Please let me RANT! (about Bank of America)

[BlueJazz]

I know the readers of this post have their own problems but there's nobody else in the house I can bitch to.. :)

Every 3 months I get a Check ($471.23) from the bank of america for some CD's I have.

This morning (again..for the 10th time) the idiot cashier at bank of America tells me:
I can't cash this...you only have $405 dollars in your account.

ME: But it's a Bank of America check.
Cashier: I have to verify that it's good.
ME: You have to verify that the Bank of America has $471.23 ??????

Cashier: Well..how do I know it's good.

Me: Jesus Lady..I've been banking here for 12 years...I'm not a spy. You think I printed the check to screw the bank out of 471 stinking dollars so I can go to jail and ruin my life???..plus the fact that I've been cashing this same check for 6 years???

Me...Walking out...(Very softly to myself)...#$%@#^%$#!!!!

[ananda]

1. well

Screwy rules and tellers.

Well, bluejazz, did you get your money?

[BlueJazz]

5. No...I'm going to go to another branch and see a bank officer that...

..I know...sigh....

[Sherman A1]

2. isn't customer service

just wonderful!!! Couldn't arrange for direct deposit could you? It would save the headaches and the time involved with going to the bank in the first place?

[BlueJazz]

7. You know..I've thought about that but frankly, there are not enough..

..hassles in my life.

:rofl:

[KurtNYC]

3. Thank you

They did that kind of stuff to me all the time. 14-day holds on out of state checks! It is 2006 -- computers and all and they still want 14 days to hold my money? They know whether the check is good or not.

Thanks for reminding me why I will never be a BofA customer again.

[BlueJazz]

17. Yep...isn't it amazing that (If you or I had the Money) we could...

..wire $1,000,000.00 to a swiss bank and the account would be valid immediately??

[MadHound]

4. Tell them they are violating the law

If it is a check drawn on a BoA account, then the BoA has to make good on their own check when you present it. This is the law throughout the land.

[Armstead]

6. Join a credit union

I got out of a bank when they started adding a surcharge because I had less than a cewrtaion amount in my checking account.

I figured that when banks start charging you for not having money, it's time for a change.

Credit unions tend to be more customer friendly.

[AndyA]

8. I don't care for BOA much, either.

The branch I do business with on behalf of my employer is always under staffed. After standing in line for over 15 minutes, I usually go ask someone sitting at a desk with no customers why their ads on TV are so deceiving.

I have yet to be greeted at the door by an employee waiting to take care of my needs. After forcing the issue, the employee usually grabs some deposit slips and makes their way down the line writing receipts for people making straight deposits.

I blame this on the consolidation of the banking industry. All the small hometown banks have been eaten up and swallowed by these huge conglomerates, who care little for their customers. The banking industry needs to be broken up and overhauled, they're getting away with murder and our elected representatives are letting them do it, just to get campaign money from industry lobbyists. Nazis, all of them.

Your rant about BOA is well deserved, if you ask me.

[Sydnie]

20. I have been greeted at the door and it doesn't make it better

I was told to take a seat when I was trying to transfer some funds across the country to my sister's account. While the "manager" that could have handled this transaction for me continued to "greet" people who didn't want to be bothered in the first place, I sat for over an hour waiting for the other "manager" to be available.

They must have realized that their wait times were getting too long as they had set up a tv on the end of the desk where you fill out deposit slips and such, facing the chairs, with a DVD of the Best of the I Love Lucy Show! I kid you not. I was treated to two full episodes and part of another before they were available to help me. Meanwhile, the greeter stood around for long periods of time with nothing to do. It was amazing to watch.

[qanda]

9. My experiences with Bank of America have been overwhelmingly positive

I guess that could be comparatively speaking because our other bank is just awful.

[RebelOne]

15. I have to agree. No problem ever with Bank of America.

[Midlodemocrat]

18. You will LOVE this BoA story.

A couple of years ago, my brother sent me a check for $3,300 to help offset the cost of taking care of my father. The four of us split his bills every quarter.

Well, BoA deposits the check as $330,000 into my checking account. So, me, good citizen and non terraist, call them up and they instantly reverse it.

We go to CA for Thanksgiving and lo and behold, the corrected credit voucher, or whatever they call it comes back from my brother's bank saying that he didn't have $330,000 in his checking account, (like anyone keeps that kind of money in their checking account), so they deduct it AGAIN and lock up all my money.

Took 48hours for it to get resolved and in the meantime, I was bouncing checks all over the continental US.

:rofl:

[qanda]

19. That's a terrible story

If something like that had happened to me I would think Bank of America was pretty bad also.

[Midlodemocrat]

22. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of other choices that are much better.

And, frankly, my experience as a customer for the past 15 years has been pretty positive. Except for the $300,000 mistake. Which my friends are still laughing about.

You can't imagine the horror of logging on to your online banking and seeing that you are $300,000 in the red.

[high density]

33. I worked in a bank's check processing department

In a typical bank imaging setup, the amounts on at least 75% of the checks/deposit tickets/etc are read by computers. I forget what the error rate was, but it was probably at least 5%. The other 25% of the tickets are manually entered by lowly paid employees who are working strange shifts in the afternoon/evening/night. Unfortunately errors like what you saw are rather common, though the more typical thing is that zeros get left off (e.g. $3300.00 gets processed as $33.00) because of people writing dashes, the letter x, printing out checks in stupid fonts, and doing other dumb shit that the computer can't read.

The Federal Reserve was also pretty bad at processing checks. We would get checks that were encoded properly but processed incorrectly by the fed, something as drastic as a check for $50.00 being charged to us for $100,050. I dunno how the Fed ever balanced at night. Some of these errors will go away once image exchange under Check 21 is going strong.

[China_cat]

10. Gee, you mean you didn't get charged $4.50 for the privilege?

(A charge one Jacksonville bank made for a while if you used a live teller)

[sui generis]

11. that's where you say "I need to speak to the branch manager. Now!"

and follow up with "No ma'am, I'll wait here until he's off the phone. I've already done my time in line, and you are refusing to honor this check drawn on your institution by your institution. Is the manager available? Okay, then let me speak to your branch vice president."

That IS what your fees are for. Make them earn it.

[redirish28]

12. Don't feel bad. Banks are always trying some sort of Bull crap.

My wife's mother was out in Vegas. She had a savings and Checking account there as well as her father. Now this was a grown woman in her 30s and this bank would charge her a every time she got money out. One day she asked exactly what is the fee for..she figured that it was a transaction fee but wanted to make sure... The woman explained it wasn't a transaction fee but actually a penalty for taking out HER OWN money. The fee was in there to discourage people taking money out.


Well my wife's mother and father withdrew all their money which was about $8,000 dollars total that day and told the bank manager that if any sort of fee was charged she would sue... They didn't

That was in the 70's

[rman]

13. If she thinks the check might not be good, then why does she first say

the problem is you don't have enough in your account?

Doesn't make sense, sounds like reaching for reasons not to pay out the check.

[dsc]

38. because instead of cashing the check she is withdrawing your money

until the check is determined to be good.

[Cassandra]

14. I had a similar problem with Citibank...

and a Paine Webber check (I was depositing, not cashing). I left a message for the manager who handled that and asked him if he really thought I would risk going to jail for such a piddling amount of money; that if I was going to forge a check, I would have done it for way more (note: I don't forge checks). The money cleared the next day instead of three weeks later as I had been told.

[Midlodemocrat]

16. That's ridiculous. I am a BoA customer and I routinely deposit

or cash checks with more than I have available. Sometimes thousands more.

Any bank officer can override the teller's ridiculous behavior. If you have been a customer for 12 years, it should be a no-brainer that the check should get cashed.

Sorry for all your troubles with BoA. Banks generally suck.

[dogday]

21. I had BOA put a 14 day hold on a cashier's check from

another bank in the same town.. A Cashier's check from another bank should be as good as cash.... That is why it is in cashier form.... I closed my account and went elsewhere....

[deaniac21]

23. Instead of them sending a check chane to direct deposit. I

haven't been in a bank in 10 years.

[lindisfarne]

24. B of A is ridiculous about holding checks-even cashiers checks.

If they can take money out overnight to pay a check, I don't see why it takes them 10 days to verify a check (the real reason is they collect a lot of interest on this "held" money). You might switch to Washington Mutual if one is in your area; they are somewhat more reasonable (in one case, they cleared a $3,000 cashiers check for me immediately, despite my average checking balance being about $15 - I'd been a customer for 10 years though). By the way, B of A CD rates are ridiculously low. You might go to bankrate.com and look in their CD section for better rates.

[never_get_over_it]

25. Last year

I sold my house in Virginia after having moved to FL. I had to do paper work and have the papers notarized. I went to my BOA branch and asked them to notarize - they told me they could not notarize for me - because they were not doing the loan for the sale of the house. EXCUSE me I was selling the house no loan involved on my side. I had 15K in their stupid bank and they would not notarize for me - I had to go somewhere else and pay like nine bucks to get the papers notarized - I had NEVER in my life before paie to have anything notarized - always went to my bank and never before BOA did I have a problem. I was pretty pissed.

[KatyaR]

34. Did you know that there are banks that will refuse to exchange

your rolled coins or give you change for a large bill if you don't have an account with them?

A girlfriend of mine went to my bank (which is not her bank) at Christmas to buy VISA gift cards because they had an advertisement for them on their marquee. She stood in line almost an HOUR because they didn't have enough tellers, and then when she finally got to the head of the line she was told that she couldn't buy the cards, not even with cash, because she didn't have an account there.

Customer service, my ass. They've got us all over a barrel, and they don't give a shit how they treat their customers.

[Gormy Cuss]

41. Banks are moving away from notarizing outside documents.

I learned that a few years ago when none of my banks, large or small, would notarize a document even for a fee.

[Heddi]

26. I was SOOOO Happy to get rid of BOA as our bank

It all started about...8 years ago. The account was in my husband's name (we were still dating at the time) and I would go into the branch on payday and deposit all of my check into his account. No big deal--I was just depositing, not withdrawing.

THen BOA had this policy (this was long before internet banking) where you could only call the 800# to check your balance 2x's a month. If you called more than that, you were charged $3 or something per call.

hookay. We'll just go to the bank and get balances.

Oh no. See, you can only go into a branch 2x's per month. After that, you're charged $3 for each time you go into a branch to do ANY type of banking.

Ooookay. Let's just do it all through ATM.

OH no, see, even if you use a BOA ATM, you can only use the ATM 2x's per month. AFter that, you're charged $2 per transaction.

Okay. We thought "well, two in-bank transactions and 2 ATM transactions should take care of my check-depositing needs".

Oh no, see, you can use the ATM twice per month OR go to the teller twice per month. You can't do 4 transactions a month--just two--without being charged.

We sucked it up because there really weren't any other banks in our area at the time that were as convenient to where we lived/worked as BOA, and we also did alot of travelling and could always count on a BOA ATM during our travels.

However, about 3 years later, when we had about $20,000 in the bank (in cold, hard, cash that we had saved up to move to Seattle) we were SO happy to go into the bank and complain (again) about the ridiculous fees for using THEIR bank...I mean, you'd think they'd WANT you to use their bank but they were doing EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to KEEP you from using the bank.

THe manager gave us this hoo-haa runaround about this that and the other and was just generally rude. So we told him to go ahead and withdraw all the money out of our account and give it to us in either cash or cashier's check.

He looked at us--two 20-something scruffy "hippies" that probably smelled like pot smoke and no doubt thought to himself "yeah, all $15 of it, right". Well, he pulled up our account and saw that we had $22,000 + in the bank and his eyes POPPED out of his head. Then he saw that my husband had nearly $40,000 credit line on his Visa. OH, that's when the appologies started. THAT's when we were finally treated like PEOPLE. That's when "Oh, well, you know, we can waive those fees and this transaction won't have a charge blah blah blah. I think he would have paid our rent if we asked him to!

Needless to say, he finally relented and gave us a cashier's check and we took our money, moved to Seattle, and opened an account with the barely tolerable US Bank...which is a DREAM compared to BOA....

[LynneSin]

27. Sometimes that's not HQ problem but inexperienced tellers

or tellers that get anal retentive about the policy. Before I received direct deposit, my paychecks were mailed directly to me and I usually ended up getting them 1-2 days before my actual paydate.

Now not wanting to have a large payroll check lying around AND the fact that perhaps payday was on a weekend, I would usually take the check to the bank the next day and deposit the whole thing.

I did this for three years and nary a complaint about the date on the check since rarely I was using the check before it's date.

Then one day and oddly enough the day before I was leaving on vacation, there was a new girl and I was there to deposit the check because I was going to be out of the country for 10 days and then going straight to a 3 day meeting elsewhere. This was the first time the girl checked the date and refused to deposited it even though I wasn't trying to pull any money out on it and I was leaving the country the next morning.

I tried making a stink but even the manager (who did know me) comment that technically the date was for the next day and she was doing the right thing. SHe offered to hold the check for me and then deposit tomorrow, but I was a bit wary about that since that was my vacation money.

So I ended up driving 10 miles to the next branch and did the same thing and they didn't even blink an eye.

Talk to a manager about this policy and what happened. You'll probably be suprised that there was an oversight on what happened.

BTW, I refused to use that teller girl again. If I was the next person in line and she was the teller, I'd let the next person go ahead of me. And I was never once questioned again about the date thing

[grasswire]

28. I recall standing in line in a BofA once...

...and hearing a woman from India told that she could not open a bank account there with her $8,000 in cash because she had no previous banking history. Really.

[movie_girl99]

30. That's odd because my husband is from England

and when he came here 6 years ago with only a Passport for ID, the only place that would let him open up an account w/out a drivers license was B of A.

[grasswire]

31. does he have brown skin?

I assumed that had something to do with the denial I witnessed.

[movie_girl99]

36. good point. i never thought of it that way. n/t

[FooFootheSnoo]

29. bank of america sucks

[high density]

32. Open an account at another bank

If the tellers at my bank were that dumb, I would be finding another bank pronto.

[readmoreoften]

35. No.. Let ME rant about Bank of America!!!!!!

Gee should I rant about how a teller in NYC stole a $400 cash deposit from me?

Should I rant about how a "customer service agent" laughed at me and said "You ain't gettin' your money back. Why should we give YOU anything?" When I said, because I have the deposit slip to prove that the money was deposited. He said, "SO!!!"

Should I rant about how 2 weeks later they DEBITED a $5000 deposit from my account instead of CREDITING a $5000 check?

Should I rant about how when I called "customer service" they pretended to be able to access the checking account of the person who wrote the check and made up a cockamamie story about how it might be debited because the person who wrote me the check (a bank check!) didn't have enough money in their account!

Should I rant about closing out the account and having $680 in overdrafts charged when items rebilled after I closed it?

Should I rant about closing it AGAIN after paying the $680 that I defrauded and then getting a call from a collections agency about how I owe BoA $99 in overdrafts?

Should I rant about calling customer service again and having them explain to me that a few days after I closed my account, I was charged a monthly maintenance fee, and because my account was empty it overdrafted and then they had to reopen it and then other bills started rebilling--- and overdrafting?

Should I rant about how 1 and 1/2 years later I am still TRYING TO CLOSE THE DAMN ACCOUNT!!!!!!

DO NOT BANK THERE!

[Vinca]

37. If that happened to me, the family fortune would not remain at BOA. nt

[Rosemary2205]

39. The other big banks aren't any better

I've wandered around all the major banks in 4 different parts of the country. The problems are equal. My only truly good experience has been with credit unions.

[Chemical Bill]

40. Boycott all the big banks!

They are the money behind all that is wrong with America. Wall Street is not some abstraction, it's big banks using your money to screw you. Put your CDs and savings in small, local banks or credit unions.

Bill

[newportdadde]

42. The real crime is having CDs with BOA your getting screwed on interest!

If you have CDs with Bank of America your getting a lot worse then bad customer service your getting a terrible interest rate. Check out bankrate.com, when my wife and I were looking to put money into two CDs Bank of America was a joke compared to other banks.

[Ioo]

43. This is why I use smaller Crudit Unions, they fawn over you...

I walk into my bank, and I get treated like I have 100 million in the bank. Because they want to make sure you DON't go to a Bank of "America".

They have great CD rates, and so on...

I am not sure why people bank with the HUGE boys when there are a lot of great smaller banks...