Bank Of America greedy ripoff scam artists! Lynchburg Virginia

Recently, I discovered an error in a bill payment service, CheckFree.com, which handles the "pay by check" options with Dominion power.

This started when I checked my balance as I usually do every night, since we live very close to our balance. I was absolutely shocked when I saw a payment to Dominion Virginia Power for $284.05 on 8/13/04. This payment was scheduled for 8/18/04 for $213.11, and I was about to change it to bump it back to the 20th, since I'd gotten an extension. Well, since it somehow went through early, for the wrong amount, of course I can't change this.

So I call Bank of America when I notice it sitting in Pending Transactions and beg them to stop it or return it. The response was "It is a pending ACH transaction, and we can't stop those, call back tomorrow once it has gone through, and we can file a dispute." I ask what will happen, and if it's even worth my time to pursue, since the bill was to be paid in a week anyway. I was told that the dispute department or whatever its called would credit the amount disputed until it was resolved.

Did this happen? Of course not. ACH transactions are hard to fix. Stop payment is unavailable on ACH transactions. Instant credit is not available because it was not a checkcard transaction. When asked why a customer service rep would tell me that it would be credited, the response was "That representative was mistaken, this transaction does not qualify for that courtesy" or some such nonsense.

This mess with BOA was all after I'd contacted the other two parties and been told it wasn't their fault and they're not going to do anything. Bank of America's official policy, as I have been told any time I have even the slightest problem: "It was not a Bank error, so we can't ...." whatever the request is. Heaven forbid they part with a penny when a customer's security has been compromised.

The only advice I was given was to take $25 and open another Bank of America account since it seems my accounts and whatnot have been compromised. No, we won't help you, but you can open another account and after all of your transactions have been processed in the old account, you can close that one and have the new one! Right.

This isn't the only problem I have with BOA, it's just the most recent and hideous. The one before that was charging me a $33 overdraft charge for a $0.26 overdraft, which was a comination of a transposition error, and a 1 cent difference in a planned paycheck.

These people really are horrible. I have YET to get any amount of customer service from these people at all when it comes to an actual problem.

Katherine
Altavista, Virginia
U.S.A.