Consumer complaint received 2022-05-26
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: MA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement
Sub-issue: Credit card company isn't resolving a dispute about a purchase on your statement

Complaint:
Bank of America gave me a incorrect exchange rate ( in the bank 's favor ) for at least five transactions that I made in XXXX during a three-week trip in XXXX this year with my US BOA card. 

I know that the exchange rate was wrong because the BOA representative told me that exchange rates are handled by Visa and a Visa representative checked the rate for me. But the Visa representative said that to get a refund, I needed to go back to BOA. When I sent back to BOA, I was told that I needed to use an online process for reporting the error. 

The representative knew that I wanted to dispute every single transaction in a month of travel, since my suspicion was that if two charges checked at random were wrong, all of them might be. However, when I tried using the online process, I discovered after disputing the first three of my transactions, I was directed to call customer support. I called again and they said that they could not resolve the problem. 

They could not explain why I had been overcharged and suggested several incorrect reasons. ( One was that the rate is not the date of the transaction but the date of settlement, but I determined that this is not the problem by confirming with the agent what the rate for the date of settlement was ; the agent suggested that I was confused because there is a transaction fee of 1 %. this was also not the problem because the 1 % fee is a separate line item on the bill. finally the agent suggested that I was not taking into account a possible value added tax. This was also not an explanation because I have a copy of the exact amount in XX/XX/XXXXcurrency that the merchant charged the credit card. If there was any taxes, it would have been included already in this number. ) The agent sent me to a manager who told me that there was no remedy other than making a complaint to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is what I'm doing. I realize that it might be possible for me to dispute three more transactions as I did before, after some cooling off period ( but I don't know how long that would be ) and then three more and so on until I have disputed all of the approximately two dozen transactions. But there should be a better way. I have received refunds for the three transactions that I disputed ( I entered the transactions to dispute in chronological order ; these did not include the two transactions that the Visa representative previously confirmed were incorrect ; I expected I would get to them in order, but they were later in my trip, so I have not yet disputed them ). I would like BOA to recalculate every transcation I made during this trip ( which was in XXXX ). If, as I suspect given what I've learned, all or most of the charges are incorrect, I'd like them to recalculate transactions for earlier travel ( such as a three-week trip to XXXX last XXXX.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief