I'm stunned. BofA just refunded 3 overdraft fees without a fuss. Something has definitely changed

[apples and oranges]

over there. I wasn't even going to bother calling them, I just paid them the money, and was never going to use the card again but a friend told me to try.

If they recently "got" you, and by "got" I mean, misled you about your available balance and then waited until you made a large purchase to push through several small things, call them up and mention that you think it's an unfair practice to wait days to push through small items in order to maximize overdraft fees. Turns out, they are in the middle of appealing a decision against them for the exact same thing. I knew I wasn't crazy!

http://clossonsettlement.com/

[notesdev]

1. They are hemorrhaging customers

word of their crappy business practices has been going viral... I bet they're starting to feel it on their bottom line.

[jtrockville]

5. ^ I was one of 'em. I'm so glad I ditched BOA.

[RKP5637]

8. Me too! I ditched them when they bought out my old credit card company. I

told them I refused to do business with a company like BOA. I doubt the rep. gave a SH**. ...but I felt good getting rid of them.

[Cronus Protagonist]

11. I used to work there - I'll never do business with them. Ever.

Now that I know their internal corporate culture.

[Nikki Stone1]

10. Maybe Congress can order the bank broken up into smaller local banks.

Nations Bank bit off more than it could chew when it bought Bank of America in California and bought the name for their use. What we are really seeing is Nations Bank (under another name) and its sucky practices.

[Iggo]

17. What?

I didn't know that!

So BofA in CA is not the same as BofA in the rest of the country?

Seriously, that's news to me. Thanks for the info.

[NuttyFluffers]

20. no, the merger happened in 1998, due to Russian bond failure.

it's all online. quite a sad story. turned a relatively decent bank into an utterly shitty one. i switched in 2001, never looked back. still have a CC through them, but whatever, no love lost.

[Nikki Stone1]

21. Yes, the California B of A was fairly decent. Nations was scum. But nations bought it out and took

the name. I guess Nations was trying to hide its scumminess.

[Lugnut]

19. Good.

I dumped them in favor of the local credit union several years ago.

[bobbolink]

23. That would be a very good place for them to feel it... on their bottom

even line.

:)

[Catshrink]

2. They did something "for" me unexpectedly and unasked

my lastest statement showed a reversal of the annual fee and refund of a month's finance charge. WTF? I'm not complaining, just stunned.

[DFW]

3. They certainly didn't used to be that way

When I got my daughter her first VISA card when she moved to the States, I asked for the bill to be automatically deducted from my account, as I wasn't in the States often enough to monitor it. They said OK.

Next thing I know is I start getting notices that they are charging her exorbitant late fees for not paying her bill.

I called up Bank of America in the States with time I didn't have, and from Germany, which was still expensive back
then, to ask why this was happening.

It turns out that the idiot who set up my daughter's VISA account forgot to put through the instructions to have
her bill automatically deducted from my account. The supervisor I finally got on the line "generously" offered to
settle the account for late fees and interest "accrued" to date, and arrange for all further charges to be deducted
as I had originally requested. I told them that this was going to be resolved in the next half hour one way or the
other. I had just received my inheritance which was fully put aside to pay for my daughters' college tuition, so my
account had a bundle in there at the time. I gave the supervisor on the phone my Social Security number, and said
the decision was in her hands. She had told me her name, which I had noted. I said either all late fees and interest,
which must have at that point been all of $150, would be waived by Bank of America, and I kept my account with them,
or they could insist on the fees, and I would pay them, and then both of our accounts at Bank of America would be
emptied and closed within the hour (I have people back in Dallas who could do that for me), and I would send a letter
to Bank of America explaining whose actions (hers) had prompted me to leave them.

The late fees and interest were waived.

[Thickasabrick]

4. Maybe all their customers are joining credit unions. I'm gonna. nt

[MrsCorleone]

7. Me, too. In the process of moving my funds after a large bank took over our community bank

[bridgit]

14. We are, too many banks suck, Chase took over WaMu and they super suck so we gone

[grasswire]

6. thank you for that news, because I'm about to fight them

...on overdrafts. A brand new business account. The first weekend it was used. $200 in deposit. $211 in debits (small travel-related charges such as cuppa coffee). Then, in 24 hours, almost $300 in overdraft fees because they rearranged the order of transactions twice. And I did not authorize overdraft protection on this account.

[CoffeeCat]

9. That's just awful...

...and I hope you can get the matter resolved.

It sounds as if this is an optimal time to try to fight them.

My guess is that these banks tried to suck us dry for as long as they could. That was their business
model for many years, and Congress opened the legislative floodgates for these banks to screw us.

Now that door is closing--and I bet these banks are trying to keep customers--knowing that the new
reality will be pretty harsh for them. They won't be able to screw us as much as they were--and if
they end up losing customers in droves--they will surely be hurting.

You may have some leverage.

[unapatriciated]

18. What's worse is when they do it to those on fixed incomes.

My son who is disabled and on SSi used to bank with BoA and they did that to him a couple of times. They knew those overdraft fees would be there at the first of the month and could care less that it was most of what he had to live on for the next month.

[Smashcut]

22. !!! This is the scam BofA runs on its customers.

And I can't believe it's even legal.

They post transactions to your account in bundles, deliberately ordering them from largest to smallest regardless of the date the expense was incurred in order to maximize the number of transactions that hit after an overdraft and hence, their fees.

Do NOT do business with them. They are scam artists!

[greennina]

12. It's because Obama is in charge now.

Everything is changing.

[SheilaT]

13. This is why I have long thought debit cards to be

a very poor idea. If a charge got rejected because you didn't have enough money in the account, I'd think they were fine. But when I learned that they'll simply allow the charge and charge overdraft fees, I decided I'd never get a debit card. And I never have.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. And I have only a debit card and no credit cards

Never had a problem. If you don't spend more than you have in your account, you don't have to worry about overdraft fees.

[strategery blunder]

24. Until the bank screws around with deposits, that is.

It's not at all beyond BofA to order debits before deposits, when the deposit occurred chronologically before the debit.

In which case the money was in your account, but the bank was playing games.

It's nice to have a few thousand extra dollars in your account that you'll never use, to serve as a buffer against such shenanigans, but that is a pipe dream for too many Americans. :(

[Th1onein]

16. Something's definitely different..

I deposited CASH the other day, at an out of state B of A (out of state from where I opened the account). The teller told me it was available immediately. They didn't credit my account for three days! For cash! Then they sent me an email that I would be charged an overdraft fee because my account was in a negative balance. I called them and told them that if they charged me one fucking cent, I would close my account. The customer service guy told me I would have to call back AFTER the charge appeared on my account. I told him I BETTER NOT SEE a charge; I'd spent enough time on the phone with them already.

Now, three days later, no charge.

[laughingliberal]

25. Well, there goes the argument from the PR crowd that if you don't spend money you don't have...

Apparently it can happen spending money you do have. I know they have the ability to score checks deposited immediately but they still 'hold' them for several days. Now, I go cash the checks our customers give us at their bank and deposit CASH only in my bank account. I keep only money in there for 2 drafts that come out of our account on the 10th of every month. The rest I put on a pre loaded debit card which has no overdraft protection. Screw the banks. They'll never see another dime out of me.