In which BofA steals $100 from me (aka: rant about your banks with me!)

The BBQ Pit
1

Sometime last year, Bank of America rolled out a new mobile deposit feature. With any smart phone, you can take a picture of your deposit and- via their app- deposit the check right into your account. As someone who detests physically going to the bank (irrational? Me? Never!), this sounded fabulous to me. On reflection, I should have been instantly distrusting and suspicious of anything BofA does, but in a moment of blind faith and tremendous optimism about being able to avoid the bank, I used their app.

The first three or four checks went through without a single issue-- everything posted at midnight and was lovely. I was thrilled. The next check, though, had a problem.

On February 28th, I deposited a check for $1980 written on our businesses’ BofA corporate account into my BofA personal account. I then spent the next two weeks going about my business-- that is, until a few days ago. I got a letter from Bank of America telling me that the deposit of $1980 was incorrect and that $100 has been deducted from my account to fix it. “Bwah?” Thought I.That check definitely said “one thousand nine hundred and eighty dollars” and $1980 (go ahead, see for yourself-- that’s a blacked out version of BofA’s image). They even helpfully include an image of the check. . . yup, $1980. I’ll concede the hand writing’s sloppy, but it’s pretty obvious what it says. Also, the corporate account was debited for $1980, not the $1880 that was put into my personal account.

What they didn’t include, however, was a way to contact them to contest this-- no phone number, no website, no email, no physical address. So, I called customer service. It took an hour and ten minutes— and seven transfers before I got through to someone who could sort of help me. I say ‘sort of’ because she said the following:

[QUOTE= Bank of America Mobile Claims Representative]
"Oh, I definitely agree that it very clearly says NINE hundred, not eight hundred. I’m not sure where they would have even gotten that. Even if the numerical portion looked questionable- which I don’t think it does-- the written part very clearly says nine. And, LEGALLY, we are required to go off of the written part.

That said, I don’t think this is going to end well for you, unfortunately. I can put in a request for them to review and correct it, but I honestly doubt they will. Your best bet is just to write another check for the $100 difference and deposit it again.
[/QUOTE]

. . . are you fucking kidding me? Fucking seriously? Thankfully this happened to me and not some vendor we wrote a check to, but what in the actual fuck, Bank of America?!

Now, before anyone says it: I opened an account up at Schwab months ago and I’ve been migrating over slowly. Needless to say, this has given me the last kick in the pants I needed. Hell, we’re likely closing the corporate account, too. Yes, over one hundred dollars, but it’s the goddamned principle of the matter!

Now, rant with me, Dopers. Rant about your evil banks.

2

So basically, BoA says, get your job to pay for our mistake? Douche move.

3

Go in and talk to a branch manager. They have more authority to actually fix things, and the work flow and incentives are different when a live human is standing in front of you politely making her case. The guy on the phone is a bunch of states away, he knows he’ll never see or talk to you again, and all he can do is put in work orders for someone else to do.

4

I agree that BoA sucks, and that it shouldn’t have taken this much hassle to fix an obviously incorrect decision on their parts… But that handwriting, ouch!

5

More or less. “It’s only $100,” she said, “I mean, just write another check for it.” Oh golly, thanks, ma’am!

I was told that because this was a mobile deposit, they actually can’t do anything-- I have to go through their claims department’s mobile something or another.

In my defense, it’s not mine :slight_smile:

6

I too hate BoA, but for entirely different reasons. They were the mortgage lenders to some people who wanted to buy my previous house … by the time they were done putzing around everyone else involved with the sale was wishing the entire BoA mortgage department would be eaten by rabid weasels. I was rooting for them to go down in flames during the recent mortgage crisis. If only …

7

These things happen all the time, but usually the next is zero. In other words, yes, they misread the check as $1880, but then they debit your corporate account for $1880 also. There’s just no fucking way they can debit $1980 from the corporate account and credit only $1880 to your personal acct. The whole idea of double entry book-keeping, debits & credits prevents this. Double check that end. You also need to go into a branch and speak to a VP about this.

Your idea of moving the accounts is a good idea anyway, mind you.

8

BAC is up almost 4% today. Coincidence? :wink:

9

IT’S MY MOTHERFUCKING $100 THAT’S PROPPING THEM UP!!! :mad::mad::mad:
:smiley:

10

You should stop having 3 month olds write your checks. Problem solved.

This is what I see.

The numeral 9 could be a nine or an eight.

The written portion is barely legible.

“Om Famsano n.z hunLad Aid F (or E) lbAry DoiLcAJl Z”

Actually that’s not legible at all.

11

I first thought you meant Blood Alcohol Content.

12

Whoever wrote that check for you has such sloppy handwriting that it looks like a doctor did it…

13

I believe that having your enemies eaten by wolverines is the “in” thing this year.

14

Fuck BoA.

I once had a checking account with them, and for reasons I don’t need to go into, I ended up with a negative balance of about $350 that I couldn’t repay for quite some time (several months). I had lost my job and the account got overdrawn, triggering overdraft fees, negative balance penalties, etc. Now that stuff, whatever; it was my own doing, that stuff is all bank policy and their right (although the reason it got to -$350 was they kept approving debits while the account was already negative instead of just denying them, so they could keep hitting me with overdraft charges). That’s not my beef with them.

What pissed me off was how difficult they made it for me to settle that account. My car got totalled and the other driver’s insurance paid me out for it, to the tune of about $8000. They issued me a cashier’s check which I took to BoA and sat down with someone. I show them my check, request that they cash it, keep what I owed them, close the account, and issue me a check for the remainder.

“Sorry, can’t do that,” they said. Why? Because I don’t have an active account with them.

“Okay,” I replied, “then can I open a new account, deposit this check, pay off the old account, then close both accounts?”

“Sorry, can’t do that either.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have a negative account here already.”

Seriously? I’m trying to settle that account with you. You can see I have the money right here. I’m trying to give you money. Just take it and we can go our separate ways for fuck’s sake!

And of course, I can’t open an account at another bank until I settle my negative account with BoA.

So my only option was to take the check to a check-cashing store and get buttfucked for 10%. So my -$350 account ended up costing me over $1100.

Fuck BoA!

15

Not honey badgers? Huh, and here I thought that was the IT angry animal lately on the Internet o.o

16

Can this just be a “rant about BofA” thread? Here’s my story:

A few years ago when I was bankless (new city, no matching banks with my old city) I got a check that was drawn on a BofA business account. I figured the best place to go to cash it was a BofA branch. I expected some kind of service fee, but figured going to the bank on the check had to be better than a different bank or a scummy check-cashing service.

Well I went, asked plainly to just cash a check, and they wasted about ten minutes of my time making me wait for a customer “service” person to give me the hard sell on one of their checking accounts. The account was the same features I got out of my old bank but with the added benefit of a monthly fee. I politely said no and went back to actually cash the damn check I’d brought in.

I asked what the fee was to cash the check since I didn’t have an account and the teller told me this: “I don’t know. There’s no way to find out until I actually run it.” What the fuck!?

They got me for a flat $6, which I know isn’t anything, but I figured it was a valuable $6 lesson to stay the hell away from Bank of America.

Fuckers. Call your state AG?

17

That’s the next plan— she said to give them until Tuesday to get this straightened out (“thought it should be faster since I mean, both accounts are from our bank.”)

Oh! And after she told me there likely wouldn’t be a resolution and I started getting mad, she said, “Well, actually, the LIKELY thing to happen will be that they’ll give a $100 credit to your corporate account.” Ma’am, that doesn’t fix the issue at hand, now does it? I mean, it sort of does-- at least you didn’t steal $100 from BOTH of my accounts in that scenario.

18

Small note to add myself then if its BoA bashing!
When I withdrew 800 dollars (leaving at least 50 still in there) when I was just an 18 year old girl on her first job trying to get an apartment; they had the nerve to charge me for the withdraw and charge me a 2 dollar “paper” fee. Meaning I was -.50 cents. They claimed that made me over drawn (this was a savings account) and would charge me an additional 200 bucks. I closed my account and never went there again -_-

19

I agree for the text amount - that is jibberish. I do think that the numeric amount is 1980, but having jibberish text might give the bank wiggle room to say that they think it says one thousand eight hundred and eighty. Still wouldn’t explain 1980 debited from one and 1880 credited to another though.

20

According to the phone rep, she said that the “nine” on the written part has zero resemblance to the “eighty” a little farther down the line, so even if there was confusion, she had no idea how they could assume that was “eight” when it looks nothing like the “eighty.”