There are a lot of good things about today's $25 billion settlement between the five largest mortgage servicers, the Dept. of Justice and the attorneys general of 49 states. But in spite of the huge price tag on the deal — which could grow even larger if other lenders sign on — it's only the beginning of cleaning up the aftermath of housing market collapse. More »
We thought the whole zombie fad was over, but don't tell that to the folks at Bank of America who seem to be having some problems with deciding whether or not a customer is alive or dead. More »
More than a year after several of the nation's largest mortgage lenders temporarily suspended foreclosures after it was revealed that they had been using untrained, unqualified "robosigners" to process foreclosure documents, the U.S. Justice Dept. and the attorneys general of 49 states have announced a $25 billion settlement that will result in mortgage reductions to some homeowners. More »
Bank of America Plaza, the tallest building in Atlanta, went on the auction block today, in a perfect example of things that go around you know, coming around. How does that medicine taste now, Bank of America? Your landlords missed mortgage mortgage payments and now they have to sell. We're sure that must be soo hard. More »
Last night was the deadline for the attorneys general of each state to sign onto a massive settlement with the nation's five largest mortgage lenders, and more than 40 of the states opted to join in the pot-sharing. More »
UPDATE 4:40 p.m.: Kenneth says he's going to leave his $16 house without a fight, telling the Dallas Observer's "Unfair Park" blog: "If they are the true owners, then you're supposed to give it up anyway." More »
Mahdi went through the upsetting ordeal of having her Bank of America checking account compromised, which was bad enough until of course, BOA found a way to make the whole thing even worse. Shocker. More »
As we've previously reported, Bank of America's loan modification program (for want of a better phrase) is being sued by the state of Arizona. But the AZ Attorney General says the nation's second-largest bank is hindering his investigation by quietly negotiating settlements with underwater homeowners — or at least those who will pledge to keep their mouths shut about the bank. More »
Bank of America poses "a grave threat to U.S. financial stability," according to watchdog group Public Citizen, which has called for the bank to be broken up. More »
Because between the existing glut of daily deals websites is apparently not sufficient, and because we aren't already inundated with complaints about Bank of America, the nation's second-largest but most-reviled financial institution has decided to branch out into the online deals business with BankAmeriDeals. More »
Though Bank of America surely expected a certain amount of attrition when it announced it would begin charging a monthly fee for some customers to use their debit cards to make purchases, it probably didn't expect that it would see a full 20% increase in the number of customers saying "bye-bye" to BofA. More »
Nearly a half-decade after the U.S. housing market collapsed like something that collapses really badly, the country's five biggest mortgage providers — Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi and Ally — are oh-so-close to reaching a settlement with the states that could include overhauls to how they operate when it comes to the whole lending/servicing/foreclosing process. More »
Ever since it stupidly acquired Countrywide Financial — and all of that company's toxic home loans — the Bank of America name has become synonymous with rampant, and occasionally screwed-up, foreclosures. Now the tallest building in Atlanta is facing foreclosure — and it just happens to bear the BofA name. More »
Tom was in danger of foreclosure and losing his home, so when he was approved for a mortgage modification program by Bank of America, he was relieved. As long as he made his new lower monthly payments on time for three months, he was golden. But one slip of the fingers on his phone's keypad changed everything, and fast. More »
When Bank of America issued Jorge's credit card in 1998, for some reason that remains unclear, the card was issued in the name of "Jorge [Lastname] Sr." Jorge doesn't have a son named Jorge Junior, and there's no reason why the account should be set up that way, but Bank of America assured him that this wouldn't be a problem. And it wasn't. Until he needed an emergency cash advance, and couldn't prove to the unfamiliar branch's satisfaction that he hadn't, say, stolen his dad's credit card. More »
While a large majority of women in the U.S. choose to take their husband's last name when they get married, it's certainly not some unheard-of practice that should wreak havoc at a national bank. But Bank of America employees in Albany decided they could not possibly recognize a new bride as her husband's spouse since she hadn't changed her name to match his. More »
Next time your bank is being stubborn over closing on a mortgage loan, perhaps consider doing a little song and dance — it worked for one couple battling with Bank of America. Well, that and a really good credit rating of 798. More »
At the intersection where Foreclosure Ave. crosses Health Care Blvd. lives a California couple who had to choose between mortgage and the health insurance needed to cover the wife's late-stage amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Until recently, it looked like they would be forced to vacate the house they'd bought 15 years ago, but Bank of America has decided to delay the eviction until after the wife's death. More »
Nearly four years ago, we first reported on allegations that Countrywide Financial, the failed lender that was bought by Bank of America after it collapsed, had their system set up so that non-white loan applicants were steered toward subprime loans, even if they could have qualified for a standard mortgage. Well, the wheels of justice turn remarkably slowly in Washington, DC, but today the Justice Dept. finally announced a settlement with BofA for $335 million over these allegations. More »
For the third quarter in a row, the Treasury Dept. has released its report card detailing how the country's largest mortgage servicers are doing with processing loan modifications. And for the third consecutive quarter, both Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase will not receive incentive payments from the Treasury because the banks are doing such a craptastic job at complying. More »
There's a funny little thing about putting a "stop payment" order on a check that most banks don't tell you about until it's too late: They often only last six months and the only way to guarantee that check never gets deposited is to close the associated checking account. This is a lesson being learned the hard way by a Bank of America customer who saw her account drained of its last few dollars after an old landlord cashed a 16-month-old check. More »
Another day, another settlement for reigning Worst Company In America runner-up Bank of America. This time, BofA has agreed to pay $315 to plaintiffs in a class-action suit over mortgage-backed investments sold by Merrill Lynch, the once-great financial institution that BofA swooped in to save when it collapsed in 2008. More »
Even though Bank of America and a few others have — for now — ditched their plans to charge customers a monthly fee for making purchases with debit cards, the Justice Department has decided to look at the possible antitrust considerations surrounding the controversial proposals. More »
When Bank of America recently decided to scrap its plan to not charge its customers a $5/month fee for using debit cards to make purchase, the bank said it had listened to what its customers thought about the idea. But should consumers be grateful to BofA for not doing something they shouldn't have done in the first place? More »
A man in Greece has filed a lawsuit against Bank of America, alleging that the financial institution screwed up and gave his account — and his $59,000 — to another person with the same name. More »
UPDATE: As predicted, the obviously fake BofA page has been pulled down by Google, because why should anyone be able to have fun at the expense of Bank of America? More »
While Bank of America's now-abandoned plan to charge debit card users $5 a month has received a halogen spotlight recently, far less attention has been paid to how it collects fees off the unemployed. In some states, unemployment benefits are issued via Bank of America debit cards. States save money by not using paper checks, but the unemployed lose out from all the fees hiding in the cards. More »
Chris was one of the many in October who closed their bank accounts with Bank of America, and other similar big retail banks, in protest over planned fees for using their debit card. But last week she found it had been reopened for no apparent reason, with a 1 penny balance out of nowhere. More »
As it paid out $410 million to settle a class-action suit over reordering transactions to maximize overdraft fees and backed down after initiating a $5 monthly fee for debit card users, Bank of America has done some soul-searching. The bank says it's decided not to go ahead with a plan to let customers opt in to a $35 overdraft fee on debit purchases made with insufficient funds. More »
To settle a class-action suit over reordering transactions to maximize overdraft fees, Bank of America agreed to pay out $410 million months ago. A judge has now approved the settlement, and the bank has coughed up the money into an escrow account from which it will be distributed to customers who were part of the suit. Those who had a Bank of America debit card between January 2001 and May 24, 2011 will automatically receive a payment of at least 9 percent of the fees they paid. More »
Instead of charging customers a $5 monthly fee for using their debit cards, one credit union is actually paying its members to use their debit cards. In a direct jab against the big banks, First Community Federal Credit Union is running a promotion that lets members earn up to $5 a month for swiping their debit card. More »
In the month following the announcement of Bank of America's (subsequently scrapped) plan to charge a $5 fee to some of its debit card users, at least 650,000 Americans consumers have opened accounts at a credit union. According to some reports, that's 50,000 more than the number of new accounts opened in all of 2010. More »
Tomorrow is Bank Transfer Day. By this date, people all across America are shutting down their accounts at large, costly, name-brand banks and transferring their funds to new bank accounts at their local credit union or community bank. Here is an excellent video made in Portland that follows along with several different people as they close their bank accounts and give their reasons for doing so. One person wants to save money, another disagrees with the bank's foreclosure practices, a third is mad about the bailouts, and the last is a union withdrawing its funds to show solidarity with holding Wall Street accountable. More »
A family in Utah sold their home earlier this year and thought they had rid themselves of their Bank of America mortgage. That is, until they received a foreclosure notice several months later for a house they no longer owned — all over a $1 coding error. More »
While today's announcement that Bank of America is dropping its plan charge a monthly debit card fee, and that other big banks have similarly scrapped their fees, could be dubbed a victory for consumers, it's only a small triumph, and one that has people wondering what the banks will do next. More »
Imagine that you're working overseas when your home is destroyed by a hurricane. Sucks, right? But you keep paying the mortgage on the property because you hope to eventually rebuild. So why is Bank of America foreclosing? More »
Millions of Americans have lost their homes in the last few years and — as any reader of Consumerist knows — the banks who foreclosed on those properties have also made more than their fair share of errors. Thus, starting today, 14 of the country's largest mortgage servicers are contacting millions of foreclosed-upon former homeowners to offer them the opportunity to have their cases independently reviewed. More »
Given all the anger currently being directed toward a number of the bigger banks, it might be tempting to stroll into your local branch and walk out with all your money in a sack with a dollar sign on it. But if you want to switch your funds over to a new institution without running the risk of screwing up any automated payments of direct deposits, it will take a few steps. More »
As you may have heard, more than a few people around the country have been out and about in recent weeks in protest of — well, in protest of a lot of things. But what many of these people (and many of us who are sitting in our homes) share in common is that they're fed up with the super-sized banks and are looking for alternatives. This appears to have led a growing number of people to the front door of their local credit unions. More »
With reigning Worst Company In America runner-up Bank of America preparing to roll out monthly fees for some customers who use their debit cards to make purchases, a number of people are thinking it's prime time to end their relationship with BofA — and that's a perfect moment to capture on video. More »
Ralph knows that mysterious deposits in your bank account from unknown entities are probably not a good thing. They're much more likely to be harbingers of fraud than tiny, mysterious gifts. So he alerted his bank, Bank of America, that someone might be trying to steal from his account. The bank proceeded to do... not all that much, since no fraud had been committed yet. More »
Have you ever glared angrily at the ATM, knowing that you're going to be saddled with fees and wishing you could sue everyone involved? Well, it looks like more than one person has followed through on this idea. More »
With financial institutions like SunTrust and Bank of America implementing fees for using debit cards to make purchases — and a number of other banks doing regional tests on similar fees — a new survey says that nearly one out of three American consumers would leave their bank if it introduced such a fee. More »
This weekend, a few Bank of America protesters in Santa Cruz, CA, attempted to enter a local branch to close their accounts. Only problem was, according to a BofA employee, "you can't be a protester and a customer at the same time." More »
Bank of America's new $5 monthly fee for having a debit card is getting painted as a public enemy, but columnist Michael Hiltzik for the Los Angeles Times says we should be giving it a great big hug. More »
In advance of the upcoming Bank Transfer Day Consumerist reader Jeff and a friend decided to stand outside a San Diego branch of Bank of America to remind customers that they should consider a credit union. This didn't go over well with a man claiming to be a BofA employee, who threatened to have Jeff's credit union account cancelled if the protest continued. More »
Bank of America's infamous $5 monthly debit card fee hasn't quite caused enough backlash to make the bank Qwikster it away. But customers can cling to hope of the bank one day eliminating the fee, because at least an executive has spoken publicly about the hypothetical notion of getting rid of it. More »
We've covered a number of stories of homeowners who weren't behind on their mortgage payments but found themselves the subject of foreclosure because someone at the bank transposed a number or didn't pay attention to the documents they were robo-signing. But here's one about a Houston couple who find themselves facing foreclosure from Wells Fargo, all because someone never transferred the title. More »
Bank of America has taken a lot of flack over the bank's decision to levy a $5 monthly fee on debit card holders. Now the CEO is firing right back. More »
Oh, Bank of America. Just when we think your antics have finally reached a zenith, you go on and prove us wrong with something newly and truly despicable. Like say, attempt to stop a reporter from reporting. More »
Even though swipe fee reform resulted in a bank-friendly compromise, it still managed to halve the amount banks earn every time you pay for something with a debit card. And so the hunt to make up for that lost money continues, with Bank of America looking to charge a $5 monthly fee to some debit card users. More »
How many bank heist movies have involved a thief cooking up some elaborate plan just to get a few hours alone inside an empty bank? Well there's one Bank of America customer in Connecticut who wasn't too thrilled when he found himself in this situation, and even less thrilled when he was let out only to then allegedly be mocked by BofA staffers. And this is how we end up with the nation's largest bank being sued for false imprisonment. More »
Bank of America has decided to stop selling pizza. The bank, which operates 1,140 Pizza Hut branches through its NPC International division, has reportedly decided to sell off the business. BofA could get more than $800 million for the Pizza Hut stores. More »
Earlier today, the folks at Moody's Investors Service cut Bank of America's credit ratings after it came to the decision that, should the nation's largest bank fail, it would be less likely to receive bailout support from the federal government. More »
Protesters chanting, "Bank of America, bad for America" tried to dump ten plump black garbage bags of trash in a BofA branch in Malden, Massachusetts. The bags contained refuse collected from the yard of a house the bank foreclosed on and let fall into disrepair, becoming a blight in the neighborhood and threatening to drag down property values. More »
Last year, several of the country's largest mortgage servicers — Bank of America, GMAC/Ally, JPMorgan Chase, among others — were forced to hit the pause button on foreclosure procedures after it was revealed that many foreclosure documents were being rubber stamped by untrained, ill-informed "robo-signers." This delay caused a bottleneck of foreclosure-worthy properties waiting to be reviewed. But now it looks like those homes are starting to trickle out into what could be a flood in early 2012. More »
Many families who have just lost a loved one have had to deal with the unfortunate task of dealing with the debt left behind after death. One widowed woman is suing Bank of America Home Loan Servicing, saying they called her as many as 48 times a day demanding payment. More »
Ever since the housing bubble burst, we've run a number of stories about homeowners who had been told the only way they could qualify for a loan modification was to stop paying their mortgage for a few months, only to end up in foreclosure because the lender had no record of a modification application. This is not one of those stories, though the ending is the same. More »
Last week, ConsumerWorld.org claimed that anyone could access credit card account info for Chase and Bank of America customers armed only with the customer's phone number and the final four digits of their credit card. That's certainly alarming, so MSNBC tested it out. More »
The nation's largest bank is trying to get a wee bit smaller — at least in terms of payroll. A newly uncovered memo reveals that Bank of America plans to cut at least 3,500 jobs in the upcoming months, with the possibility that thousands of additional positions could also be eliminated. More »
It's been a quiet 2011 on the foreclosure front in New Jersey, as several banks froze seizure proceedings late last year following the revelation that foreclosure documents were being rubber-stamped by untrained "robo signers." But a judge in the Garden State has given the go-ahead for Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo to resume uncontested foreclosures. More »
When David tried to report some fraudulent activity on his debit card, Bank of America transferred his call to a 1-900 type phone line that specialized in feet-related activities. More »
After 18 months of trying to get a loan modification from Bank of America, the owner of a Seattle-area property that includes both her nursery business and her home, decided to get a little help from 10,000 of her friends, hoping that a hefty petition would help convince BofA to modify the mortgage. More »
Three years after breathing life into a drowned Countrywide Financial, Bank of America is probably wishing it had just let the lender sink. BofA has already lost $8.5 billion in one lawsuit, with others still pending that could more than double that amount. So what's the nation's largest bank to do? Maybe put Countrywide in bankruptcy. More »
Bank of America's CEO Brian Moynihan posted an email to the company's intranet telling the rank and file to keep their chins up amidst their sinking stock price and news that they would be sued by AIG for selling crap mortgages. More »
The couple who "foreclosed" on Bank of America got The Daily Show treatment last night. John Oliver caught up with the homeowners to find out how they showed up with repo men and sheriff's deputies at a Bank of America branch office and got the bank to pay them money they were owed. It all began when the bank tried to foreclose on them, even though they had no mortgage at all, and owned their home free and clear. More »
In a legal battle that could be dubbed an all-star edition of our Worst Company In America tournament, AIG intends to sue Bank of America to get back $10 billion it lost investing in toxic mortgages made by BofA and two of its most infamous acquisitions, Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. More »
We're willing to bet that Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan's office has two dartboards: one featuring the curiously orange face of former Countrywide head honcho Angelo Mozilo, whose company made countless loans to people it knew could never properly repay them; the other with the smirking face of Moynihan's predecessor Ken Lewis, who was stupid enough to think Countrywide was worth buying, a decision that continues to haunt the nation's largest bank. More »
Now here's one to reduce the oversupply in the housing market. As the reluctant owners of vast amounts of foreclosed and abandoned houses it can't sell, Bank of America is going to start bulldozing patches of them. More »
A group of homeowners in San Jose, CA, are so fed-up with the messy conditions at a bank-owned, abandoned home that they picked up the garbage themselves — and took it straight to Wells Fargo in protest. Unfortunately, it looks like they dumped their troubles in the wrong lobby. More »
As a wee baby consumer, Kodi's parents taught her that credit cards are terrible things that she should avoid. She did her best, avoiding credit cards, but wasn't able to stay away completely. Not because of any failure of her willpower, but because somehow Bank of America applied for and obtained a credit card on her behalf without her asking for it—or even knowing about it. More »
Last summer, GMAC was looking to foreclose on a property here in Brooklyn. Only problem was, it didn't have documentation proving that it actually owned the mortgage and the original lender, Ameriquest, couldn't help because it had gone the way of the dodo a few years earlier. So what's a mortgage servicer to do but fabricate the paperwork? More »
Earlier today, the Federal Trade Commission announced it is mailing out refund checks to the nearly half million American homeowners who were charged excessive fees on their mortgages by former Worst Company In America champ Countrywide Home Loans. More »
Bank of America had a rough second quarter, winding up $9.1 billion in the red, mostly caused by the $8.5 billion settlement it had to pay out to 22 investment groups over mucked up securities. The bank has paid out $12.7 billion in settlements this year. More »
With all the horror stories we read and write about Bank of America, it's easy to forget that there are BofA employees who understand the value of treating the customer as something other than livestock. More »
What makes this Bank of America $410 million class action settlement special is that it's over a basic consumer banking business practice. For years, banks have been processing your daily transactions in order from highest to lowest, rather than real-time. They say they're doing us a favor so that if we have a check bounce, it's the one for the babysitter and not the mortgage payment. But this class action suit claims that Bank of America did this to unjustly enrich itself. It's one of over 60 lawsuits against various banks for similar practices, and it could reshape the entire industry. More »
Like a watchful, overprotective parent, Bank of America sees Alexander's spending habits and disapproves of them. Whenever he makes a debit card purchase over $50, they put a hold on his card. "They told me that I should stop spending my money at an exuberant rate," he notes. What? More »
While Bank of America may have millions and millions of customers, one would think that having 10-digit account numbers would allow the bank to have billions of customers without duplicating a number. But this is BofA, who not only managed to have two customers with identical numbers for two years — depositing $30,000 of Social Security payments into the wrong account during that time — but who also shrugs it off by saying this "does happen occasionally." More »
When Bank of America swooped in to save swooning Merill Lynch and Countrywide in 2008, it achieved its goal of becoming the largest bank in the U.S. Three years on, those same acquisitions could be dragging BofA into a second-place position behind JPMorgan Chase. More »
An unemployed single mom in Orlando either managed to overdraft nearly $3 million from her accounts at Bank of America or the bank's computers went haywire and mistakenly debited each of her three accounts to the tune of around $900,000. Regardless, the woman says BofA is attempting to close those accounts, leaving her and her family in dire financial straits. More »
A Sacramento man nearly lost a house he paid for in cash when Bank Of America tried to sell it in a foreclosure auction. The mistake prevented the owner from renting out the house, but luckily the bank caught the error, caused by a data entry mistake, and called off the sale the day the house was scheduled to go up for auction. More »
Last week's $8.5 billion settlement agreement between Bank of America and 22 investment groups over tainted securities, is being challenged but not by BofA. Rather, one group of bondholders claim the bank got off too easy. More »
It's a lovely surprise to get in the mail from your bank, a letter telling you they're going to cut your mortgage balance in half while increasing your interest rate slightly. NYT reports that tens of thousands of option-arm mortgagors, homebuyers with a loan that had a low introductory interest rate that shot up after a set period, have been getting such letters from Chase and Bank of America over the past year. More »
Three years ago this week, the acquisition-hungry CEO of Bank Of America looked at the menu of failing financial institutions and came upon a bargain bit of junk food called Countrywide that he could gobble up for only a couple billion dollars in BofA stock. Surely this little trifle couldn't do any damage to his bank's ironclad insides, right? But since that first bite of Countrywide, the nation's largest bank has been praying at the porcelain god, barfing up billions in losses. More »
Bank of America is reportedly close to settling with investors burned by securities backed by mortgages from Countrywide Financial, which BofA acquired in 2008. The investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Blackrock Financial Management, have been twisting the bank's arm to get it to buy back ill-advised loans that defaulted during the subprime mortgage crisis. More »
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there have already been 216 credit card data breaches in 2011, including the Citi hack that resulted in $2.7 million of stolen funds. And while the number of breaches is down from 333 during the same period of time from last year, the security of our credit card information is still a big concern. More »
An eighty-two year old Tampa Bay man has lost everything he owns, including pictures of his dead wife, after a clean-out crew hired by Bank of America mistook his house for the foreclosure next door. More »
Nick became a customer of Bank of America since 2003, and hasn't had any major issues, so he has stuck with them. Until now. He works in Afghanistan, and needed to wire some money to his mother. No problem! He just needed to sign up for a free program that lets customers prove their identities before transferring huge sums of money. Free if you're in the United States and own a smartphone, that is - otherwise he would have to pay $20 for a physical card and wait for it to slowly meander through the military mail system. More »
A woman says she lost her home to Bank of America by following its advice to her that she skip mortgage payments. The woman had lived in the house for 25 years and began struggling with payments when she began battling breast cancer. When she asked the bank to help adjust her mortgage in 2009, she said the bank told her it couldn't help her because she was current with her payments. Once she allowed herself to miss three payments, as she said the bank advised her to do, BofA did lower her mortgage payments, only to later foreclose on her. More »
A family in California thought they'd purchased their dream home last summer, only to later find out that the property had been stolen and illegally sold to them. Now they're stuck making mortgage payments on a house they could be evicted from at any moment. More »
Lest you think it's just consumers having a difficult time getting information and assistance from Bank of America, a newly uncovered report states that BofA stymied a federal review of loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. More »
The banks of America are breaking new ground every day in the science of nickel-and-diming consumers with fees that start from the second you open an account to the moment you angrily close your account... only to move it to another bank with a different set of fees. But since there are so many ways in which financial institutions can bleed your account dry, the folks at CNN Money have come up with their list of the most annoying fees. More »
Yesterday, the Treasury Department released a scorecard of just how well (and poorly) the largest mortgage servicers are doing at meeting certain benchmarks of its Making Home Affordable program. Not surprisingly, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase — the three largest servicers — were called out for needing "substantial improvement," meaning that the banks will not receive millions of dollars in federal incentives until they get their acts together. More »
Oh, Bank of America... will you never cease to amuse/amaze/horrify us? Yet another computer glitch from this year's Worst Company in America runner-up had one Massachusetts homeowner scratching his head when he received a foreclosure notice from BofA warning him that his property would end up in foreclosure if he didn't immediately pay the amount of $0.00. More »
In 2007, a mother of three thought she would introduce her kids to the world of banking by having them each open up passbook savings accounts at the local Bank of America branch. But rather than learning how savings earn interest over the years, the kids found themselves schooled in the finer points of bank fees and the need to check your statement. More »
Olly, olly, oxen, free. A class action lawsuit against Bank of America claiming they were less than above board with their loan modification practices has been certified for national participation. More »
Three of the nation's biggest banks have teamed up to offer a new payment service that lets you transfer money from your bank account using only a cell phone number or email address. It's called clearXchange and it's being offered to Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo customers. An inkling of how it will work is revealed on the initiative's placeholder web page. More »
Just when you think the beleaguered bankers of the world can finally stop dealing with pesky investigations into their roles in the recent financial ugliness (some would call it a global economic meltdown), some Columbo-like snoop has to say, "Just one more thing" and open up all new cans of worms. The latest can-opener is New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who has reportedly begun a broad investigation of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. More »
CBS 13 has the story of a man who fell behind on his mortgage payments who was told by Bank of America that unless he sent them $4,175 he would lose his house that he had spent years putting work into. So he managed to put together the money and sent it in as a cashier's check. Then the bank lost his check. More »
Ever since Bank of America got greedy and gobbled up the greasy, calorie-filled platter that was Countrywide, it's been dealing with the indigestion caused by that company's oodles of toxic mortgages. Now, after losing the Worst Company In America title by less than 1% to BP, BofA has decided to do something more than pay lip service to its crappy state of affairs. The bank has announced it will open 28 new foreclosure prevention centers in 22 states between now and July. More »
Bank of America currently rejects debit card items that would make your balance go below zero, but Finextra reports they're going to test out a new system that sends you a text message when you're about to overdraft. The message will give you the option to let the transaction go through and incur an overdraft fee. More »
This year's Fortune 500 list is out, and while Walmart's $421 billion in revenue may have beaten out Exxon Mobil's paltry $354 billion, the oil giant beat out Big W where it matters most, profits. According to Fortune, the crude colossus made a whopping $30.4 billion in profits last year, nearly double what Walmart made and over $10.5 billion more than the next most profitable company on the list. More »
Now that the regulatory heat is off on overdrafts, Bank of America is jumping back in with overdraft-related fees. They are also increasing the monthly fee and changing their requirements for avoiding it. More »
Something is rotten in the state of Georgia! Or at least, it would seem that perhaps the state is in cahoots with Bank of America, which is acting like a brat and charging fees for anyone who dares to question what the deal is. More »
Have you ever heard of the Bank of America Customer Years program? Patricia hasn't, which is interesting, because she apparently consented to sign up for it. She saves all paperwork that her financial institutions send her, and can't find any trace of this program: or any valid reason why she would have signed up for it. More »
It's not all that interesting that Fifth Third Bank sent Jeff and his wife a letter encouraging them to refinance their mortgage: after all, they're Fifth Third customers, but their mortgage is with another bank. What is interesting is that they just took out the mortgage a few months ago, and they went with another bank because Fifth Third turned them down. More »
On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil rig leased by BP to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, caught fire following an explosion. The disaster left 11 men dead and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf. For the cost-cutting efforts that ultimately led to this catastrophe — along with others in Texas and Alaska that have killed more than a dozen more employees, injured hundreds and leaked toxic chemicals into the air and water — thousands of Consumerist voters have selected BP as the Worst Company In America. More »
Perhaps hoping to garner sympathy votes in our Worst Company in America contest, Bank of America today reported a 36% drop in profits for the first quarter. One of the big drags on business continues to be the toxic landfill of mortgages the bank gobbled up when it bought Countrywide Home Loans. Never trust a man who is completely orange, I always say. More »
In the same year that a film about a stammering British king won the Best Picture Oscar, another UK misfit, BP, now stands on the precipice of claiming another precious piece of Americana: The Golden Poo. But that's only if the oily Brits can wrestle the trophy out of the tenacious-but-incompetent grip of this nation's least-favorite native son, Bank of America. More »
Now that ATMs can gobble up your checks and not even bother with an envelope, many consumers have been joyfully feeding their money into them, especially those who, like Consumerist reader Frank P., have ebank accounts and thus would have to pay to deposit them with a teller. This very technology, gone awry, is the reason Frank says he's leaving BofA forever. More »
Here's a funny fee that I just found out about, even though it's been in place for at least a year. So, Federal regulation, Regulation D, prohibits more than six withdrawals per month from a savings account (ATM withdrawals don't count towards the 6). Most banks will just charge an "excess activity fee" if you go over that amount, but Bank of America charges a $3 fee if you have more than three withdrawals in a statement period. When Paul questioned why, customer service told him it was a "deterrent fee" to discourage him from hitting the Federal limit. "That's like giving me a speeding ticket for going 27.5 miles per hour as a deterrent so I don't go 55," he writes. The rep was unmoved by his analogy. More »
Those college kids in the NCAA may be back to hitting the books, but here in the WCIA octagon, competing companies are still hitting busy hitting each other below the belt en route to the title of Worst Company In America! More »
Two rounds of WCIA bloodshed are in the book and the beaten bodies of 24 multi-billion dollar companies are being hauled off to be burned on a pyre. But for those businesses left standing — let's call them the Elite 8 — the parade of pain marches on. More »
It's bad enough when someone finds a way to swipe your personal info to use for their own illegal purposes. But it's a special kind of jackass that has the temerity to send you a "Thank You" note after stealing your funds. More »
Round One is officially in the books, meaning it's time for this blood-soaked train to keep charging forward with our first Round Two match-up! More »
After eight days and 16 first round battles, the WCIA steel cage is littered with the bones of those companies not crappy enough to continue on in the tournament. But the thrill of victory is fleeting for the remaining combatants, all of whom must square off again if they hope of crowning themselves the Worst Company In America! More »
If there's one thing — aside from general ineptitude — that Bank of America's mortgage division has a surplus of, it's abandoned and foreclosed properties. Meanwhile, the city of Detroit has a lack of police officers living within city limits. Now the city will have 10 more houses for cops to live in and BofA will have 10 fewer buildings they can't unload. More »
Bank of America is apologizing after a frustrated realtor took her venting to YouTube in a dramatic recounting, reports the Charlotte Observer. The realtor was representing a seller who was selling house through short sale. The realtor found a buyer, the seller was happy, and supposedly, the bank was happy. A week later when the new homeowners were moving in, a "trash out" crew rolled up in a truck with tinted windows, sporting black tshirts with an image of a gun on the front and the word "agent" on their backs. They were there to throw everything in the house out and change the locks. More »
A homeowner has affixed their SUV with a creative anti-Bank of America collage and slogans on posterboard and parked it outside a BofA branch in Austin, Texas. Reader Jeff is at the SXSW festival and sent in this picture he snapped of the scene. The driver of the car apparently has a loan with Bank of America and is accusing them of "fraud" though I can't decipher from the medley of images what kind they had in mind. Nice pirate flag, though.
The Congressional Oversight Panel overseeing the TARP program has finally made public the data on exactly how much each of the various bailed-out banks received from the combined coffers of TARP, FDIC and the Federal Reserve. The winner: Citigroup's $476.2 billion. More »
For the sixth year in a row, we asked Consumerist readers to send us their nominations for our Worst Company In America tournament. And this year's response was the greatest by far. More »
Have you been unable to log in to your Bank of America online account? You're certainly not alone. The bank told Crain's that "some customers may experience slowness" and many customers aren't able to access the bank's Web site at all. More »
Laura (no, not me) is trying to track down a 37-year-old certificate of deposit that belonged to her grandparents. This is more difficult than it sounds, since their original bank was gobbled up by progressively larger and larger banks until it became part of...Bank of America. Laura's grandmother passed away recently, and it bothers her that this situation isn't resolved. She's determined to find this lost CD: even though Bank of America alternately claims that there are no records of it, or that her grandfather cashed it in after he died. More »
S. finds himself in a situation that's very common in this recession: he's unemployed, and his house was foreclosed on. The twist to his story is that he's considering applying for a job at the very bank that his mortgage was from. Does he have a chance? More »
Not being a Bank of America customer won't protect you from the company's formidable foreclosure machine, but if you are a customer, paying off your entire mortgage doesn't help, either. After an Illinois woman sent a check for more than $60,000 to pay off her mortgage, she learned that the company hadn't applied the money in her escrow account to the principal as they were supposed to, putting her in default. The company helpfully came after her to collect the money she supposedly owed and help her avoid foreclosure. More »
Bank Of America is really making a last-minute run to secure a high seed in the upcoming Worst Company In America tournament. As if there weren't enough evidence in its favor, here's the story of yet another customer who found herself trapped in the BofA maze, even though she has never had a mortgage — let alone a single account — with the bank. More »
If Bank of America has decided that dealing with you is "risky business," you're gonna get smacked with a $59 annual credit card fee starting in May. What makes a customer a potential target for the new fee? More »
Let's look back to the summer of 2008, when it was revealed that Angelo Mozilo, the curiously orange former CEO of Countrywide, had the company offer below-market "VIP" mortgages to certain politicians and other influence peddlers. Fast forward to the present, where Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has issued a subpoena to Bank of America, looking for related documents, e-mails and names. More »
Joseph is a longtime customer of Bank of America who has always had a fee-free banking experience. Then he noticed an unfamiliar $3 fee on his account called a "Check Image Service Fee." He hadn't heard anything about this, so he signed on customer service chat to find out what it was all about. It turns out to be a fee for having printed images of your canceled checks on a paper statement. Really, the fee is intended to encourage customers to stop receiving paper statements in the mail. More »
This curious 1960's ad for a Bank of America personal loan portrays needy borrowers as jerky junkies twitching for a fix. Thankfully, BofA has a storehouse of jars of "instant" money (that operate suspiciously like a cup of cappuccino) that is the balm for your frayed nerves. More »
Here's yet another example of just how confused things are at Bank of America these days. It's not just customers who can't get answers from the company's help line. Heck, even the bank's employees can't get through. More »
Bank of America, which earlier this month agreed to pay over $2.8 billion to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to settle claims about faulty mortgages, says it could spend another $10 billion to address outstanding claims. The company says the number is the "upper range" of its estimated housing bubble liabilities. More »
Bank of America is making an 11th-hour push for inclusion in the upcoming Worst Company In America tournament. Starting in February, folks with BofA mortgages who don't have BofA bank accounts will see their current 15-day grace period for making payments cut by 40%. More »
Andrew thought everything was fine with his Bank of America credit card account, save for the physical card itself, which was frayed and needed to be replaced. Then he called customer service and was told not only would he not receive a new card, but his account would be killed because of delinquency. More »
The first reaction to your bank instituting new fees on your "free checking" account in 2011 might be sheer, overwhelming panic, or maybe rage, indignation, or some combination thereof. But don't be afraid, fee-haters, there are ways around extra charges to your account. More »
The folks at Bank of America continue to feel the sting of all the bad mortgages they acquired when they adopted Countrywide in 2008. The bank has agreed to pay a total of over $2.8 billion to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to settle claims over questionable loans sold to the two government-sponsored enterprises. More »
In what will probably come as a surprise to no one, Consumerist readers have overwhelmingly selected the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as the biggest business debacle of 2010. More »
We asked for your input in nominating the biggest business screw-ups of the year and you responded. Now is your chance to vote for a loser from the final five nominees. More »
Think Bank of America is regretting the day it decided to salvage Countrywide? The acrid aftertaste of that acquisition just got a little worse with the news that Allstate Corp has sued BofA and 18 other defendants, alleging losses on more than $700 million of mortgage securities Allstate purchased from Countrywide. More »
Bank of America told this couple that their house would go into foreclosure on Christmas Eve, which came as something of an anti-Christmas Miracle to them considering they had never missed a single mortgage payment. More »
Marc has a problem with Bank of America's security. He called the bank and, using alarmingly little information, was able to get access to his wife's account. He's worried a thief would have been able to do the same. More »
Last week, the attorney general in Arizona filed suit against Bank of America, alleging that it hadn't made good on its promise to implement a functioning loan modification program. And while Christine doesn't live in Arizona, her story should give her state's attorney general reason to consider joining the legal fray. More »
Over at Domain Name Wire they noticed that starting on December 17th, someone has been going around buying up all the various permutations of BankofAmericaExecNameHereSucks.com sites. So sorry folks, you won't be able to start your new BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, or BrianTMoynihanBlows.com blog. You were going to use it host your lookbook of clever Lawrence, KS fashions, right? More »
A new batch of lawsuits are accusing banks of essentially burglarizing people's homes, reports the NYT. Before a foreclosure has been properly filed and processed, people behind on their payments have come home to find their locks changed and some or all of their possessions gone, taken by contractors working for the bank. More »
The attorney general for Arizona is none too pleased with Bank of America. Earlier today, he filed a lawsuit against BofA, alleging the bank misled customers about its home loan modifications. More »
Hilary shares the struggles her sister is undergoing to close on a house with a mortgage through Bank of America. The closing date has been delayed and the loan officials keep demanding more paperwork and explanations of bank transactions. More »
An identity thief robbed Scott's Bank of America account of $600. Adding to the pain, the bank spun its wheels on offering a refund, bludgeoning him with a $35 overdraft fee. More »
If you're an under-the-gun homeowner with a Bank of America mortgage and you've been keeping your fingers crossed that the bank's temporary suspension of foreclosures would continue indefinitely, you can uncross them. The bank announced today that it would resume foreclosures this month. More »
The SEC has charged Banc of America with fraud for rigging municipal bond sales with dummy bids, defrauding hospitals, schools, and other state-run organizations. The bank will pay $137 million to settle these charges. More »
Starting Feb. 8 2011, former WaMu account holders gobbled up by Chase will become the latest batch of customers to lose their free checking privileges. They will still get "free checks for life", but their "free" checking is about to become "fee" checking. More »
Why should politics get all the fun? WikiLeaks has promised to release a trove of information about a "major" bank in 2011. And based on a comment WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made to Computer World in 2009, folks are speculating that the next massive dump will be 5 gigs of data from a Bank of America executive's hard drive. The main question is how to present it. Well, slideshows and infographics and popup ads, obviously. More »
The Grim Reaper of the recession harvested Rich's door and screen company, leaving him with unpaid debts. Then the real nightmare began. Bank of America seized his elderly mother's life savings to pay off Rich's line of credit because she had added Rich's name to the account to protect the funds in case she became incapacitated. More »
If you've lost your remote and been unable to fast-forward through your DVRd shows — or heaven forbid you've had to watch something on live TV — in the last two months, you might have seen one of Bank of America's commercials touting its "$0 Liability Guarantee" for all its credit and debit cards. But is all this just window decoration on guarantees you already have? More »
Some criminal has joined with Bank of America to make John's life hell. Multiple fraud investigations have froze what little of John's money remains after overdraft fees have sucked it dry before BofA decided there were no errors or fraud on his account. Fed up, John has closed his account but wants his money back. More »
After Alexis's employer started making her and other workers taking mandatory furlough days, her income dropped so much that she had trouble making mortgage payments. So, like many others, she sought a loan mod. She followed all of Bank of America's instructions and thought she was on the path to getting a mod. Then BoA told her they were going to foreclose on her house. More »
Ten days after announcing a freeze to foreclosures in all 50 states, Bank of America announced on Monday that it was time to get back to the business of foreclosing on homes in 23 of those states. More »
As the news breaks that Angelo R. Mozilo, the curiously orange former CEO of Countrywide Financial, has agreed to pay millions of dollars in fines, we decided to take a walk down Countrywide's Memory Lane... which happens to be a street littered with abandoned and foreclosed houses. More »
In spite of their nickname, "robo-signers" — those hired to process the mountain of foreclosure documents during the recent recession — are flesh and blood human beings. And like many human beings, they also know very little about mortgages and foreclosures. More »
The Bank of America foreclosure freeze doesn't work out so well for those who were about to buy a foreclosed property. Andy finds himself spinning his wheels, having been zapped by the freeze ray just as he was about to close on a house. More »
Earlier today, when Bank of America said it was halting foreclosure sales in all 50 states, we decided to take a stroll down memory lane to revisit the wide array of foreclosure disasters that BofA has perpetrated on the homeowning public in just the year or so. More »
Hot on the heels of foreclosure and eviction freezes by GMAC/Ally, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, the Attorney General for the state of Texas has become the latest AG to request that loan servicing companies put a temporary halt to foreclosures. More »
Bank of America announced Friday that it was halting foreclosures in each and every case that hadn't gone to judgement. They became the third major bank to put the brakes on foreclosures after revelations that document processing firms were allegedly forging papers and signatures on a massive scale. More »
In a shift that can be rationalized as environmentally friendly, Bank of America is telling customers that they must agree to receive disclosures, notifications, statements and bills via e-mail if they want to continue using online banking. More »
Bank of America stole Jason's house from him, putting it through foreclosure even though he has no mortgage, with them or anyone, and he paid for it in cash. More »
It's one thing for a bank to nag customers who are late with credit card payments, but quite another to be rude about it and insist they'll have to cough up $75 late fees in addition to interest. More »
Chaz forgot about a check he wrote a month ago and when it got deposited this month, his Bank of America account went into the red. This also caused a transfer he started to get rejected, so he got two $35 overdraft charges. Armed with a "stuff happens" one-time fee refund card Bank of America gave him when he opened his student account, he went in and threw himself at their mercy. More »
Ah, innovation! Bank of America was just awarded a patent for a process that lets it make sure any teller at any branch will know not to give you a refund on a disputed overdraft fee. According to Techdirt, the idea is to prevent "refund shopping," where a customer might visit multiple branches hoping to find a sympathetic ear. More »
It hasn't even been a month since our last dead Bank of America customer story, but here the bank is at it again, refusing to let a woman's son close her checking account no matter what he does. Although she lived and banked in Tennessee and he lives in Pennsylvania, the latest nonsense has the bank demanding that he visit Texas in person to get a document notarized. More »
Everyone deals with death at some point, and everyone grieves differently. The major corporations our lives are intertwined with often don't want to let us go—or create unneeded problems for our survivors. Dan's father recently died, and he wrote up a comparison of his family's experiences with a variety of large companies. Out of Bank of America, American Express, Fidelity, AT&T Wireless, and Comcast, which companies do you think were the easiest to deal with under the circumstances? More »
Will was meticulous about avoiding the succubus that is overdraft protection in his Bank of America checking account. So you can imagine what happened to him: The bank automatically stuck him with the so-called protection thanks to an automatic function that stuck him with a $100 credit card cash advance, along with the accompanying finance charges. More »
BofA has been Fedexing Eli a loan mod opportunity once every two months for the past eight months. He has no intention of doing a refi, he's never been late on a payment and likes his 5/1 ARM and low interest late. Wonder how many other homeowners is BofA frittering away their bailout bucks on by FedExing junk mail. Meanwhile, the people who actually want loan mods are stuck in purgatory.
Even though they have made every payment in full and on time, Bank of America sent one couple a letter asking them for the deed to their house. More »
Seth tells Consumerist that when he tried to open an additional savings account with Bank of America, recently, the überbank put up some privacy roadblocks that he found intrusive and problematic. He's already a customer, but the bank insisted on verifying his identity when he applied for a new savings account online. One of the questions was about his sister's financial transactions, not his, which made him uncomfortable. More »
Dave can't get Bank of America to accept that his parents are gone, even after sending over the death certificates. He keeps telling the bank to take the house, because nobody in his family wants it and the mortgage is underwater. Bank of America keeps threatening his parents with letters about how behind they are on payments. Oh sure, everything about this story is funny on the surface, but not when Bank of America tries to extract money from a closed account you once shared with your dad, forcing it to re-open and siphon funds from your real accounts. More »
Paul tells Consumerist that he has a few problems. First, Expedia and Delta Airlines failed to correctly undo and reschedule a flight that his family took from Michigan to Florida. Second, his wife and children have gained the ability to bilocate. Or teleport. At least according to Delta and Expedia. Neither company seems fazed that the family flew the same route twice in a row both times. Sure, this trip might be physically possible, but it's also completely insane. More »
Last month we wrote about Bank of America's bid to coax customers to stop bothering tellers in person by offering free checking to those who stay away from branches and don't request paper statements. More »
Kevin's mom is the executor of a family friend's estate. Chase, the company that holds this family friend's mortgage somehow got hold of her phone number, and is now calling her incessantly, looking for.... the dead person? Chase reps claim that they're not allowed to speak with the executor of the estate, yet they keep calling back despite pleas to leave her alone. More »
At many banks once you stop payment on a specific check, it's dead forever. Bank of America has a different policy, though, the New York Times reports. Once you stop payment on a check, that's just the beginning of a lifetime ordeal. You'll have to renew your stoppage every six months, otherwise the check is fair game to be cashed or deposited once again. More »
My 3-year-old says "I don't have to go potty," takes a dramatic pause, then follows up with "But I do!" According to reader Alex, Bank of America echoes the delivery technique. BofA tells him it has received his e-bills. But it hasn't! More »
Bank of America introduced a new free checking account. The catch is you have to do all your banking without stepping foot inside a branch. If a teller has to deal with your nonsense in person or you request a paper statement, you're slapped with a $9 fee that month. More »
The Illinois AG filed a lawsuit this week against Countrywide, alleging that the now imploded mortgage lender steered blacks and Latinos into riskier subprime loans more often than whites, even when they qualified for safer mortgages. More »
The APR on Kevin's Wells Fargo credit card got jacked up from 9.6% to almost 23%. He owes $16,000. At 9.6, he could afford to make double the monthly payments, but now he's paying $300+ a month in finance charges alone. He's begged up and down the hierarchy, from the CEO to any exec or VP he could reach, to please reduce his APR so he can carry this debt. Nope. The numbers have spoken. The odds are calculated. Your risk has been assessed, and the verdict has been issued: you lose. More »
Reader M. has a sad and frightening cautionary tale for us all. He's unemployed, and his debit card was stolen. Now he's been accused of stealing more than $11,000 from himself and gambling it away at casinos. Bank of America has finished its investigation, and concluded that M. is responsible for the withdrawals, and now must pay back the $11,000 he didn't spend. At the 20% APR charged for cash advances, naturally. More »
Seems like in the last few years that big banks make embarrassing errors as often as criminals commit crimes at Taco Bell. So it was no small feat for the editors over at CNN Money to whittle it down to their list of 6 Biggest Banking Blunders of recent years... By the way, three of them involve Bank of America. More »
Just in case students don't slog through college with enough debt hanging over them, their colleges and universities have cut semi-secret deals with banks to share personal info meant to market credit to them afterward. The Huffington Post says Bank of America has such deals with 700 schools. More »
Tom says Bank of America closes his checking account and refunded only $60 of the $100 he had in the account, dinging him $40 for an "investigation fee." The bank hasn't given him a reason for the closure or the fee. More »
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Bank of America for taking $25 billion in federal TARP bailout money but intentionally failing to live up to its part of the bargain. The deal was that banks were supposed to use use the money to allow struggling homeowners to reduce their payments to affordable levels. "Bank of America came up with every excuse to defer the Kahlo family from a home loan modification, from stating they 'lost' their paperwork to saying they never approved the new terms of the mortgage agreement," said the plaintiff's attorney. "And we know from our investigation this isn't an isolated incident." Bank of America declined to comment.
Bank of America took a little kick in the shins today as Countrywide Financial Corp, the mortgage lender they acquired in 2008 as it suck into the quicksand, has agreed to a $624 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit accusing it of misleading investors about its lending practices. More »
"Darnit, where was that mortgage modification paper? I knew I put it somewhere. Oh well, let's just foreclose on these people's house. STAMP! Whoo, that was tough. Time to treat myself to a Diet Coke." That's an imaginative reenactment at what's going on inside the mortgage departments of the biggest banks in America: total disorganization, the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, a bureaucratic and document-strewn nightmare that can swallow up people's homes right from under them. More »
A shadowy figure emerges from even darker shadows to reveal the umber-colored world that is the Bank of America Collection department. It is a place so fell that it cannot be even spoken of directly and is instead referred to as "Customer Assistance." A cruel joke? Perhaps. "I never expected to be working for such an evil company. but they were the only ones hiring," says our tipster who has some tough-love advice for all you deadbeats out there so he doesn't have to call you up and demand your money. Because he will find you, and he will get you. More »
Cassie writes that she is trapped in an extra special circle of banking hell. No matter what she does, Bank of America is unable to close her checking account. Just when she thinks it may finally be dead, the bank charges inactivity fees to her account, which in turn re-activate the account, starting the process all over again. It's like the worst zombie movie ever. More »
Deb tells Consumerist that she did the proper thing after her divorce: months ago, she brought a copy of the divorce decree to her local Bank of America branch so they could remove her ex-husband from the account. The branch manager declared the situation taken care of, which is why Deb was horrified to learn last week that her ex's name had never been removed from the account, and he had transferred its contents—all of her money—into his own account. Yep, the branch manager made a mistake, and no one at BoA will admit that it was their mistake. More »
For five years, the people at BrandZ (you know they're in branding because of the "Z") have been evaluating customer opinion and awareness of various global brands, and then putting a dollar value on that evaluation for their annual Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report. Here are the top 10 brands on the BrandZ list. More »
When hitting the shops overseas, many credit cards will charge you additional international transaction fees. The savvy traveler needs to equip themselves with a credit card that charges low or no fees at all. Here's the current rates for the seven credit cards with the lowest international transaction fees: More »
Consumerist reader Frank recently wrote to Bank of America — copying us — on behalf of his girlfriend. Seems that BofA was conscientious enough to not only notify her of suspicious activity on her debit card, but also to credit her account for the fraudulent ATM withdrawals... Only to take it all back a week later. More »
Two of last year's WCIA Final Four return to square off as Bank of America, who thumped Time Warner Cable in the Elite 8, goes up against Ticketmaster, fresh off its victory over Anthem BCBS. More »
After three rounds of voting, 28 of the most despised companies in the U.S. have fallen, beaten and bloodied as they attempted to win the coveted title of Worst Company In America and the elegant golden poo trophy that goes along with it. Now, with just days left in the tournament, only four remain. More »
Consumerist reader Chris wrote in because Bank of America somehow decided that the best way to get money from his father's business was to simply take it from his parents' joint bank account. More »
Things are really starting to heat up. Bank of America has already breezed through match-ups with Citibank and Walmart, and now only Time Warner Cable with their "metered broadband" stands between the mortgage giant and the Final Four. More »
With over $408 billion in revenue, Walmart has regained the coveted top spot on the annual Fortune 500 list. The mega retailer had slipped to #2 behind Exxon Mobil on last year's list after two consecutive #1 years in 2007 and 2008. More »
A former BoA IT worker has agreed to plead guilty to installing malware on the bank's ATM machines in order to withdraw money whenever he felt like it, reports Wired. According to the plea agreement, his total take from the crime was between $200-400k. The bank won't disclose how he did it or what the malware was like, but earlier this month Visa announced that new malware has hit the U.S. that could not only capture customers' PINs and card data, but also give the criminal the ability to empty the machine of any cash that was in it. More »
Got a squirrely Bank of America issue that no amount of calling and pleading with customer service can resolve? Try kicking it up the poop pile to CEO Brian Moynihan, or one of his trusted slaves: More »
It's bad enough that banks have been negligent at implementing the government's loan modification program, but now a BoA mortgage loan officer is being sued for making extra money illegally on struggling homeowners. According to the Boston Globe, a new lawsuit claims the employee was demanding as much as $1,500 from each borrower before offering help foreclosure help, and routing the funds through his own company, Foreclosure Alternatives. The lawsuit also alleges that the man falsely represented himself as an attorney for BoA. More »
I hit the streets of New York with a video camera, asking taxi drivers, youths, store owners and chicks eating donuts, "What's the worst company in America?" Most people laughed and said, "Worst company?" — and then thought real hard and gave us some answers, answers which may shock you! This video has subtitles so you can watch it at work without anyone knowing. More »
Imagine that you're a homeowner who has managed to stay current on all your mortgage payments. And then you find out that the bank has not only foreclosed on your house, but they've also sold it at auction. That's exactly what happened to to a couple in Georgia. More »
Meet Matt. He's is the writer of the most reasonable, calm, thoughtful letter we've ever gotten from someone whose bank misplaced a check for $14,000. That bank is Bank of America, and they've lost a customer. Was it because their ATM ate the check? Not really. It was because they couldn't even bother to act concerned about it. Matt is ready for a bank that thinks $14,000 is important. More »
Consumerist reader Patrick wrote in to express his dismay with Bank of America. He had purchased two items online that wouldn't be shipping until a later date, but the authorizations placed on both items by the vendors caused him to overdraft (and be charged $35 overdraft fees) for his subsequent purchases. More »
Perhaps in a move to lose in the first round of Consumerist's Worst Company In America tournament, Bank of America announced today that it plans to offer around $3 billion in loan forgiveness to about 45,000 homeowners. More »
Bank of America is tops when it comes to having the most deadbeat customers. They are leading the pack in delinquent customers and charged off accounts. That ravenous acquisition strategy's not looking so hot now, eh? You can gorge, but eventually you have to pay the check. Here's how the major credit card companies stacked up Jan-Feb. More »
The Chicago Reporter is a publication that reports on race and poverty in Chicago. This issue's cover story is about mortgage modifications and the struggles that homeowners face when trying to access the Obama Administration's refinance program. Apparently, banks are so incompetent that it can be almost impossible to actually modify your mortgage. More »
To dig right into the meat of the story they've been tracking for over a year, NPR Planet Money reporters David Kestenbaum, Chana Joffe-Walt plunked $1000 down and bought up a securitized pack of Countrywide mortgages. At one point it was worth $75,000. Will the homeowners pay their mortgages and the reporters make their money back or will too many houses get sold at a loss and the asset implode? Follow along and find out.
Bank of America announced they will stop charging overdraft fees on debit card purchases. If you don't have enough money to buy the item, the transaction will be declined. More »
Bank of America finds itself the target of a new lawsuit filed by a woman in Pittsburgh who alleges that the bank not only improperly seized her home and damaged her other property, but also kept her parrot hostage even after they admitted making a mistake. More »
It's a real junkyard over there at Bank of America. We have yet another complaint about their online system being so jacked up that it won't even take your money. That's the last thing you want to happen when you're trying to pay your mortgage in these foreclosure-happy times. Jason has already escalated to the executive office, and they still suck. More »
Harry's got a problem: the Bank of America card he's had for years is paid off, but now it's been set to explode in Harry's wallet if he ever uses it again because the variable APR will jump to 29.99 percent. What's worse, his other card has been canceled. Now Harry doesn't know if he should start using the BofA card or back away quietly from it. More »
Here is some Countrywide executive customer service info. Even though Bank of America acquired Countrywide, some of this contact info is still valid. Former Countrywide customers who experiencing post-integration account difficulties have reported success using it. More »
When you are a major national bank, and your fees and policies compare unfavorably to those of a Mafia loan shark, you're probably in trouble. To celebrate the CARD Act going into effect on Monday, last night "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" gave their audience a quick overview of how credit cards work. ("Or maybe they'll just give you a rate hike of 30% for no reason at all. Why? F*** you, that's why!") Then correspondent Wyatt Cenac spoke with two people who have unique insights into how the American lending industry works: former Bank of America credit collections CSR, YouTube star, and Consumerist hero Jackie, and former Mafia loan shark Lou. More »
Be careful if you call Bank of America. You might wake the beast. April called BofA about a credit card that she hand't used in a while to see about getting her interest rate reduced. At first they told her she qualified for a new card with an APR 10 points lower, but then the bloodshot eye of the guardian cast its fell gaze upon her for the first time in years and something nasty happened... More »
A U.S. District Court Judge signed off on the $150 million settlement between Bank of America Corp. and the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations of making misleading statements during BofA's purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co., but he wasn't exactly happy about doing it. More »
Reader James writes in with a story we hear a lot lately. During the run up to the credit meltdown —Bank of America kept raising James' limit. He ran up a balance while caring for someone who eventually died — and now that he has paid off his debt, his limit has been cut. In the long run, however, he feels that he's better off without credit cards. More »
We regularly get letters from people who are upset that their bank "unilaterally" closed a credit account they hadn't used in years. They're always quite surprised that the bank can do this, and usually want to get their accounts back. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. You really do have to use your account occasionally to keep the bank from closing it. More »
This may come as a surprise to exactly no one, but it looks like most customers of big national banks are less likely to believe their banks are trustworthy, according to a new Forrester poll. Even less surprising: the same poll is done every year, and it's always the same big banks at the bottom of the list. A Forrester VP explains, "They are public institutions who are in business to make money for their shareholder and inevitably, that shows to customers." More »
How many different ways can you screw a man? Vince couldn't make his Bank of America mortgage, because they fired him after 21 years of service in the due diligence department. Even after he did a short sale 5 months ago, Bank of America still hasn't cleared it off their books. Now the illegal debt collection calls start. Is new CEO Brian Moynihan powerless to stop his own company from shaking down its own employees? Let's find out! More »
Andrew Cuomo has announced a lawsuit against Bank of America's former CEO Kenneth D. Lewis, its former CFO Joseph L. Price, and the company itself, for "duping shareholders and the federal government in order to complete a merger with Merrill Lynch." Uh oh! More »
Jim and Susan's mortgage is underwater by $160,000. They want to live up to their obligations, they want to keep their home, but they can't do it with a $370,000 mortgage on a house that's only worth $210,000. An attorney told them to send some "jingle mail," just pop the house keys in an envelope, mail it to the bank, and move away. What they really want is a modification so they can stay in their house, but Bank of America has been jerking them around and they don't have faith that this last hurdle will actually get them a mod. Isn't there a decision-making human at BofA that can finalize this deal for them?
V. and her parents are having a heck of a time cashing in the certificate of deposit they opened jointly. She says it just matured, but she's in Canada (she doesn't say where her parents are) and they gave power of attorney to another party. BofA won't deal at all with this other person, but what's worse, V. says they've taken her name off the account entirely. More »
An unemployed 40-year old mechanic is in the clink after he threatened to rob Bank of America as revenge for an erroneous service fee. He's in jail on $75,000 bond, which neither he or his 72-year old frequent surgery recipient mother can afford. The man he was arrested after he called a local news channel and told them to show up tomorrow as he was going to rob the bank. It was unclear how he planned on pulling off the heist. Maybe he was going to raise their APR without notice?
Bank of America's new CEO, Brian Moynihan, didn't bother to ask what his salary would be when he accepted the job late last year. In fact, he's been working for almost a month without knowing how much he's getting paid. Maybe he assumed he'd get a deal like predecessor Ken Lewis, who earned an annual salary of $1.5 million (plus bonus), and pocketed over $50 million to walk out the door at the end of last year. Well, Brian, here's why job coaches always tell you to ask about money upfront: Instead of $1.5 million, you're stuck with a meager $900,000 this year. And your bonus? Yeah, we'll get back to you on that. More »
Charlie and Maria Cardoso managed to do something few homeowners can: They own their vacation home in Florida outright, with no mortgage. But that didn't stop Bank of America from kicking out a tenant who was renting the house, tossing out the Cardosos' possessions, and, yes, foreclosing on the debt-free home. More »
Last October, Bank of America screwed up and seized a vacation home that didn't belong to them. They also changed the locks and shut off the power, leaving 75 pounds of salmon and halibut rotting for a week before it was discovered, writes Laura Elder of the Galveston Daily News.
The owner, Dr. Alan Schroit, and his wife discovered what had happened when they showed up on Halloween to prepare for a party they were going to host the next day. More »
Bank of America launched a new sub-site to help explain their banking penalties to fee-curious customers. I always feel safer when my website talks to me and pretends to be alive so Bank of America has also included "Janet," a walking talking video actor to help guide me through the process. I appreciate that she is wearing no belt. It sends the signal, "hey, we're keeping it cas." More »
Alex says Bank of America's efforts to protect him and his wife from fraud have stranded them in Salt Lake City without access to their accounts. He says the bank mixed up his and his wife's security info, leaving neither of them able to break down the security walls. He writes: More »
Responding quickly to Wednesday's post of Julia's complaint that Bank of America doubled her credit card interest rate, then refused to reset it despite promising it would, the bank has promised that it will indeed undouble the rate for good. Got all that? More »
Julia said Bank of America hiked her interest rate then placated her for months, promising it would eventually lower it to its previous level, only to turn around and say she was misinformed and would be stuck with the higher interest rate. More »
Sean has a warning for Consumerist readers with Bank of America credit cards. At the beginning of December, he tells us that he called the bank about a billing issue, which earned him an account review and a drastic reduction in his credit limit. More »
Update your EECB contact lists: Bank of America has named their new CEO. The new man in charge will be Brian T. Moynihan, who has been the president of president of Consumer and Small Business Banking since August. According to BusinessWeek, the board chose Moynihan after an external candidate dropped out of contention. More »
So, Bank of America is writing a big, fat, $45 billion check to the U.S. to pay back the money we handed the bank under the TARP program. Great news, right? Not so fast. Wall Street bad boy Henry Blodget points out that BofA is paying the money back while taking out ultra-low-interest loans from the government — loans that don't come with any of the restrictions bundled with TARP funds. More »
Here's a testimonial from a former Bank of America customer assistance employee. She was fired on Monday for offering repayment plans to too many customers, even those who "deserved" the 29.99% APR for making late payments. After hearing her story, you might conclude that this job was never a good fit for her skills. The next time you run up against a dead-sounding CSR, though, remember that people like Jackie don't make for profitable collections department employees, which is why they don't stick around for long.
—>Bank of America got so fee crazy last week that it applied a $10 overdraft fee to Christopher's account even though it wasn't overdrafted. I went back and forth with Christopher to try to figure out what BoA could have done to trigger this, but as you can see from the screen cap below, he only had two debits on the day of the event. More »
—>The huge salaries and bonuses paid to executives of banks and other firms that received government bailout funds have been the subject of a lot of taxpayer rage. The Obama administration listened, and will order pay cuts. More »
—>Bank of America has announced that it plans on "testing" annual fees on some of its reward cards starting next year. The odds are good you won't see this—a BoA spokeswoman says it will only be tested on 1 percent of accounts globally—but who knows? Maybe the BoA Fairy will smack you down. More »
—>Departing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis will get no 2009 pay or bonus. But won't this serve as a disincentive to future executives who are thinking about totally cocking up their company and bringing down the US economy? [WSJ] (Thanks to Snarkysnake!)More »
—>Do you hate Bank of America? Well take today's earnings report and wallow around in it like Ann-Margret in beans, becuse the bank has posted a loss of $1 billion before dividends to preferred shareholders—"When those dividend payments are included, the loss was $2.24 billion," reports the New York Times. More »
—>Outgoing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis looked like he had a pretty sweet deal, with the $53 million pension he's due to get when he walks. Hold on, says one union, in a letter to White House "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg: "The American people are counting on you to reform the reckless culture of Wall Street that allows bank executives to drive our economy into the ground and walk away with millions." More »
—>Sometimes, your dad's advice doesn't apply anymore. Companies have realized that giving a damn is too expensive. That's when it's time to kick ass, Consumerist style. Craig writes: More »
—>Ken Lewis is probably a little bummed out that he will no longer be the CEO of Bank of America — but how sad can he be with a $53 million pension? More »
—>Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis resigned yesterday after becoming a lightning rod for criticism after his controversial takeover of Merril Lynch. Even though BoA has appeared in our Worst Company in America contests each year, it's kind of sad because his office had a good record of solving our reader's problems they sent in to the executive office. Too bad that ethos couldn't have flowed downhill more. More »
—>Dalton Chiscolm has sued Bank of America and its board, and wants "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" in return for being subjected to what the judge describes as "inconsistent information from a 'Spanish womn' [sic]" as well as allegedly misrouted checks. In addition, Chiscolm wants another $200,164,000 in damages. We're not sure why that amount is separate, but who knows how a mind like Chiscolm's works? More »
—>While we don't recommend doing this on a large scale, one woman's YouTube debt revolt has succeeded. Ann MInch, a YouTube sensation and then-unemployed credit card rebel, has been offered a lower interest rate on her card. More »
—>Sen. Chris Dodd plans to introduce legislation that would require banks to get permission before allowing fee-generating overdrafts. Banks are on track to earn $38.5 billion in overdraft fees this year and, according to a study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, most banks offer the "service" automatically. Common "features" of the programs include not notifying customers when an overdraft is about to occur, not offering them a chance to cancel the transaction, and processing the transactions in ways designed to increase the number of fees. More »
—>Instead of waiting around for the CARD act, which restricts the ways they are allowed to squeeze money from customers, some banks are introducing simpler, CARD-compliant credit cards meant to be less confusing to consumers, and maybe make us all hate the credit card industry a little less. More »
—>New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is gathering information in order to file fraud charges against some BoA executives over what they knew, and what they hid, when they acquired Merrill Lynch & Co. a year ago. Earlier this week, his office subpoenaed 5 board members to find out "what they knew regarding the mounting losses and bonus payments at Merrill before the deal closed on Jan. 1 and what role they played in deciding whether to disclose that information to shareholders," according to the Associated Press. More »
—>Under government pressure — and by "pressure" we mean asking meekly in a very soft voice — companies that have received funding from the taxpayer-funded TARP program have outlined the controls they plan to put in place to limit "luxury expenditures." And — surprise! — the definition of "luxury" is very different for the corporate titans spending your money. While most big banks have put at least some limits on personal use of corporate jets, many seem to echo Bank of America's policies on official use, which state that that execs can use private planes for "safety and efficiency reasons," no advance approval required. More »
—>Judge Jed Rakoff, our favorite crusading curmudgeon of the court, is at it again. And once again, he's turned his ire to the backroom deal that Bank of America tried to cut with the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a complaint about outsize bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch before BofA took it over last year. The $33 million settlement, Rakoff wrote in his decision, "does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality." More »
—>Run people's interest rates up to over 25% and eventually one of them is going to snap. Meet Ann. She's has a balance of several thousand dollars on her Bank of America credit card. The bank has raised the interest on the card to 25.49% from 12.99% and she feels like there's only one thing she can do to take a stand against what she calls "usury." She's refusing to pay. She's also asking other consumers to "search their own souls" and consider joining her in a "debtor's revolt." More »
—>It's important to note that the Fair Credit Billing Act caps your liability at $50 for unauthorized credit card charges — but you have to notify the bank in a timely fashion that someone is using your card. (You should notify your bank in writing within 60 days of the first incorrect bill.) One Colorado man is finding out the hard way that not noticing an $11,000 charge to your account for months is really, really bad. More »
—>The Wall Street Journal says that Bank of America is interested in paying back a portion of the bailout money it received, with the goal of getting out from under the purview of the salary czar and reduce a "layer of federal involvement in its affairs." More »
—>Daniel thought his government savings bonds would help pay his tuition, wasn't sure whether they had matured after 15 years, and headed to his Bank of America branch to see if they had and cash them out. He said the bank gave him confusing advice that wound up in his cashing his bonds for less than full price. He writes: More »
—>Remember those banks that the federal government bailed out because they were "too big to fail?" Well...after mergers and bank takeovers (some encouraged by the government) those banks bailed out because they were "too big to fail" now are much bigger. JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America combined now control more than 20% of all bank deposits in the United States. More »
—>Cash-strapped art museums across the country are turning to an unlikely source for new exhibitions: Banks. According to a story in the New York Times, Bank of America, Chase, and a number of other global entities have put together traveling art exhibits and are offering them to museums across the country. More »
—>After stranding reader Shannon in Siberia with no functioning ATM card, Bank of America has reached out to her and made up for the situation. Sort of. A new card was immediately dispatched, but the corresponding PIN didn't show up until five days later. She did, however, receive a $100 Amazon gift card for her inconvenience. More »
—>Recently, the SEC settled with Bank of America over charges that the company mislead its investors about the $3.6 billion in bonuses paid by Merrill as the brokerage was being taken over. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, however, isn't buying it. He's refusing to approve the settlement until it can be shown that the $33 million Bank of America agreed to pay is adequate. That's nice, but he best part is that the judge is being hilariously sarcastic during the hearings. More »
—>Bank of America has cut off Shannon's debit card and says she has to get a new one. This would otherwise be a minor inconvenience except for the fact that Shannon is in Irkutsk, Russia on a 2-week Trans-Siberian trek. More »
—>Banks are set to make a record $38.5 billion in overdraft fees, says a new report in the Financial Times, and the bulk of the money is coming from those who can least afford to lose it. More »
—>Reader R Turner has a cautionary tale about Bank of America. He says a BofA error led to a late charge on his credit card account, then without his authorization the bank took out a cash advance to cover the payment. More »
—>New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's report on the bonus structures of the banking industry is out and — oh my— it's damning. The AG says that 3 banks, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP. Morgan Chase, paid out bonuses that " were substantially greater than the banks' net income." More »
—>If you're not a Bank of America customer, but visit one of their branches to cash a check, you'll need to be fingerprinted. No, check cashing is not a crime, and the bank is trying to protect itself against fraud, but some people still don't like the idea of giving up their prints for cash. More »
—>Earlier this week we wrote about how BoA told Jesse he could never have an account with them, but they wouldn't give a specific reason. A lot of readers and tipsters suggested ChexSystems was the culprit, so we asked Jesse if there was something in his credit past causing the problem. More »
—>After reading about how Jesse was banned for life from Bank of America for no clear reason, other readers wrote in with similarly bizarre BoA stories. Wayne was locked out of his new account after he opened it and charged a $75 overdraft fee. Chris was sent checks linked to a duplicate account and then charged penalties when the checks bounced. Edward's new account was closed but the CSR refused to tell him why, and he was charged a $60 "research fee" for the closing. When Edward went to a BoA branch to clear things up, he says the employee there told him, "That's why you don't open up accounts online." More »
—>Jesse tried to scam Bank of America. No, wait. He tried to open two accounts at once! No, that's not right either. He did something wrong, that's obvious. Isn't it? Hello? Please tell us what Jesse did wrong, Bank of America. Your lifetime banning confuses us. More »
—>Nathaniel got a money order to pay rent, and noticed Bank of America charged him twice for the transaction. He placed a call to customer service expecting a long, difficult battle, but was pleasantly surprised with the outcome: More »
—>Corey admits that he messed up. He was the one who didn't keep as close track of his transactions as he should have, and overdrafted his account. It was Bank of America's policies, however, that resulted in his being hit with fifteen overdraft fees at $35 each, for a total of $525 over the course of a weekend. Corey knew that he was in the wrong, but thought that these fees were unfair, and also more than he could afford. So what did he do? He used what he's learned from reading Consumerist to make his case to the people in charge. More »
—>Hector didn't know whether or not he was going to accept Bank of America's offer of a new credit card with a $3,500 limit, so the bank made his decision easy by issuing the card without his permission. When Hector discovered the surprise credit line, he called Bank of America with two requests: explain how they could open a new account without his consent, and keep the account open until he could figure out the new line's impact on his credit score. Of course, without a peep, Bank of America immediately canceled the new credit card, leaving Hector wondering what might happen to his credit score... More »
—>Bank of America messed up Andy's credit score by failing to send him credit card statements or giving him online access to an old account he only recently started using again. They also refused to work with him over the phone, telling him each time he called that they had no record of his previous conversations with customer service and therefore no reason to believe him. More »
—>The merger between Merrill Lynch and Bank of America was sold to us as a marriage made in heaven that would save the financial system. It wasn't, and it didn't. Now Frontline takes a closer look at the now-infamous debacle that cost tax payers billions — and CEO Ken Lewis his chairmanship. More »
—>Are you a Bank of America shareholder who is angry at CEO, (and former chairman of the board) Ken Lewis for going ahead with the Merrill Lynch deal? Well, you're just mean. It wasn't his fault. At least, that's what he's just testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. More »
Over the last 1-2 years Skype has gone from being a great alternative to the greedy phone companies, to being worse than AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Comcast combined. Skype's shady business practices are unlike anything I have experienced with ANY phone or cable company before. And I am saying this as someone who spends $150/year on Skype subscriptions and at least another $50-$75/year on additional Skype out credits. More »
—>The California Supreme Court has effectively reversed a 2004 San Francisco trial court decision that ordered BofA to pay $284.4 million in damages to more than 1.1 million customers. The California Supreme Court ruled that banks can tap Social Security benefits in bank accounts to cover bounced-check fees, a practice consumer advocates say is abusive because Federal law prohibits Social Security benefits from being seized to pay a debt. California law apparently doesn't consider overdraft fees to be debt, so the fee party will be allowed to rock on indefinitely. More »
—>Today, as expected, is a crappy day for former Countrywide CEO and co-founder Angelo "Orangey Orangerton" Mozilo. The SEC is suing Mr. Mozilo along with several of his colleagues, claiming that they profited from stock sales while hiding information from investors. More »
—>His extreme orangeness, former CEO and founder of Countrywide Home LoansAngelo Mozilo, is about to be slapped with civil fraud charges, according to the Wall Street Journal.More »
—>Ryan convinced Bank of America to drop their demand for $315 from nine overdraft fees by sending a well-crafted Executive Email Carpet Bomb. Ryan admitted that he was wrong to expect his checks to clear so quickly, but gently reminded the bank that nine overdraft fees was excessive, and explained that he would consider taking his business elsewhere if they thought this was an acceptable way to treat a long-time customer. Two days later, the fees were gone. More »
—>It may be a random confluence of sponsorship, but this poll from the front page of CNN.com last night is too funny not to share. Thanks to Douglas for sending it in. More »
—>Kenneth Lewis is probably having a pretty crappy day. The government just told him that he needs to find $33.9 billion in order to "withstand any worsening of the economic downturn." Anybody got any spare change? More »
—>Corbin had a very confusing experience with his Chase credit card. Because of a unexplained returned payment by his bank, his $30 automatic minimum payment led to $156 in late fees, overlimit fees, returned payment fees, and a fee charged, as far as I can tell, for being charged fees. More »
—>Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis has been sh*tcanned from the chairman position, but will remain CEO, says the NYT. Calls for Lewis to resign in shame and go cry alone with his money have been getting louder over the past few months. More »
—>Last year's champion VS a troubled car company that used your bailout money to buy an ad thanking you for your bailout money? Which one makes you punch the wall with rage? More »
—>New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is at it again. They've been investigating the circumstances that led to the merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch and the subsequent bonus payments to executives. In a letter to Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Cuomo quotes Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis as saying that former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsonthreatened him with removal from his position and mass firing of the board and senior management if he didn't allow the merger to go through. More »
—>The bailed-out banks have found a new way to annoy the government, according to the Congressional Oversight Panel, the body named by Congress to oversee the federal bailout. Chair of the committee and friend of the blog, Elizabeth Warren, is concerned that the same people who are subsidizing the banks are being targeted by abusive lending practices, says the Wall Street JournalMore »
—>Last week Bank of America decided to hike rates on millions of credit card customers. They said that if you carry a balance and have an interest rate below 10%, starting in June you're likely to see it spike into the double-digit category. BoA said it had to do it because these customers were "underpriced relative to market conditions." But according to at least one email, Bank of America might be underrepresenting the number of customers caught in its interest rate dragnet... More »
—>Bank of America doesn't think cashing checks drawn on its own accounts is a service that should be free to no-name people who come in off the streets—they want $6 for that privilege, one reader recently discovered. More »
—>Last year's Worst Company in America winner, Countrywide Home Loans, has sued AIG for not paying their claim on losses from failed real estate loans that they had insured with the company. More »
—>Reader Thomas was celebrating the birthday of his 1 year old when a letter arrived from his credit union. It was a notice informing him that he had overdrafted his account. By $546,020. Whoops. More »
—>Well, it looks like the whole Merrill Lynch bonus scandal may have a Scooby Doo ending — with a judge unmasking the executives by the end of next week. More »
Bank of America has launched a new cash-back reward program called "Add it Up," where money is deposited in your bank account when you shop from partner retailers. For example, they offer 1% cash back on every dollar spent at Newegg, and 5% for every dollar spent at CompUSA. [Dallas Morning News] More »
Nice perks if you can get them. A SEC filing from Bank of America reveals the goodies that come with being a banking exec. "Homeowners who can't relocate because they're stuck with mortgage payments on a home they can't sell would lust after even a pale imitation of the $2.6 million relocation deal Bank of America gave Barbara J. Desoer, who moved from North Carolina to California last summer to take over as president of Bank of America's Mortgage, Home Equity and Insurance Services business." [Consumer Reports] More »
—>New York Attorney General and House Financial Services Committee Chair Barney Frank have written a letter to Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis demanding the names of the nearly 700 executives who received bonuses in excess of one million dollars. More »
—>If you have any lines of credit and you use them to manage your financial flow, you should evaluate your personal money matrix so you're ready in case all of them get cut. They're cutting lines of credit even for rocket scientists like reader Rocky. That's right, he's an engineer in the aerospace industry, has never overdrawn, never been late, never incurred NSF charges, and has 3 Masters and 2 MBAs. Overnight, they cut his four lines of credit. Apparently his only crime was simply having them. He called multiple times and got nowhere, only to be told to talk to a credit counselor. A credit counselor? Bank of America, he doesn't have bad credit, he has no lines of credit because you just cut them all. His story, inside... More »
—>Virginia Hammerness, the 75-year-old heiress to A.P. Giannini's family fortune and a significant stockholder in Bank of America, the bank her grandfather founded in San Francisco in 1904, has harsh words for the people in charge. More »
—>You know how Merrill Lynch recently lost $15 billion? Remember how we're in a unbelievably huge global financial crisis that threatens to unravel the fabric of our economy? John Thain says that's no reason not to pay billions of dollars in bonuses. More »
—>Shares of banking stocks are dragging down the markets as investors become increasingly convinced that the banks will be nationalized, says Reuters. Investors are shunning the companies, worried that shareholders will be wiped out in a government takeover, and are fleeing to U.S. Government bonds and gold, which rose to above $1,000 an ounce. More »
CSR: Oh, that's really not the way to look at it. I know that if it were my mother, I'd pay it. That's why we're in the banking crisis we're in: banks having to write off defaulted loans. More »
—>Should bailout out banks be buying naming rights? Dennis Kucinich doesn't think so, and last week he urged the Treasury department to cancel one such deal between Citibank and the New York Mets. Now Bloomberg says that seven more bailed out banks are spending money on stadium rights. More »
—>Bank of America's stock slid to a 20 year low today as investors became increasingly convinced that the bank would be nationalized. Share tumbled 18% early today, before climbing back up in the afternoon, says CNNMoney. More »
—>The Service Employees International Union is running a campaign asking Bank of America customers to go into their local branch on Thursday and have a conversation with the teller about why their CEO, Ken Lewis, should be fired. One point that's sure to rile up the tellers: their annual pay is less than what the CEO of one of Bank of America's acquired companies spent on new drapes for his office. More »
—>Don't take it personally if you can't reach Bank of America to renegotiate your mortgage payments. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) tried calling the bank on behalf of two constituents, only to be "repeatedly put on hold for long stretches, disconnected, transferred to extensions that did not work, and ultimately switched to a recording which directed her to the bank's website." More »
—>It seems that Bank of America didn't really appreciate that unexpected $15.4 billion dollar 4th quarter loss by Merrill Lynch — because its former CEO, John Thain has been shown the door. More »
—>Bank of America has settled a class action lawsuit over its dirty overdraft tricks—things like approving transactions that generate overdraft fees, for example, or clearing transactions in high-to-low order to increase the number of overdrafts. If you're a former customer of BoA, Fleet, LaSalle Bank or United Trust Company, you can claim your part of the settlement fund. More »
—>Bank of America is now on Twitter, user "BofA_help." They have a pretty boy named David Knapp who is here to solve your problems and answer your questions about Bank of America. He seems to be both handling inbound requests and scanning for people on Twitter with BofA problems and reaching out to them. Certainly faster than sending Ken Lewis a letter. (Thanks to Brandon Savage!)More »
—>For years personal finance experts have been telling consumers to watch out — that there was "no such thing" as a "fixed rate" credit card — the bank can raise your interest rate whenever it wants as long as it gives you a little notice. You don't have to miss a payment. You don't have to do anything "wrong." Now some consumers are learning the hard way. More »
—>Here's a suggestion for all of you who bank at Bank of America. If the bank makes you angry, do not try to get revenge by calling 911 and reporting a fake robbery in progress. More »
—>A study by the Associated Press says that executives at bailed out banks got $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits — including cars, personal use of company jets, and country club memberships. More »
Bank of America has announced that it will lay off 30,000-35,000 people as a result of its merger with Merrill Lynch and the economic downturn. [MarketWatch] (Thanks, Dariush!) More »
The sit-in has ended in Chicago, as Bank of America, union leaders and Republic Windows & Doors have reached an agreement that will give each employee eight weeks' salary, all accrued vacation pay and two months' paid health care. [AP] More »
—>After activists took them on a field trip, Bank of America has pledged to phase out lending money to companies that mine coal by exploding off the tops of pretty mountains. Well, they explode ugly mountains too, but you get the point. [Switchboard, from NRDC] (Thanks to John!)More »
—>Circuit City has secured a loan from Bank of America that will pay for its operating expenses until it emerges from bankruptcy next year, says Bloomberg. This financing gives CC a new lease on life — Yes, we may yet see the bankrupt retailer rise from the ashes to continue its proud tradition of ignoring customers who are standing at the register. More »
—>Inside, email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses for over 100 different companies to inject your customer service complaints into their corporate executive offices, and get it well on the way to success. More »
—>Concerned about a recent incident in which his wife's social security number may have been exposed (by a Bank of America employee, but that's another story), Christian wants to know if you can change your social security number. In special circumstances, yes, the Social Security Administration will change your number. You need to show proof that 1) you've suffered harm from someone misusing your ss# and 2) you've made all reasonable efforts to otherwise solve the problem i.e. credit report freezes, closing accounts and changing account numbers, etc. If both of these apply, then you can simply visit your local SSA office, call, or visit www.ssa.gov/reach.htm. More »
—>The NES collection agency is coming after Nancy for a debt on an account number she's never owned. She's trying to beseech BoA billing for a resolution and to fix her credit history. That may be completely the wrong way to go about it. Here's her story: More »
—>Countrywide either doesn't know, or doesn't care that reader Graham has a fixed rate mortgage, because they keep sending him "notices" that his mortgage is about to "adjust." More »
—>Is the new financial capital of our country located in Charlotte, NC? 60 Minutes traveled down south to talk to CEO Ken Lewis about his bank, its recent purchase of Merrill Lynch, whether or not the bank bailout is "socialism" and the economic crisis in general. More »
—>Luisa accidentally overdrafted her checking account with Bank of America, but found that no matter how much money she put in — it was being eaten up by the fee monster that lurks at the bottom of her account. It has big yellow teeth and glowing eyes and only the CEO can control it... Rrraaawwwrrrr........ More »
—>With stories like this,this, and this, it's not hard to imagine why someone might need to kick their Bank of America problem all the way to the top of the dung heap . Here's some executive contact phone numbers: More »
—>We received a tip today that Bank of America supposedly plans to close nearly all of its customers' credit cards on October 1st, but the only source we can find for this rumor is a single post at iReport.com, CNN's public journalism free-for-all. Everything else online that mentions this is traced back to that one short post. So, until we find out more, we're going to say this one is bunk—and a great example of how wild rumors can pop up during desperate times. (Thanks to Joseph!)More »
—>CNN has an interview with two former credit card bankers who are admitting that their job was to get consumers to max out their credit cards and take on as much debt as possible, regardless of the customer's ability to afford it. They both worked for MBNA at their "sprawling consumer call center in Belfast, Maine." The bankers say that they were told to aggressively push cash advances, and were trained to convince consumers that they needed the maximum amount of debt at the highest interest rate. More »
Bank Of America's site has been down for several hours today. Coincidence? Related to its purchase of Merill Lynch? Outcome of market turmoil? Uncertain, but it is certain that BoA customers can't do any online banking right now. UPDATE: It's back up, but so slow as to make it practically nonfuctional. [cNet] More »
Washington Mutual's new CEO's disclosure of further writedowns and setting aside of capital calmed investors and stemmed the massive selloff of its stock
This appears to be a higher-level BoA credit card services number where a real person picks up in just a few rings and is actually competent and help you out with your requests: 800-792-9008 More »
—>What do you think of Bank of America's "Keep The Change" program? How it works is every purchase you make with your BoA debit card you make gets rounded up to the next dollar. The difference between that and the actual price gets moved from your checking to your savings account. The idea is to help people save. Good idea, but there's some potential downsides I can see: More »
—>Many of you know that if you're late on your credit card bill payments they can raise your rates as high as 29.99%, but that's just for scalawags, right? Nope. JLP at All Financial Matter's brother was late twice on his Bank of America bill, once by three days, and once by one day. That was enough to make Bank of America say, OMG, this guy is way too risky and we need to penalize him and send his rates as high as they can legally go! More »
—>At Bank of America, your accounts are Buddhist. As in, undergoing "eternal return," where accounts that have been closed and passed on will reemerge, rejuvenated, reopened, even if you closed them long, long, ago. Reader Chip writes: More »
—>JD Power and Associates ranked American Express at the top of their 2008 Credit Card Satisfaction Study. Customers gave the company high marks in interaction, billing and payment processes, reward programs, fees and rates, and benefits and services, with the first three factors standing out in particular. Capital One and HSBC, which target revolvers with lower credit scores, received the worst marks. Oddly, Discover got second place. People must really like their two-cycle billing (see "Two-Cycle Billing And Why It's Evil"). Full rankings inside... More »
—>A Bank of America customer got a nasty surprise after withdrawing cash to pay her employees — a dye pack exploded in her car. When she went back to the bank to complain she says she didn't even get an apology. More »
—>Someone ring a bell because Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has just sued Countrywide (and, of course, Bank of America) for deceptive lending practices. They're seeking damages of $100,000 for each violation, as well as "up to $5,000 per violation of state consumer protection laws, disgorgement of all ill-gotten gains and an order compelling the company to cease its illegal practices." More »
—>Duhn duhn da duhn! Envelope please... yes, America has voted and... the Worst Company in America award goes to.... Countrywide Home Loans (now owned by Bank of America)! The final vote was... More »
—>Bank of America twiddled their thumbs as an identity thief withdrew over $40,000 from Chris Hooley's account over five transactions in a single day. Chris canceled his Bank of America debit card immediately after he lost his wallet, which should have put a big red flag in Bank of America's system to stop them from handing over tens of thousands of dollars to a stranger. Apparently it didn't! More »
—>Banks don't always own the homes they're trying to repossess, a crucial oversight that residents facing foreclosure can exploit to stay in their homes—though not without effort. Mamie Ruth Palmer successfully sued the Bank of New York after the bank tried to foreclose her home without possessing the note securing the property. After six years in court, the bank agreed to slash her outstanding mortgage in half and waive $12,000 in foreclosure fees so she could keep her home. More »
—>Bank of America has been strolling across college campuses, handing out budget-propping fees to alumni associations in exchange for agreements to provide unrivaled access to a trusting and loyal customer base. The perverse agreements encourage universities to earn kickbacks by convincing their already indebted students to use school-branded credit cards to take on even more debt. More »
—>Remember our reader who tried to use his Bank of America debit card on a parking meter and was charged a $10 cash advance fee? One of our commenters did a little investigation on our story and got two conflicting responses from Bank of America. More »
—>Jasper got a notice in the mail about marketing from Bank of America, so he called them up to opt-out. After agreeing to stop spamming him, the Bank of America CSR launched into a sales pitch for their "credit protection" services... More »
—>Here are 18 working Bank of America executive/employee email addresses. A Consumerist reader launched a EECB (executive email carpet bomb) that got his overdraft fees refunded; these were the ones that didn't bounce back, plus some more we found recently. More »
Now that Countrywide has been acquired, Florida wants some of that Bank of America money! More »
ATTENTION: Bank of America is currently in the process of purchasing Countrywide, but the transaction is not yet complete. For the purposes of this contest we ask that you evaluate their track record with consumers separately. Thank you.More »
—>Countywide CEO Angelo Mozilo thinks his company being treated unfairly by the media according to a article in BusinessWeek. At the Countrywide annual shareholders meeting, Mr. Mozilo said: More »
—>Avi Oslick is obviously a fan of the movie Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," Avi Oslick told NBC 10 in Philadelphia. Rather than going to his window and yelling, Avi has placed a huge banner on the side of his house telling the world how he feels about Bank of America. More »
—>Reader Gary used his Bank of America credit card to pay $2 on a parking meter in Washington, DC. Bank of America treated it as a cash advance and slapped him with a $10 fee, as well as a higher APR. When Gary called to complain, he learned that it wasn't an error: Bank of America has started treating payments to parking meters as cash advances and may even treat all payments to government entities as cash advances. More »
The bracket has been updated as we prepare for Round 4 of our Worst Company In America contest. See the full-sized graphic, suitable for framing or forming the basis of informal office betting pools, inside... More »
Didn't you hate not having access to credit when you were 6? Today's kids don't have to suffer like you did. Meet Bennett Christiansen of Aurora, IL. He's got a shiny new Bank of America credit card with a $600 limit. More »
Reader Tara has a checking account with Bank of America that's supposed to be "free" if she meets 1 of 3 balance requirements. She meets one of them, but Bank of America keeps charging her $20 — and they don't intend to stop. More »
Here's yet another reason to avoid Bank of America, from reader Alison. She received a call on a Saturday at 8:30 in the morning from Bank of America, to deal with an issue she resolved the previous night. She was not pleased with being roused so early on the weekend, so she called BOA to request they disturb her no earlier than 9:00 am, especially on the weekends. The cranky CSR answering her call not only told her such a request was impossible, but added "Well, I have to be at work at 7 in the morning, ma'am." Alison didn't feel that was adequate justification for waking her up, and is closing her account. She told her story in an EECB to Bank of America, and let us listen in. Read her email, inside. More »
—>It is done! The Federal Reserve has given the OK for Bank of America to buy subprime poster child Countrywide Financial Corp.. Bank of America CEO, Ken Lewis, says that even though the mortgage market has deteriorated significantly since the bank offered to buy the mortgage lender, buying Countrywide is still a good deal because the housing market is going to improve "by early next year." More »
—>Reader Drew went out of his way to ensure that he'd be able to get money from ATMs (using his Bank of America card), while on vacation. Despite his best efforts, he learned that a) putting a note on your account saying that you'll be in England and b) drawing less than the maximum daily amount from your account is still not enough to keep BoA from putting a hold on your account. He's written in with some advice for other Bank of America customers who are planning on traveling soon... More »
—>Bank of America charged Jason three overdraft fees for the hell of it, even though his account balance never approached $0. Jason called the bank for an explanation, and was told that due to some mathematical wormhole controlled exclusively by Bank of America, he now owed $105. Tired of the bank's nonsensical jibber-jabber, Jason printed out his statement and headed to the local branch... More »
This is Round 45 in our Worst Company in America contest, Bank of America vs Monster Cable!Here's what readers said in previous rounds about why they hate these two companies... More »
—>Reader Dan says Bank of America called his old address and gave out his account details to the person who answered the phone. Luckily, that person turned out to be his father, though Bank of America didn't know that. Once they did know they were speaking to a relative, they asked Dan's dad to pay his bill for him. More »
—>We confess, we love confessions. We are fascinated that BOA can be the largest and the most despised bank chain in the country. We received a letter from a person who identifies himself as a former Bank Of America personal banker and he's ready to talk. Have a seat in the Consumerist confessional. 5 confessions of a BOA personal banker, inside.. More »
—>Reader Ophelia has a problem. It seems that after 10 years of perfect customer service from Bank of America, they suddenly decided to treat her checking account like a savings account and are charging her hundreds of dollars in "over use" fees. Her apoplectic letter is inside. More »
—>Poor Jacob. He only wanted to deposit a $2,019 check with Bank of America. Apparently, this was enough to provoke the bank into shutting down his account, leading to overdraft fees whenever Jacob tried to access his money. More »
Jenn's checking account with Bank of America recently had a policy change designed to increase overdraft fees, and it worked: sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning she was hit with 6 NSF charges going back the previous 48 hours, because she was about 15 minutes late transferring funds into her account the day before. Technically she had broken the new policy, but Jenn hadn't realized or remembered that there was a policy change and she was taken by surprise. She decided to try to reason with BoA's corporate office about the fees, and explain why she thought they were unfair. More »
—>Longtime Consumerist reader TBT read the fine print for a credit card she recently opened with Bank of America, and discovered that buried in pages 13 and 14 is a section that limits your right to request a chargeback to your home state or within 100 miles of your home address, and only for purchases over $50. He found this shocking, but, actually, this is a limitation provided by the Fair Credit Billing Act. If you dislike it, here's a great post of ours on writing effective letters to Congress. More »
—>It seems that everything isn't going so swimmingly during the transition from LaSalle Bank to Bank of America. One reader says that a check he deposited and has a receipt for has mysteriously disappeared... More »
—>It's evident the pendulum swung too far in terms of giving away too much credit, but now it seems to be swinging back in the opposite direction just as hard, with banks getting too tightfisted, even when it doesn't make sense. For instance, the APR on James's BoA credit card jumped from 9.32% to 13.99%, and shortly after he called to see about getting it back, they closed all three of his credit cards. One was a Gold account with a lifetime APR of 7.99%, the other had a 1.99% APR. Just last month, he received an offer to transfer $15,000 to the 1.99% card. Obviously at least one department in Bank of America thinks he's a good credit risk. It appears some other expressionless faces of the massive dodecahedron that is the entity called Bank of America disagreed. More »
Bank of America will pay a nearly $10 million settlement to 15,000 customers after feeding investors information that was biased towards its own funds, says the SEC. [CNNMoney]More »
—>Jim over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity closed his Bank of America account after a teller forced him to fill out a deposit slip. Jim doesn't care for deposit slips, calling them "a wasted branch on a tree we'd otherwise like to keep around," and likes tellers to double-check his math. Even though Jim yielded and started to fill out a slip, the teller tapped a reserve of rudeness that inspired him to close his account. More »
—>Bank of America, the nation's largest bank and one of our largest student lenders, today announced that it would stop making private student loans and instead "do more lending under a federally guaranteed program," says the Wall Street Journal. More »
—>This is Round 25 in our Worst Company in America contest, Bank of America vs Toys R' Us. Vote which sucks more, inside... More »
Bank of America Corp said it has agreed to pay $28 million to Countrywide Financial Corp Chief Operating Officer David Sambol to run the company's mortgage operations. That's 37% more than Bank of America's CEO makes. [Reuters] More »
Reader Chad writes:Yep, you read that right. Thanks to Consumerist, I was able to launch a successful EECB that will end up saving me over $10,000! More »
Bank of America announced it would be cutting bonuses for top company executives this year. They must have realized you shouldn't not reward someone for losing tons of money. [NYT] More »
Love your website. I've been a fan for quite a while. I finally have a story of my own to add. A couple of weeks ago I called BofA to cancel the Automatic Payment Plan on my BofA Visa. I was taking advantage of a 0% balance transfer offer. The autopay plan would have paid off the entire balance in full at the end of the month. Today I received 64 individual and identical letters from BofA confirming the change to my account.
—> Don't say we never printed anything nice about you, BoA. One of your customers just had an experience with you that—despite still having an overdraft fee of $20 to pay—has left her feeling pretty good about you. More »
—>Because Marc B. hadn't used his account for a few years, Bank of America decided he must have died, and froze his account. Then they started charging a maintenance fee, which eventually overdrew his account. Full email inside. More »
—> The FBI has opened an investigation into Countrywide for suspected securities fraud, reports the New York Times. The Justice Department and FBI "are looking at whether officials at Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, misrepresented its financial condition and the soundness of its loans in security filings." So far everything is unofficial because nobody has been authorized to discuss the case, and a Countrywide spokeswoman says, ""We are not aware of any such investigation." More »
—>"Pay-option mortgages" are loans in which homeowners can choose to pay the interest or even just part of the interest on their mortgage each month. If they do this, the unpaid interest is added to the principal resulting in a mortgage that actually grows over time. More »
—>Before leaving for his honeymoon, Derek called Bank of America to make sure he could rely on his debit card while he was in Japan. Bank of America assured him that he would have no problem accessing money. Yet on the third day of his honeymoon, neither he nor his wife could draw cash from their cards, stranding them with only $15 in cash. More »
—>If you're a customer with Bank of America or HSBC, you're more likely to be a victim of identity theft, according to a new report. Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California at Berkeley, compiled a list of all the banks mentioned in identity theft complaints filed with the FTC for January, March and September of 2006. Bigger banks obviously have more incidents, so Hoofnagle factored in their total number of deposits."I've been working for years to try to spark a market, a true market, for competition on preventing fraud," Hoofnagle told the NYT. "Some of these institutions have attempted to compete based on advertisements, but I'm a real believer in the idea that if you give consumers information, they can make better decisions." This is only a fraction of the banks included, showing the worst offenders. Full graphs, inside... More »
First and foremost i would like to thank you for the wonderful site. The information found here has been extremely useful. With that said i just want to share with you a success story i had with getting Bank Of America to lower the interest rate on my Apple GoldReserve Line of Credit. This story does not start out so nicely though.
—>Silly Bill. He thought Bank of America would let him spend $5,800 on a home theater system just because he had over $10,000 in the bank. He tried to charge the system to his Bank of America Visa Platinum Check Card but was declined. Confused, Bill called Bank of America customer support for an explanation and had the sort of conversation that makes you want to drive a fork through your ear. More »
Bank of America still isn't giving customers, and now, reporters, a straight answer when asked why they've been jacking up people's interest rates to 23, 29%. [Star-Telegram] More »
—> More about Bank of America's inexplicable rate hikes against good customers who never pay late: the Charlotte Observer talks to some recent recipients of BoA's infamous rate-increase letters from the past few weeks. The first person they talk to is a 60-year-old woman who "had never been late on a credit card payment, just refinanced her home at a lower interest rate, and just been rewarded by her credit union with a lower rate on her credit card there." Bank of America just raised her card from 13% to 24.99%. More »
—> BusinessWeek has just published an article about Bank of America's recent surprise mailings in January to some of its customers, announcing "that it would more than double their rates to as high as 28%, without giving an explanation for the increase." These customers have good credit scores and hadn't made any late payments, and those who called Bank of America to ask why this was happening weren't given clear reasons. Industry experts say Bank of America has reached a "new level" of "lack of transparency in raising rates," beyond anything Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase currently practice, because BoA is apparently using some undisclosed internal metric to determine who gets the rate hike. More »
—>Paul writes, "Did you know a "closed" checking account is never really closed? Today I walked to the local BofA for the third time to close a checking account that every month seems to magically re-open with a $5.95 account fee. What the manager told me was quite shocking." More »
—>JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America now charge $3 for non-customers to use their ATMs. Wachovia increased fees at a potion of its ATMs, and the average fee that your bank charges you to use another bank's ATM has risen as well. More »
Bank of America will "scale back its structured products unit, stop offering collateralized debt obligations and sell the prime brokerage that caters to hedge funds, eliminating 650 jobs." More »
—>A Washington Post personal finance columnist got her identity stolen and someone tried to use it to buy $812.18 worth of running shoes. Somehow, the thief had gotten access to the Nancy Trejos personal information and stolen her Bank of America debit card number. The crook placed an order online with the store and arranged for an in-store pickup. The clerk grew suspicious when the woman couldn't produce the card used to place the order. More »
—>The other day reader Dave wrote us because he'd noticed a bunch of strange debits from Sprint on his bank account. Since he uses Sprint, he thought it was a billing error, albeit a serious one, because Sprint had debited $1,717.49 in the past two weeks. Dave hadn't been able to find anyone at Sprint to help him reverse the charges and wrote to us for advice. Yikes! More »
—>Marketwatch says that Bank of America is in "advanced" talks to acquire Countrywide. No word on if said talks took place on Vader's Star Destoyer or on Captain Hook's pirate ship. Bank of America already bailed out Countrywide last year, chucking $2 billion into the troubled mortgage lender in exchange for preferred securities that could be converted into stock at $18. Countrywide is currently trading at around $7.75. More »
In a scene like something straight out The Office, a bank teller and her beau got married in a Bank of America branch as customers did their bank business, AP reports.
For ambiance, a candle was put on top of a copier, a linen tablecloth was draped over a desk and music from rocker Bryan Adams played over a speaker. "We're having a wedding," branch manager Deanna Kinsey told customers. More »
Reader gets $200 refunded, a rate cut on her home equity line of credit, and a personal apology after using some of the Bank of America email addresses we posted. [Pamela Kruger] More »
—>After waving good-bye to billions in the subprime mortgage market and bailing out nefarious mustache-twirling mortgage lender Countrywide, Bank of America says it can no longer afford soap for its employee's break rooms. More »
—>A former Bank of America employee provides these email addresses and says they're the people to complain to about getting fee'd to death (or any other customer service related issue you want to escalate). More »
—>Losses from the subprime meltdown are going to hurt Bank of America, but they won't say how badly. They just want investors to be prepared when the 4th quarter numbers come in, says the NYT. More »
—>I thought I'd give your readers a heads-up on how much Bank of America sucks, and why you should make all deposits to a bank teller and never, ever at the ATM. More »
—>Today at 9:30 a.m., Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) will continue his investigation into the unfair and deceptive practices of the credit card industry. Today's topic: arbitrary rate increases for cardholders in good standing. The hearing picks up where Senator Levin left off in March, when he questioned the use of excessive fees, interest charges, and the abuse of grace periods. More »
—>Here's a different kind of rewards card, instead furthering more material consumption, the Brighter Planet Visa card lets you earn "EarthSmart" points. These points are automatically used every month to fund renewable energy projects. Every 1,000 points funds about 1 ton of carbon offsets. (Carbon offsets are a way of breaking the cost of planting trees, reclaiming methane, building windmills, etc, into purchasable units). There's a 0% introductory APR for the first 12 months, 9.99% or 15.99% APR thereafter, depending on your credit score. You get to feel good, renewable energy gets funded, and Visa and Bank of America get good PR —win-win-win-win. Gotta wonder, if you default on your payments, will they pull the trees out of the ground? More »
—>Now that the LaSalle Bank merger is complete, Bank of America is looking to win over the notoriously neophobic population of America's 3rd largest city. To that end they've taken out a full page ad in Crain's touting Bank of America's "local commitment" and ability to provide "global capabilities" to businesses that want "every competitive advantage." More »
—>"Got a charge on my credit card from "Member Services" for $19.23. This is a card I use for 3 specific bills, and I pay them off the day after the charge shows. I know it's coming so this stood out. More »
—>Bank of America gave Timothy a fun new "change in terms" yesterday that says if he pays late on his Visa at least twice in 12 months, they're reserving the right to jack his rates up to a higher APR. It could go high as up as an effective APR of 32.24%. Hey, gotta make up for that 32% earnings drop somehow. More »
—>Back in April, we told you that Sallie Mae was going to be sold to JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America for around $25 billion. Now JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America want to bargain, and Sallie Mae is now suing its potential buyers in an attempt to force them to honor the original deal.
Sallie Mae's potential buyers gave the nation's largest student lender until Tuesday to consider their reduced buyout offer in light of what they said was "the new economic and legislative environment that faces the company." More »
—>This University of Iowa credit card scandal is getting more interesting every day. Today's development: The University has "backed away" from allowing athletes to be used in the U of I alumni association credit card program. More »
—>Remember those cold winter nights when your family stayed up late and fought to bankrupt each other? Recall the number of times you cheered a little metal dog (or hat or thimble) to move around a square board quickly? Recollect regularly screaming "come on seven!" only to roll a six? Who knew that all that time you were really learning about personal finance? Well, Blueprint for Financial Prosperity now knows this was the case. He's detailed eight personal finance lessons he learned from Monopoly. More »
—>Bette Miller has a bond she purchased in 1984 from Rainier National Bank. That bank was purchased by other bank, which was then purchased by Bank of America. More »
Buying LaSalle will make BofA (NYSE:BAC) a dominant player in Chicago for the first time. At present, BofA has less than 2 percent of that market's deposits, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. More »
—>We stumbled across a very interesting article in the Des Moines Register that discusses the methods public universities' alumni associations (in this case, the University of Iowa and ISU) use to obtain and sell student data. More »
—>According to a demonstration by Chris Soghoian over at CNet, Bank of America's "SiteKey" picture authentication feature can be spoofed by phishers and is, basically, worthless. More »
—>77-year old Peter Gossels won his 8-year lawsuit against Bank Of America for $10,000 in undisclosed fees the bank assessed when he deposited a large check drawn on a German bank. The elderly lawyer argued that the bank failed to disclose the exchange rate when he conducted the transaction. More »
—>"ConsumerMan" Herb Weisbaum over at MSNBC says that banks have messing around with their late fee structure lately—adding a third tier of pricing, raising fees, etc. Those of you with higher balances might be paying more if you're late. We think that's not cool, so we're posting a round-up of current fees. More »
Bank of America got the final OK it needed to go ahead with its purchase of LaSalle Bank [Chicago Tribune]. More »
If you have over $2,500, you can start earning upwards of 5.2% interest with this hard-to-find Bank of America money market account. [My Money Blog] More »
—>Bank of America defended raising ATM fees to $3 for non-customers to withdraw from its ATMs by spokesperson Betty Riess spilling this lovely bucket of hogwash: More »
—>The New York Times has a very interesting article about the business practices that resulted in Countrywide's dramatic spiral into the dirt. Recently, the nation's largest mortgage lender had to tap $11.5 billion in emergency credit and was the beneficiary of a $2 billion investment bailout from Bank of America. More »
—>Bank of America has rolled out over the past yearATMs that don't require you to put your money or checks in an envelope when you deposit. Just shove the bills and checks in the slot. Vincent Ferrari saw the new ATMs in Queens and sent us the scan of the flyer that was sitting next to them, writing, "I know you aren't huge fans of Bank of America, but the new ATMs are undeniably cool..." More »
—>Bank of America employees in California forgot that Marian Prescher, a 73 year-old diabetic woman, was looking her through her safe deposit box when they closed the bank last Friday. Prescher did not expect to be in the bank long, and had not taken her diabetes medication. Sometime between 6pm and midnight - when she was discovered by a cleaning woman and taken to a hospital - she passed out, bruising her right cheek when she hit the floor. More »
—>US PIRG says they've obtained legitimate documentation that says Bank of America will be raising their ATM surcharges for non-customers to $3 at most locations. The change will take place on July 31st. More »
LaSalle customers should be happy. Among other things, they're gaining access to world-class online banking and a coast-to-coast branch and ATM network. More »
—>Bank of American managed to fight off a hostile take over by the Royal Bank of Scotland to acquire LaSalle Bank from its parent company ABN Amro. The Dutch Supreme court has cleared the way for Bank of America and conversion seems all but inevitable for all of you LaSalle Bank customers. More »
I just got yet ANOTHER call from a third party selling life insurance policies for BoA. Sometime last month, I told them to stop calling me, and that just because I bank with BoA (I had...I terminated that week before last for reasons unrelated to this) doesn't mean they're allowed to keep calling despite my telling them to stop. If I had access to our call records at the moment, I'd list the time, date, and duration of each call, as well as the date I told them to stop. More »
Years ago, Carla Ruff stored her grandmother's jewelry and a file of personal documents in a safe-deposit box at her bank in San Francisco's Noe Valley, thinking they would always be there when she wanted them. More »
—>The proposed settlement for a class action lawsuit against Bank of America that would affect everyone who has ever had a checking or savings account with them since 1995 is pathetic. In return for selling your private information without your knowledge, and depending on your account, you can get: $200 off your next mortgage with Bank of America! OR... More »
—>Seven big payday loan chains are extensively bankrolled by brand name banks. Bank Of America, Chase, WellsFargo, U.S. Bancorp, and Wachovia all extend tens to hundreds of million dollars in lines of credit to these predatory lenders who charge several hundred percent interest on cash advances, often made to the poor and uneducated. More »
—>According to a tale, possibly apocryphal, we picked up while visiting Charlotte, Bank of America's home base, BoA CEO Ken Lewis was once standing behind some customers having trouble with a malfunctioning BoA ATM. More »
—>There's a law in this country that prevents any one bank from holding over 10% of the insured deposits. If Bank of America manages to hold on to its deal to buy Chicago's LaSalle Bank, Bank of America would hold approximately 10.7% of deposits—about 5.1 billion dollars too much. More »
—>Do you have over $100,000 on deposit at Bank of America? If you do, you might qualify for a special new Amex just for Bank of America's wealthy customers. Oh my, the perks are fat! More »
58 out of 60!? We knew people were vulnerable to phishing operations, but that number is just sad. Get to know your bank's security features and, for heaven's sake, look for them when you log in. There's no reason 58 out of 60 people should be falling for an obviously fake site with incorrect security features. Looks like it might be back to the drawing board for Bank of America.—MEGHANN MARCO More »
—>When you are the victim of fraud, you assume that your biggest friend will be your bank. They're the ones that are supposed to help you put your life back together. More »
The plaintiffs, who seek class-action status, said Bank of America had disproportionately "steered" African-Americans bankers and brokers to largely minority or low-net-worth clients. More »
—>The Red Tape Chronicles has a story about an identity theft victim who allowed herself to be victimized over and over again. Rachel Poor (pictured) noticed some unauthorized spending on her account, reported it, but then continued to use the account and make deposits. Every time she put money end, the crook would overspend it. On top of that, she also got hit with 20 overdraft fees, and so forth. It got so bad that she had to beg her boss for a loan. The article's author asks, "why a criminal was able to steal money from Poor's account more than two weeks after she reported it as suspicious." More »
—>If you close your account because some jerk stole your student loan payment check and is trying to cash it, you might want to switch banks. Otherwise, Bank of America might helpfully link your new account to your old one so the #%@$# can still cash the stolen check. More »
—>According to this reader complaint, to amass the personal information Bank of America uses to "verify your identity," they employ a company that that trolls public records for your data. They look for things like employer, student loans held, what hotel you stayed in last year, etc. More »
—>Yet another reader confirms that if Bank of America is hitting you with overdraft fee after overdraft fee, you can get them waived by writing a complaint letter to CEO Kenneth D. Lewis. More »
—>In what would be the largest lawsuit in the history of mankind, Bank of America has threated to sue LaSalle Bank's parent company if it fails to acquire the Chicago bank. Bank of America had a deal in place to buy LaSalle from its parent company ABN Amro, when a group of European bankers lead by the Royal Bank of Scotland stepped in with a hostile bid for the entire company. Just for some perspective on how ridiculously huge a $220 billion lawsuit is: More »
Now, however, a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland aims to upset that deal with an uninvited $98.6 billion takeover offer. The Scottish bank would keep LaSalle, while a couple of partners would carve up the remaining ABN Amro operations around the world (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/26/07, "The Making of a Monolith"). More »
—>After more digging, we ferreted out some of those notoriously hard to find bank's fee schedules. These list all the fees a bank can levy against a consumer's personal checking or savings account. Most are buried to some extent, limiting consumer's abilities to shop around. More »
—>If you have an intractable issue with Bank of America, and calls to regular customer service and attempts to escalate are unsuccessful, try the manager escalation line: More »
—>We'd always sort of assumed that someone had to check the to make sure money was real before they put it into an ATM, but apparently a few fake bills have been known to slip by. Wealth Junkie blogger Alexander had $4 in his wallet when he stopped by a Bank of America ATM to get cash for his Costco shopping trip. When a cashier at Costco spotted a fake $20, Alexander knew exactly where it came from. More »
Bank of America's takeover of LaSalle will vault it ahead of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Chicago, increase earnings and satisfy a goal of Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis to gain market share in the third-largest U.S. city. While Bank of America has been opening branches there since 2003, Chicago remained one of the few major U.S. financial centers where it didn't rank among the top five lenders by deposits.
You can never escape! Bank of America will find you no matter where you go. It will shut down your coffee shop and it will open a branch. Ha, ha, ha! If you try to use a local bank, it will buy your local bank. It will find you.—MEGHANN MARCO More »
—>Ariel's wealthy aunt died. When his mom went to open her safe deposit box, which was supposed to hold $300k in bonds and jewels, it was empty. The bank clerk said that it had been emptied that morning, by the aunt... More »
—>If you recall, Travis got charged $280 in overdraft fees after Bank of America gave him some wrong information about his bank account when moving to a new state. He wrote a letter the CEO, which we posted. Now, good news. He writes: More »
—>Bank of America has an online security measure called SiteKey and says, "[W]hen you see your SiteKey, you can be certain you're at the valid Online Banking website at Bank of America, and not a fraudulent look-alike site." More »
—>Looks like even if WaMu's Consumer Lending Department isn't closed, they still have no clue what they're doing. After La Boy transferred money from his Bank of America Account to his WaMu, he was essentially accused of trying to steal from himself. It took numerous calls to Washington Mutual to get it resolved, and most reps were more interested in passing the buck than resolving the issue. More »
—>A Senate hearing today called up executives in the credit card industry to defend their anti-consumer practices, their explanations provoking laughter from the crowd. More »
New television commercials incorporate the bank's "flagscape" symbol with images of customers getting new homes and envisioning future careers. Additional spots will highlight home equity and savings products.
The marketing move comes on the heels of controversy about the Bank's new credit card policy, which allows major credit cards to be obtained without a social security number. More »
In the latest sign of the U.S. banking industry's aggressive pursuit of the Hispanic market, Bank of America Corp. has quietly begun offering credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers — typically illegal immigrants. More »
"So that left me in a moral dilemma. In effect, I was witnessing some bad stuff happening in real time. .... What to do? I downloaded the latest version of the harvested data and pondered. More »
If you really want to protect your ass in case the rebate company arbitrarily decides your rebate claim is expired, get your receipt notarized. Writes Tian: More »
Carmela's Bank of America bank account was stolen. Someone was posting fraudulent transactions on her account. When she reported it to BofA, she entered into a colossal fun trap of transfers and incompetent support staff, even after visiting the branch on 107th and Broadway in Manhattan. However, rather than fighting The Man, she should have: More »
—>Bank of America will start charging "Free Checking" customers starting 2/1/07. The bank will switch change the accounts to "MyAccess" checking, with a fee of $5.95/month. More »
With that in mind, if you prefer to bank online Bank of America might not be the choice for you, as bank website downtime has to be one of the most annoying things ever. Several banks had less than four minutes of downtime in the same period—effectively operating at 100%, including Wachovia and Washington Mutual. Yippie! — MEGHANN MARCO More »
Garth used to be able to jump out of his car and deposit his checks in under a minute. That changed when his Bank of America installed a new ATM. More »
Wiring money has gotten a lot more difficult since September 11th. This we know, and many of us are willing to put up with the more convoluted process. Still, when you're caught in the looping bowels of that convoluted process during an emergency, and companies like Western Union treat you like a criminal as you try to get cash to a loved one, you start wondering if terrorists are the ones really being inconvenienced. More »
—>If there's one thing we can comfortably count upon, it's that the policy members of major corporations are geniuses. We're not kidding. If they'd turned their attentions away from business and finance and to scientific matters, they would already have invented the time machine and I'd be able to experience first-hand what a great kisser I'll be in ten years. Unfortunately for us all, instead, they exert their ingenuity to figuring out ways to keep us in massive amounts of debt, even after we've paid our bills. More »
—>A Bank of America customer trying to verify a check sent to him by a scammer was cast in irons for his trouble. Now Clark Howard, consumer activist radio host, has started a campaign encouraging everyone to withdraw their money from BofA in protest. Bank officials claim they're just doing their duty but Howard and his viewers aren't buying it. According to Howard's site, so far they've cost BofA over $18 million in withdrawals. More »
Eagle-eyed reader Bruce points out that while Bank of America may be giving out 100 bucks...with the fees they charge they'll be getting it back from you soon enough. More »
Reader Jessica is clearly a red-blooded American. She demands service, and above all, LABOR, from her fellow countrymen and -women, even on national holidays, especially on Labor Day. More »
Banks are continuing to feel the sting of their own cyber-incompetence. After much publicized security breaches like the Citibank scandal, more and more customers are moving away from online banking due to fears of identity theft. The growth of online banking as an industry in 2005 was only 3.1%, sharply down from the growth of previous years. More »
For George and Pat Beane, the cost of four Burger King sandwiches was more than the contribution to the downfall of man and the raping of the working class Mogran Spurlock indoctrinated them about. After ordering two whopper Jr's and a two Rodeo cheeseburgers through drive through, they got charged for over four thousand three hundred dollars. More »
Yikes. Reader Charlie Flint just wrote in with this horror story. The short: Google bills him $3,000 dollars for an Adwords account that he doesn't actually have. To our untrained eye, this sounds very much like someone has gotten his bank details somehow and is using Google Adwords to funnel money out of his account, but we're no experts. Can anyone with similar or not-so-similar experience tell Charlie what the hell is going on and what he can do about it? More »
ve been rejected and subsequently sent to another account. My money, as of this writing, is still being held and I am waiting for it to be released to me. More »
—>Since we've spent a large portion of our day tearing at Bank of America, we thought we'd offer this recommendation for a new savings program, sent in by (probably astroturf) reader Greg. It seems Bank of America has a new program that rounds up your debit charges to the nearest dollar, then puts the change in a savings account. Gamey, but we like it.
But here's the interesting part: for the first 3 months they'll match it up to $250. So if you rack up $250 or more in change over 3 months, BofA will give you $250. After 3 months, they'll continue to match but only at 5%. More »
—>Since it looks like we're having a Bank of America day, have another mystery. Gawker jocker Scott Kidder took a five-dollar hit to his BoA account each time he got out money in Europe. Painful, but in an 'all banks ream you for international ATM fees' way. But there were always additional percentage-based charge with each transaction, and the BoA customer care couldn't tell Scott where it came from. More »
A long time BofA account holder who enjoys living dangerously with his balance, I've had my pocket picked to the tune of $300-400 with this artful setup. It's rather simple. If you have multiple transactions in a same day they process the largest dollar amount first. This means that if you overdraw your account on a day where you have a particularly large transactions, you end up paying the maximum overdraft fee allowed by math. A numerical example to illustrate: More »
Though no representative of Bank of America will tell me what exact times each transaction occurred, they assured me that they know that the bad one came first, and that even though they have no specific record of it, they can assure me that I had a negative balance... for an undetermined period of time.Cutting it close is user error, for sure, but we can remember (imagine?) a time when banks used to cover for a person when paychecks crossed the finish line just behind a check for eighty-nine cents. (We have a thing for those little brown coconut donuts.) More »
