The late fee depends, of course, on what is in her agreement. A fee of $75 seems high, but that really isn't the issue here.

What she is really complaining about is the phone call - and she's right. Four whole days late? My goodness, the world might end. Why is the bank calling her? How does she even know it's the bank, as opposed to some random person who raided her trash, found a credit card statement, and is trying to scam her?

Frankly, she should have just hung up.

Recently I borrowed a lot of money from Lee Kang Ster a local bookie and loan shark. I was to pay back the money two days ago. I know I was to pay back the money but I did not have it as I did not do so well at the local casino. But I was going to be paying him half of it in a week. Mr. Lee was not happy with that as he decided to have his subordinate Kim Goo Neu to hit me to the ground where Mr. Lee then proceeded to break two of my fingers and to TOP it off he now has double the amount I have to pay him. Now I am very angry and disappointed as I told him I will pay in a week (thru not all it is tough times economically). What fellow Advice Goddess Readers what should I do. I feel I was treated poorly and the customer service I received was not fair.

Please help!

Credit collectors tend to embellish things to scare people into doing what they want them to do. Even if they are calling the wrong number or have the wrong name, they'll badger you. Calling for something 4 days late is a bit much and so is charging a 75$ late fee.

The problem is, the agreements keep changing.

I am a Bank of America member. I never signed up for Bank of America. I signed up for BayBank, which became BankBoston, which became Fleet, which became Bank of America. They constantly changed things on me.

For example, with BankBank I had a debit card rather than a credit card. I did this on purpose, because when I was a student I would get close to the edge, and the card would not LET me withdraw more than I had in my account. This system worked well for me.

Unbeknowedst to me, Bank of America had given me a $4,000 credit line, but charged me $40 everytime I overdrew. I'm sure they let me know in the small print of the pages and pages of documents they sent me every month, but I must have missed it.

One month, still thinking my card worked the same way it always had, I knew I was getting close to the edge. So I didn't buy anything big, just little purchases... $10 here, $5 there, $2 there (they didn't charge me for using the card). Because the purchases went through, I assumed that I had enough money on the account. Turns out I had overdrawn by about $50, but because it was several transactions, the fees came to over $400.

Now, one could say I should have checked my account closer. Certainly. But up until that point, it was enough to have a rough estimate and to know I was close to the edge, because the card would stop me from making a purchase that the money wasn't there for. The rules were suddenly changed, leaving me with a huge bill.

I was pretty pissed.

Hmm.

There is a mortgage company in Florida that has just been busted for harassing a friend of mine; their motive? Collecting stimulus money! It seems that part of the Federal response to the failed housing market is to pay a per-instance "spiff" when the company makes a contact about a late payment!

So: BofA might be paid to throw you under the bus. And as Amy has shown us, it's not like you count as a person to them.

I purchased a house 3 years ago. The local bank who financed the mortgage immediately sold it to Country Wide. At the height of the mortgage "scam" BoA assumed the loan.

They are an absolute nightmare to work with.

For two years running they double paid my homeowners insurances then adjusted my escrow payments resulting in hundreds of dollars more due per month. After numerous phone calls to them to explain that they double paid everything, I finally had to call all the insurance companies to get the refund sent to BoA. Then it still took several months for the escrow amounts to be corrected and my payments returned to normal.

Through it all they admitted no wrong doing, charged me copious late fees, and every customer service representative that I spoke to was rude and condescending - even when they did not have command of the English language.

I get that they are a business and in it to make money. But they have complete disregard for their customers and it has just gotten worse since they received Federal bail out money. They are truly horrible.

Not to excuse her, but this pressure is a result of Obama's intrusion into the banking markets.Say goodbye to free checking, and hello to higher interest rates on cards.

That was my take on it too. I don't think the LW is concerned so much about the late payment fee, although I DO think $75 is a little high, as she was about being contacted after only four days, and the condescending carping.

Does BoA have a right to do so, well, yeah. Is it poor customer service. Yeah.

While it is unusual for a bank rep to call after only four days, she WAS late and it's hardly reason enough for her to go whining about it on the internet. I agree with Amy, this lady has very little sense of personal responsibility.

it's hardly reason enough for her to go whining about it on the internet.

Who needs a reason to go whining to the Internet?

Credit card reps can be mindless drones, because they tend to follow the script. When reps were hounding my father about some charges my brother racked up when he stole his credit card last year, I tried to sort it out, since my father has dementia and didn't understand what was going on. The conversation went something like this, after the third 8:30 am phone call.

CC Rep: Can I please speak to [xxxxxx] regarding his credit card statement?

Me: [xxxxxx] is my father, and he has dementia and is deaf.

CC rep: I will call back this afternoon.

Me: [xxxxxx] will still be deaf and have dementia this afternoon.

I personally won't touch Regions or BoA. They are both scammers. They both will take the money out of your account the night you schedule an online payment. They did this to me once when I made a payment for 3 weeks ahead of when I needed it paid. Basically I sat down and scheduled all my payments to be timed for his paychecks and their due dates.. House payments and all. They took it all out that night blew my account into oblivion and I was back at suntrust by that saturday. I make my online payments on Wednesday and they are paid by Friday.. I will never change.. They have never done me wrong.

Yes she was late but it was a bit early to be making panicky "ohh noes are you going to run off with our money" calls.

That being said.. When my husbands little brother died the company that held our car loan deferrd 3 months worth of payments. Has she asked about that. Of coarse we Paid the car off a few weeks after they deferred. Literally our next payment was paying it off..

I am on the other end of this conversation every day. I don't work for BOA, but I do make phone calls every day to card holders at a few particular credit unions that are running behind on their cards.

A vast majority of the phone calls I make are before the card is thirty days past due. Credit bureaus are reported to every thirty days. So they are notified the day the payment is past due and then again on the thirty day, sixty day, ninety day, and so on. With my particular bank online payments can take up to five business days to post in the system, in addition to the normal up to five business days that the individual's banks can take. Not to mention the five days between the phone call and when the payment is made. And when you count the four days she was already late, we are looking at coming awfully close to that thirty day mark. By being able to note the account will be paid on Friday, no one will contact her until a reasonable amount of time has past for that payment to post, and there is very good chance that BOA will not report to the credit bureau at thirty days in hopes that her payment is still in processing. So no, this is not bad customer service at all, this is BOA trying to do the consumer a favor. Bad customer service would be letting that late payment slip past the ninety day mark without a phone call or notice and simply closing the account. Bad customer service is letting her find out by her card not working after she's ate out at a fancy restaurant. Not to even mention that if she has any other credit cards, some like to adjust interest rates based on credit reports.

I have a very good feeling that this particular lady was not the most polite on the phone, simply because of the way she describes the voice on the other end of the phone. There is a very good chance that if the woman had set up the payment over the phone to be withdrawn on Friday that the agent could have waived or reduced that high late fee. On top of that, statistically if a person doesn't know on Monday what they are going to be able to pay on Friday, they aren't going to pay any on Friday.

The pressure is not from Obama's intrusion into the finance system, although it doesn't help. The pressure is because in six months it's cheaper to settle for half the amount she took from the bank than to take her to court. Our problems are that most people don't view that as theft, it's just the big banks getting what they deserve.

MonicaP,

Unfortunately, the laws are written where no one can really speak to you without your father's permission. It's not that they are mindless drones it's that there are a lot of people that try to entrap phone reps so that they can complain to our superiors, get us fired, and then their bills go away because the company fears a lawsuit.

For future reference, since you know he's not in a state of health that allows him to speak to customer service reps you should have a power of attorney or a similar document on file with all of his creditors.

Cat - many thanks for your perspective on the situation!

4 days might not sound like much, but I knew one person who used these "you're late" calls as if they were the bill. This girl didn't want to bother to walk to the post office to pick up her mail more than once a month, and when she did actual clean out her post office box she would throw away all the bills.

Every time she missed a payment, they would call her. She'd pull out a credit card and authorize a payment of the minimum necessary to keep the power on, the phone connected, etc. She'd promise to make payments in the future on specific dates in specific amounts. She wouldn't even bother to try to keep track of what she was supposed to pay when - she just waited for the next call.

If they'd given her two weeks wait rather than 4 days, her response to being told it was overdue would have "so?" or maybe "why'd you wait so long?"

Maybe she's not typical, and she certainly isn't a role model, but she's one of the kinds of people the banks and other billing departments have to deal with....

Having been a recipient of these phone calls, not often, but it has happened, it's because I didn't make a payment for some reason or another. I never felt the person was rude and normally made the payment on the spot. The more bills you have, the more likely one falls through the crack occasionally, not an excuse, it just is what it is.

My point is that I appreciated the phone call. I knew the bill was paid and they didn't have to wait until they sent out an overdue notice to get paid. I think she overreacted. They are a lot nicer at 4 days, than they are at 30 (so I've been told).

Thanks for your insight, Cat. My main problem with the credit card company was that no one seemed capable of negotiating a plan B. It was more like, "He is physically and mentally incapable of speaking with you, and no one yet has the legal right to talk on his behalf. What can we do about this?" And the response was, "We really need to speak with him." Frustrating.

Mbruce - I worked in the BofA collections department years ago, and I can guarantee you, BofA has been this way for a very long time. That experience is the reason I tell everyone to switch to another bank/credit card company if they are customers of BofA.

Whenever I read any of these bank related threads, I am always grateful that my bank is a credit union. I don't really have complex financial needs yet (no mortgage or loans other than a credit card with a low limit) so maybe this will change, but my credit union is freaking wonderful. There are no fees for anything (other than late fees, and I'm never late) so I'm always confused when banks advertise that they have free checking, as though that's an extra benefit. I also can always (ALWAYS!) get in touch easily with a human being who either knows how to solve my problem or puts me in contact with someone who can. Join a credit union!

Sam, I'll second that. I do all of my banking with a locally owned credit union and it's been a generally very good experience.

Very strange. Recently I was late with a payment on my BofA credit card, and they never called me, just tacked the late fee onto my next bill. And the fee was $39, not $75.

Bank Of America is by far the absolutely worst bank I've ever done business with. This is not just because they're rude and condescending, but they make it near impossible to change anything. Not only that, but they will viciously and gleefully pounce on any chance to charge you with fees.

My BOA horror story is as follows... One time, I needed to get some fairly expensive repairs done on my car, totaling around $650. Not a huge deal... I had just been paid and with my paycheck I had more than enough money to handle it. I would just eat cheap food for a while. Right? Wrong. The bank decided to put a hold on my paycheck (my direct deposited paycheck mind you), which sent the balance a couple hundred dollars into the negative.

However, it gets much worse than that. They took all the little charges (about 15 of them) on my debit card from up to two weeks before that and put them in AFTER the car bill, even though the repair bill was the LAST thing to go in. At $35 a pop AND an additional fee every day that the balance is negative, the late fees that shouldn't have happened at all ballooned to well over a thousand dollars.

I tried to talk to them, but it was all the same... I owed this fee money and if I didn't pay it I would be in a huge amount of trouble. I needed to borrow money to make it stop. After that nightmare I switched banks very quickly. However, it wasn't over after that... About six months later I got a call from BOA saying that I owed $200 in fees on my BOA account. I had closed the account but apparently they hadn't actually closed it and it was still open. I fought that one... Made sure they were closed. However, two YEARS later I got another call saying that I owed money on my BOA account.

So, I can sympathize with this person. If you move even a little bit out of the line, it doesn't matter how long you've been a customer. BOA will viciously screw you over. If you're a customer of theirs, get out now.

My now- deceased mother in law used B of A. We have been trying for three years to get them to acknowledge that she is indeed deceased and the accounts are indeed closed. Copies of the death certificate didn't do it. Notarized copies from the executrix didn't cut it.

We still receive statements from her officially closed accounts that somehow reopen. Repeated phone and certified mail letters have no affect.

Avoid B of A. They suck.

B of A now has my Countrywide home loan.

I live in fear on a daily basis, but I just got laid off, and can't do a damn thing about it at the moment.

And Sarah, Wells Fargo did a similar thing to me a few years ago, and I ran screaming from there, too.

I have an account at Compass Bank now, and I LOVE their online bill pay and have never had a problem with them. As a matter of fact, when a check for my HOA fees went missing, they went above and beyond to track it down and correct the situation, even though it was technically the post office's fault. Also, any time I've had to go into the bank for anything, they've always been friendly and helpful.

When privately-owned banks create money as 'loans', the profits (interest and seignorage) go back to them. If we had more public banks, we could bank with them, get our 'loans' from them too, and the profits would go back to the owners as before except that this time, it being a public bank, it's us! Every time we took out a bank 'loan', we the community would be the ones to profit, not private bankers! So, then let's bring on the publicly owned banks, right? Wrong! Northern Rock, the only entirely publicly-owned bank we have in the country, is being sold by the government, the one supposed to act on behalf of the electorate, back to the banking community that ruined it in the first place! This is a disaster.