Consumer complaint received 2023-03-30
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: SD
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Problem with balance transfer

Complaint:
On Tuesday, XX/XX/XXXX, my husband received an email from Bank of America ( BofA ) notifying us of a pending balance transfer of nearly {$5000.00} that neither my husband nor I had initiated ( from a credit card that neither of us has! ). We immediately called BofA and let them know that this was " not us '' so to speak. The first customer service rep we spoke to said that we needed to talk to someone from the sales department since they initiate balance transfers so we waited patiently while we were transferred. We went through the story again and the person from the sales dept said that they could see that transfer pending ( they even saw the amount that was noted in the initial email ) and that they would need to transfer us to the fraud department. Again, a wait for the transfer, and again, we go through the explanation of why we are calling. The rep from the fraud department, however, could not see that pending transfer and couldn't explain why we got that initial email and said the email was likely fake ( I note that there were no links or other typical phishing related items in the email ). So they said that there was no action they could take. We were therefore surprised that we got another email the next morning, Wednesday, XX/XX/XXXX, that some transactions were flagged as suspicious. My husband then logged into our BofA account and confirmed our actual transactions and flagged the balance transfer as not having been initiated by us. A couple hours later, we received an email stating that our balance request had been processed! We were flabbergasted! 

I sent an email to XXXX XXXX, President of Retail Banking at BofA, on Wednesday, XX/XX/XXXX, with the above information and asking for them to immediately credit our account for the fraudulent amount and asking how this could have happened since we spoke with XXXX people letting them know this was fraud and used there online system to flag it as fraud. I received a call on Thursday from someone who works for XXXX who explained that they would investigate the fraud but it could take up to 2 months and that the fraudulent amount would be put " on hold '' in the meantime, though not credited back to us until the investigation is complete. I was told repeatedly by this person that there was " nothing they could do '' once the transfer was initiated. This despite the fact that we told 3 people and used their online features to let them know this was fraud. I maintained that they could have done something, but they chose not to, or more precisely, their processes would not allow them. And this is the change in their process that I would like to see, that transactions are put on hold while the fraud is investigated versus let them go through and then investigate.

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 explanation