Good 'Ole Bank of America-A Tough Love Story!

Bank of Bunk. Banks Behaving Badly. These were a couple of the titles I considered for today’s blog. In the end, I couldn’t quite describe how I feel about providing a tidy bailout for Bank of America by way of $140 in overdraft fees.

Everyone knows banks charge fees, right? Savings account fees, checking account fees, business account fees, and my personal favorite, Overdraft fees. I thought I had solved the problem by signing up for Bank of America’s free Low Balance Indicator email service. I gloated to myself, “I’ll never have another overdraft fee, hehehe.”

Determined never to venture into the land of overdraft ever again, I had listened to the well intentioned advice of a friendly bank rep and signed up for the bank to email me whenever my account dipped below a certain level- in my case $20.

On the last weekend in January, I had some money in my account (a miracle in itself) and went on a shopping binge to the tune of about $50. I wasn’t concerned about my big spending because I had more than sufficient funds in the bank to cover my splurges of a new book and some groceries. I passed the weekend idyllically, feeling good about life and myself.

On Monday, I went on another grocery store binge for $21.99. That night, I received the trusty Bank of America low balance email that my account had $15.12. Perfect. The system was working perfectly. On Tuesday still feeling rich as a King Solomon, I made a deposit for over $400. Luckily, I didn't spend anything that day. On Wednesday, I logged on to pay some bills and was surprised, no, shocked, no, appalled to see 4 overdraft fees for $35 each. They had been applied my four charges from Sat January 30, 2010.

Mad as hell, I called them, demanding to know why charges from Jan 30 were just posting on Feb 2. How could this have happened when I had been so careful? I had balanced my account. I did have enough money in the bank. I learned that Bank of America never processes electronic transactions over the weekend. Never has. It is a years old policy. Also that they process in order of largest amount to smallest on the first business day. Angrily, I told her that policy was “criminal” and was obviously designed to trip up consumers. She hung up.

I called back and was on hold for almost 15 minutes (Secretly, I think my beloved Bank of America has a way of identifying irate callers and forcing them to chill out on hold for as long as possible.)

The second rep must have been the child of a banker. She coolly stated and re-stated the rules verbatim, no weekend processing. At moments, she did seem to sympathize with me or maybe she just felt sorry for me. I let her know that I would blog this incident from the high heavens and demanded to speak with a supervisor.

He, too, spoke with the studied indifference of Mr. Banks himself. He informed me that online banking, email notifications, and even the ATM were "unreliable" sources of account information. Wow, and I thought those zombies from Mary Poppins were fiction! After 30 minutes of outrage, I reiterated my vow to let the world know of this injustice. I asked for his address to send a letter of complaint and he stated that the call center is in New Mexico (convenient), but he did give me the address for the resolution office, which is a p.o. box. in Florida.

After fuming for about 20 minutes, I had an epiphany and started writing…this.

Despite all of the bad behavior the banks have exhibited in the past two years-selling ordinary folks bad loans and then selling the loans behind the ordinary folks backs, accepting government money, and the like- I continued to defend banks vehemently stating, “What else can you expect from a bank? They are there to make money, right?”

Ouch, payback is a byotch named Steve and it hurts. But doesn’t love always hurt?