they'd commit suicide. The credit card company would call the parent and say that it would be a good tribute to their son or daughter to pay off the card.

It's the old story of the kid who kills his parents and begs for mercy since he's an orphan. The banks are getting what they deserve. In fact, they paid OUR elected officials for this privilege. You'd think they'd all learn a lesson. But they're still preventing real action (on usury) that would protect us and them too in the long run. Enjoy the fall, bankers. You deserve it.

[Donnachaidh]

4. time to NATIONALIZE this OBSCENITY

If these are the business tactics, it's time to put this *business* to sleep permanently.

[liberalmuse]

5. Oh fuck, I closed my account with them a couple weeks ago...

What an atrocity of a corporation. I stopped direct deposit after the 'Republic Windows and Doors' shit, but it was the scheming against unions that made me get off my lazy ass and pull my money out. Bastards. We need to nationalize BOA.

[Life Long Dem]

13. I thought it was bad enough that they offshored but

I figured it wasn't going to matter if the next bank offshores jobs as well.

Blowing the bailout funds? Demanding payment for dead relatives? Union busting?

I'll be shopping for another bank. I didn't start out with BOA as my bank, but after a couple merges I somehow landed at a bank which has shown itself to be operated by extreme greed.

[Captain Hilts]

6. They're blaming my mother too. nt

[hedgehog]

7. Anybody want to bet part of the credit card balance was to cover

medical bills for cancer treatment?

[liberalhistorian]

8. It makes me wish I had an account with these

fuckers just for the pleasure of closing it and cutting up the cards and telling them in explicit terms why and what they could do with it.

BOA knows damn well that surviving family members are not responsible for the deceased customers' debts, that they need to file claims with the estate for payment. However, they also know that too many people don't know that and are grief-stricken and vulnerable and they take advantage of that. Too many other banks and creditors do that as well.

[jberryhill]

9. That's wire fraud, btw /nt

[Froward69]

10. It was exactly this type of discussion

that started my war with Weld county Colorado. The county Social worker went to bat for the private Hospice... attempting to tell me my fathers debts did not die with him.

[KoKo]

11. It's hard to know...I'm involved right now with an Estate...Lawyer

telling me that because Will Wasn't Probated that relative took all the money...

Lawyers and Legals for the "small of us" are different for the "Fat Cats." It's as if there are TWO DIFFERENT sets of Legal Rights for the Entitled and the Rest of Us.

Who knows. After the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Reagan Years...Who knows what the truth of anything is anymore.

:-(

[Froward69]

12. hugh??

explain... Probated is when the will goes to court. the executor of the will absconded with all the money?

In my case they were successful in transferring all of my fathers Debt to me.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

14. Are We Even Sure The Conversation Was Legitimate?

I'm still not convinced that the conversation went down exactly as the son said it did. I don't doubt they wanted their money, but I'm having doubts about their allegedly stating that it because of the dead that they're in the mess they're in.