A Bank Of America Credit Card Customer Speaks
A blogger named Harsha writes:

I opened a 0% APR American Express card with Bank of America less than a year ago and transferred a large loan balance to it and have been paying it off $1000 a month. The statement closes every 22nd and the minimum is due by the following 11th. I've always made this payment well in advance of the 11th deadline. This time, I ended up making it even before the 22nd statement close so basically my payment got tagged to the previous month.

When I called to clarify this, I was rudely informed by the representative that it is my fault for 'paying late' and that I will lose the promotional 0% APR. Then I asked her to check with her supervisor and she came back a little while later saying that they have decided to reinstate the 0% APR as a courtesy. I was delighted and thanked her and realized after I hung up that I had not asked about the $39 late fee. To me, it makes sense to roll it back because they 'forgave' the 'late payment' by reinstating my 0% APR, so why should I pay the late fee? Mind you, I absolutely agree and understand a late fee for late payments - no argument there.

When I called back, I said that if the Bank has rolled back the 0% APR because I am forgiven for the 'late' payment, then why would I pay a late fee? The representative talking to me couldn't for the life of her understand my logic. So we started arguing back and forth and she said the same thing repeatedly and so did I - classic stalemate situation. So I asked her to connect me to her supervisor. What she did next was appalling - she actually threw me off the line and I ended up at the beginning of the call where you give the machine your card details to find the best route for the call. You'd think I would have given up, but I did not.

When the next representative came on the line (now I'm angry and my voice is louder) I told him about the way in which I got bumped off the previous call and said that I realize none of this is his fault but, come on! getting kicked out is just unacceptable! Since I was angry, after hearing why I called, he offered to cut my fee down to half but no more because representatives are not authorized to do so. In fact, he said that he was not even supposed to offer me half off on the fee, but was doing it because I was upset. I was unable to wrap my head around the fact that half of the fee was being refunded as a 'courtesy' but the other half wouldn't be. So I asked him if he was being half courteous and half rude. Of course, such rhetorical questions only incite the flames of anger, and it did. We started arguing and I said that if he could roll back half my fee while not technically supposed to, then why not roll back the entire fee? Why partially commit the crime? And so on and on we went... Finally I said to him that half off was not acceptable and asked him to connect me to his supervisor. Thankfully he did. I left a message, in a super angry mode, hoping to evoke a response, but I have none so far.

My issue is NOT with the $39 fee. My issue is with the LOGIC of this whole situation. First of all, I did not make a 'late' payment. I ended up making two payments in the same month, a day early. In this tough economic environment, I am making multi-thousand dollar payments on-time (except this once), have a checking and savings account with Bank of America and am poised to buy a home next year. Despite all this and the threat of me switching to Discover (which is flooding my mailbox with offers), I am unable to fathom why the fee and worse still, why half the fee? If there was ANY logic to this, and I was indeed a payment too late, then for sure, I will not argue if the Bank starts charging me a high APR and fine me $39.

But when they have reinstated the 0% as a courtesy, why should they charge me $39 or even half of that? A pissed off customer with options is the worst kind of customer. Or am I too small for a large Bank like Bank of America to give a rats ass about? To add insult to injury, they are yet to respond to me.

Check out Bank of America Sucks. I am not that mad at the Bank - all I want is my fee refunded because it is illogical to charge it in the first place. Will someone from the Bank PLEASE respond?

In Harsha's comments, a guy who calls himself JohnnyPolo responds:

I worked not too long ago as a Bank of American Customer Service Rep for over two years. Your situation seems very familiar, one that over the course of an eight hour day I would get multiple times. The computer misread your payment, that happens. BOA has changed a lot of their rules about refund policies. As long as nothing has changed within the last six months, this is how it is...

When I first started there, you had the ability to refund any and all fees. Obviously they told us not to, but we are reps never got punished for them. We had monthly evaluation peroids where they looked at the stats from our calls, listened to two of our calls at random a month and it determined whether or not we got a pay raise or bonus. Initally we just had to score a 90 out of a 100 or above on our two recorded calls and they listened for keys things. If you said the customers name, said the banks name at least twice, and were pleasent. It wasn't hard to get above a 90. Then, they looked at about 40 different averaged stats we had ranging from our transfering calls rate to to amount of money refunded per call. But the only stat that was calculated into our pay? It was how quickly we got you off the phone. Our call average had to be less than three and a half minutes or we didn't get a raise. So my procedure, along with many other coworkers, was just refund whatever was asked by the customer because it didn't affect me. Sure, once a month my boss will say I'm refunding too much, but that was the worst of it.

Before I left, they changed their refund policy. We, the reps, were no longer allowed to make any decisions about refunds. They used a new software where we put the amount of late payments you've had and previous refunds you've received to pull a number out of nowhere and tell you how much you can refund. I remember having to tell many people, "well, I can't refund the full $39, but I can offer you $4 as a courtesy". I know a friend that still works there, and says nothing has changed. Obviously, more people get upset because we can't just refund their money back to them for these awful bank charges causing the reps calls to be longer because of arguing, therefore very few people were getting pay raises or bonuses, and many people were doing so poorly with their call times that they were receiving pay cuts.

I think I've typed too much, but I thought I'd just share what I know with you. I hope you get your money back, but if you don't, make a complaint about their "refund tool software", because with you the person you are talking with no longer even has the ability to give you your money back. It's forbidden for to to tell you software is deciding how much money to give you, so if the rep hears the words refund tool, they won't know what to do. Good luck.

I had a similar experience with reps at B of A who were mere functionaries, apparently unable to think for themselves and get around "procedure" to quickly give me the letter stating I'd been a victim of fraud. I was told by the LAPD that I needed that letter to make a police report about my identity theft. You need to make a police report to have any hope of having the thief pursued by the police. And you need to go after a thief fast to have some hope of catching the person.

Anyway, I spent two days of my life on the phone, fighting with reps at B of A, begging to get the letter. No dice -- despite my speaking to the associate manager herself in Dixon City, who'd seen the thief, who she described as a fat African American woman missing her front teeth. There are quite a few photos of me on the Internet, in papers, and on my syndicator's website. Clearly, I'm not a black woman with dental issues.

Here's a version of my complaint to the Comptroller of the Currency, the House Finance Committee, the Senate Banking Committee, California Attorney General Jerry Brown's office, and the FBI, about my shocking discovery about what passes for "multiple layers of security" at Bank of America.