Bank Of America Aka: Beelzebub They manipulate pending transactions and just outright steal. Nationwide

I am an American soldier, and I had to deal with B of A in a variety of contexts. None of which were "convenient" or remotely helpful. I noticed that every time I checked my balance before making purchases to confirm availability of funds, I had money in the account according to the ATM. But when I made my purchase and checked my balance, usually the next day, I was grossly overdrawn.

When I checked my account activity, it depicted numerous small transactions from earlier in the month that had been pending, sometimes for several weeks until my funds were whittled down enough that overdraft fees could be assessed for all of these tiny transactions that I had thought came through already. In short, they manipulate pending transactions in accordance with what they can take from overdrafts. When I got wise to what they were doing, I began watching my account, and there were times they would deduct upwards of $350 out of my check for these "overdraft" fees.

Obviously this left me short of money and the cycle would start all over again for the pay period. Other times they would just take out random amounts of money, sometimes up to $250 for what they called simply "debit" on my bank statement. When I confronted the bank manager about this, she couldn't explain what it was, so she went the extra mile and called the number on the back of my debit card. Literally, she dialed it straight from my card, then just handed me the phone.

The customer "service" rep that I subsequently spoke with couldn't explain either. It was pretty much stolen from me. In a completely seperate episode, I had a B of A credit card from when I was a civilian that they saw fit to raise my interest rate to 32% on. This raised my payment to about $250 a month. between this and my checking account, they were receiveing the lion's share of my income. Under the provisions of the Servicemember's Civil Relief Act, any debt incurred before military service cannot exceed an interest of 6% while on active duty. This is a law mind you, not a suggestion for financial companies.

B of A charged me 32% for about 2 years, feeding me lies such as "that only counts when you're deployed". Or my favorite: "we don't agknowlege the Civil Relief Act." I faxed and mailed copies of my orders to them many many times, and spoke with them on the phone on a daily basis and they refused to yield. Either the rep would just hang up on me, or just say they never received my orders. When I finally did get through to someone at B of A, they lowered my interest rate to 5.9% but refused to backpay the money they owed me in accordance with the SCRA. Then they sent me a letter a month later saying that according to their records, I was coming off of active duty and my interest rate would return to what it was previously.

I eventually went to the JAG lawyers and had them send a letter on my behalf. After lots of bad noise, JAG informed B of A, not so subtly, that they were no longer dealing directly with me, but the United States government and they will comply one way or the other. Thank God I'm in the Army, because I never would have fought those jackals off. It's rediculous that it took the Army to fight B of A. When I changed banks, I noticed that I had money again, it was like getting a raise. They took a lot of money from me in ways that can only be described as illegal, and they must be stopped. Thanks for supporting your troops, Bank of America.

Humblesoldier
Seoul
Korea, Republic of