Consumer complaint received 2019-10-31
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: FL
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Problem caused by your funds being low
Sub-issue: Bounced checks or returned payments

Complaint:
I have banked with BofA for over 5 years. I have already opened new accounts and XXXX XXXX XXXX and will absolutely be closing my BofA account as they have a significant history of cheating with respect to overdraft fees, and how they process charges. 
Years ago, I availed myself of the " account management '' tools which they tout to be useful tools for managing your account. Up until this point, I had not had issue with those account tools working. By design, when my account balance falls below 25.00 I am supposed to be notified. In this instance, those tools didnt work and to be honest, I am at a loss as to why. I had a credit card payment set to clear my account on the XXXX. According to BofA the charge posted to my account on the 30th. I never received an email or text message alert. The charge would have most assuredly overdrawn my account and should have triggered a notification to me so that I could react to the charge.That didnt happen, and as of this morning ( XX/XX/2019 I still have not received a notification ). 

My paycheck conveniently posts to my account on the last day of the month in this instance, the check was available in my account at midnight ( on the XXXX  ) although when I called BofA they explained even though they had my funds, my employer instructed that I am not to have access to my funds until the XXXX  and so the payment was returned ... ..

Officially, BofA returned my payment for insufficient funds. My complaints are as follows : 1. BofA was in posession of more than sufficient funds to cover the transaction for which they returned. This transaction should not have been returned, and I would like a statement from the institution so that my creditor does not hold that returned check against me.

2. I would like BofA to do a better job in the disclosure of their account management features so that unknowing customers such as myself are not relying on those alerts to prevent issues such as this.

3. I would like BofA to provide more clarity as to how they determine which charges will be covered through overdraft protection and which ones will not be ; to include specifics related to the type of account, years customer has been with BofA, number of overdraft fees, bounced checks etc in customers history as right now, it appears that the the determination to cover overdraft charges is arbitraily made by unknown person ( s ) without a solid non-discriminatory policy. I personally have clients and colleagues who bank with BofA and they report very different experiences in how returned processing, overdraft fees, and availability of deposits are handled. 

It should be noted that my husband and I have over 14000.00 deposited across BofA checking accounts each month, and at the time this transaction posted my husband had enough funds in his account to cover my transaction. The point for mentioning this is that I had access to money to quickly deposit in my account had I known the account was overdrawn. My assumption was the payment will post on the 30th, my paycheck will post on the 30th, the check will clear. This matter was not for lack of funds available to me, it resulted from lack of funds available in this account which could have easily been corrected in minutes had the account management tools, for which I relied on actually worked. If I STILL need to log in to my account every day and look at the account balance because BofA intends to send the alerts at their discretion then that should be clearly disclosed in lamens terms not in small print in documents which are never provided to the consumer.

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