Bank of America Taunts Armless Man, Demands Thumbprint for Check Cashing; Another Reason To Find a Real Bank

a story:

a couple of years ago after living in LA and banking at BofA for about 10 or 12 years I took a job in Canada. I left the account open at BofA because my line of work (film) requires usually returning to LA. I left a couple a hundred bucks in the account and thought no more of it.
several months later being short of cash I thought I would get a few bucks from the BofA account. the machine ate my card. I went home and called BofA to find out what was up.
this is what was up:
for the whole time I banked at BofA I had an automatic transfer of funds from checking to savings of 100.00 per week. I had completely forgotten about this. it turns out that for the entire time I had been in canada BofA had been attempting to transfer 100.00 per week from my now empty checking account to my now empty savings account and charging me an overdraft fee every time. oh yes, and they had been mailing overdraft notices to an old address in LA which I had not even done a forwarding address from.
the result was that not only had they emptied my checking account of all the money I left but with interest and penalties I owed BofA almost 6,000 bucks. my jaw literally hit the floor. they would not even discuss REDUCING the amount I owed them.
the conversation ended with me promising the nice lady that hell would freeze over before I gave them one red fucking cent.
ulitmately I ended up doing a bankruptcy almost entirely for the purpose of screwing BofA out of their 6,000 bucks.
I have never regretted that decision for one minute.
BofA, I hope you are reading this and btw fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

@Capt Howdy: It is a monstrously incompetent and wanton bank. This is how they make their money: crushing customers in an out of control system and making them pay for the abuse.

the woman I initially spoke with did seem absolutely gleeful at my situation.
I managed to get her name and later called back (after clearing barkruptcy) and left a message for her asking how she liked my solution.

@Capt Howdy: And really, this is no better reason for them to continue carrying the proud trademark of being “America’s Bank”. In Guatemala 20+ years ago they had a branch right next to the Banco del Ejercito, or Bank of the Army. Sometimes I’d stand on the corner, looking at them both thinking “choices, choices”. The tellers were better looking at el Ejercito.

@Capt Howdy: They are sadists. I have one banking correspondent working in a city that was HQ of a bank which BofA announced they were buying. Within days resumes began pouring into her dep’t (commercial banking) from folks that, no way in hell, were going to work for BofA. The one commercial account I have at BofA is going to a real bank within a week or two. Just got the paperwork back from the new (really old, old bank where I have two other accounts) and am thrilled to be able to get away from BofA before they do any more damage. The incompetence and snarling disregard is endemic to the bank’ entire s employee corps. I met one competent manager and she vanished after 2 years at a local branch. It’s not really a bank. It’s a fee-generation scheme masquerading as a bank.

for a few years now I have been using a small, one branch, home town bank near my permanent residence (I travel to work a lot). they know my name and most of them know my voice on the phone. I now live 700 miles from my bank but I do it all on line with direct deposit. I love it. I will never ever use a mega bank again.

TJ/ and apologies, because this post merits on-topic rants. But this is a story that is flying way under the radar, I think. All the pieces are in place for the G20 to be a total cluster, especially if the teabaggers catch wind of these socialeest attempts to take away our constitutional right to wear polar bear masks and carry weapons in the ‘burgh.

Imagine if you will a coming together of anarchists, Steel City vegans and Guns ‘n Bitterz birthers, all ranting about the global forces at play. Yep, total cluster.

I’ve been with the same local bank (if you count the S & L they absorbed in the 80s) since the Ford Administration, when I first opened an account at age 13 for my paychecks from yard cleaning and summer youth employment programs.

TD Bank took over Commerce, my old bank. I have no idea whether they’re any good, but once in a while I catch them charging inappropriate fees.

@blogenfreude:
They’re semi-douchey in Canada City. Not as hated as the others.

I had an acct at HSBC for seven years. They sent me a new card. I called them to cancel my current card and activate the new one, because it had some super secret fabulous chip that promised me ponies would come out of the ATM. THEY CLOSED MY ACCOUNT BY MISTAKE INSTEAD. When I called them to say wtf, they told me I had to come into the branch to reopen it. IN NEW YORK. EVEN THOUGH IT WAS THEIR OWN MISTAKE. I said to the bank manager, uh, can’t you see where my charges have come from for the last 5 years? “Yeah, but you gotta come in.” Click. I’m now with Wachovia, and they rape me on int’l charges, but when B washed his card and it came out looking like lasagna they sent him one immediately, and they are SO, SO NICE ON THE CUSTOMER SERVICE LINE. They’re always like, yes, we can do that, yes, yes, yes all the time. Nicest people ever, and totally help you all the time – and when they can’t, they feel SO BAD you wind up consoling them. I love Wachovia because of their customer service people. LOVE.

Thanks to an earlier rant informative posting and extended thread with advice from el chainsaw I quit BoA some time ago and and am happily banking with the credit union that is part of one of my unions (I have 3, and a professional guild) and I am very happy that I did. I have an IRA account still at BoA but I’ll try to move that to my credit union, too. I got rid of all credit cards apart from a VISA, again from the credit union. The bank itself is 100 miles away but I’m finding it only mildly inconvenient.

Another big difference is how much better the online service is at my credit union. Transferring funds and paying bills is so much easier than at the house of shite. Really the only reason we stayed at BoA as long as we did is that we had a great manager. When her husband got desperately ill she took a leave of absence to take care of him and they fired her.

@Benedick: My bank (USAA) is 1,600 miles away, and their mail/phone/online services are so great that it’s never been an issue. I strongly encourage anyone who’s eligible to sign up with them.

@blogenfreude: Commerce got politically prosecuted by the Bush admin because of Norcross. I looooved Commerce, its criminal the gubmint forced the sale.

@The Nabisco Quiver: Bring on cluster-fuck, nothing better than a good old fashioned Tibetan cluster-fuck to liven up the blood. Oh, wait, you speak metaphorically, damn.

I’m with one of the bigger banks and have never had a problem with them in the 10 years I’ve had an account with them (basically b/c my parents had the same bank and wanted to be able to transfer money electronically to me.)

I remember the hell both of them went through with B of A. My mom was super pissed when they bought Pacific Savings back in the late 80s and got the hell out as soon as she could.

BofA screwed Mr Cyn by holding the funds on the check he deposited without any notice (“it’s bank policy”) and then charging him $35 overdraft fees on the 7 or 8 $5-10 charges he made for cigarettes and beer before they applied the funds, which were immediately eaten up by the fees. When he tried to switch to my credit union, they wouldn’t open an account for him because of his poor track record of overdrafts with BofA. So he is stuck there for another year, during which hell be checking his online balance 5 times a day to make sure he has what he thinks he has. I get a knot in my stomach every time we get mail from them, fearing new charges for something.
@RomeGirl: How’s the switch to Wells Fargo going for you? Wachovia was based in Charlotte NC, and no doubt customer service was staffed with butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-their-mouths Southerners who have a lifetime’s training in pretending they care and making you fell bad for them when they screwed up.

This is the shit that Obama has to get rid of. It is all fucking fiction, a scheme to create tiers of creditworthiness and exact more fees. Then he should kick the execs and lobbyists of big banks to death. In the meantime, consider just opening a joint account with him at your credit union. Then he can call up Lewis and tell him where to stuff his criminal enterprise.

@Mistress Cynica: his poor track record of overdrafts with BofA. So he is stuck there for another year

@FlyingChainSaw: I was amazed at how deliberate it is, how the banks set up traps to create the opportunity to charge overdraft fees. I worked on a lawsuit involving EZPass, the electronic toll system which cut down on toll collection costs by privatizing toll collection to a contractorr who charges more than the old toll collectors used to cost. Christie Whitman’s crony capitalism, you see the point wasn’t to save money, it was to give the money to Chase, a rich bank, rather than give the money to a few thousand working families, the toll collectors. Anyway, I am reading through memos that passed back and forth between the State DOT and Chase as they set up the EZ-Pass system, and whoa, what did they do, did they set up a system under which you give EZ Pass a credit card number, and it automatically deducts your tolls each month? Oh, no, what they did instead was debit your credit card in advance each month, in an amount you set and if you don’t, in a default amount, and then, if you exceed the amount “on deposit,” they charged you a $35 overdraft fee. Mind you, there was absolutely no reason to set up a “deposit” payment system, they could have just debited the full amount in arrears instead of in advance, but no, this way, they got the use of the money in advance of it actually being due, and they could charge overdraft fees.

The State officials, Whitman’s cronies, were thrilled, because Chase set it up so that it was paid almost entirely in late fees! They estimated that they would collect half a billion, $500,000,000, in late fees alone, over the life of their contract with the state.

I was not permitted to use this information in the suit, because the partner in charge was currying favor with the politically powerful head of the highway authority, whom it would have embarrassed (the next year, he got the contract to do legal work for the authority, to the tune of several million a year). Noone in the press ever got close to this stuff, either.

Justice, ain’t it grand!

@Prommie: Whatever you see in the papers on politics or law is about 3 percent of what is actually going on, if that.

My primary research effort today is the appropriate bullet to purchase for loading one’s own ammo for elk, although it would appear to others that I am very engrossed in this long-running construction dispute. (Not billing for bullet research and stinque time, btw.) That and ordering some buckskin moccasins and moccasin boots from my cousin back home for Son of RML.

/ really looking fwd to the long weekend

@Prommie: likewow (at) netzero.net

@Prommie: Ah, Chase…

That’s what peeved me about how they’re scamming their balance-transfer customers: You know they calculated expected late payments (and consequent interest-hiking) when they made those 3% offers — it wasn’t just built on whatever the Prime Rate was. My guess is that more folks paid on time than Chase expected, and Something Had To Be Done.

I still belong to the same Air Force credit union I joined when I was 7 and my parents wanted to teach me how to save money. It’s actually better than MellBell’s USAA, but it is the most amazing credit union ever. I’ve called them at 4 am from Melbourne and at 2 am from a street corner in Philly, and they’ve done nothing but help me. They call and warn me when I might be getting close to an over draft – which as long as I have 5 bucks in the savings account, I won’t get dinged.

@Prommie: Uh, that’s horrifying. Can you cc me on your info to Chainsaws? ktxbai!

@FlyingChainSaw:

This is the shit that Obama has to get rid of.

Um, I’ll just hold my breath while I continue to work with the credit union I’ve been using for 20-odd years.

The thought of Obama reforming the banks!

…I’m sorry, I had to take a minute to wash myself because the cackling laughter turned to tears and then pee. FCS, you should have your own show on HBO!

Of course, my mortgage is held by Wells Fargo, which could probably compete for worst bank evah in the sweepstakes.