Consumer complaint received 2021-07-18
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: MA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest
Sub-issue: Charged too much interest

Complaint:
I am a XXXX patient, riddled with XXXX  XXXX and XXXX, getting treatment here in the US and in my homeland of XXXX, where I spend several months a year. 

In 2019 prior to leaving to XXXX, I was offered a promotional XXXX XXXX Master Card by Bank of America, where I have had several accounts for decades : there was some sort of bonus and it was a XXXX XXXX touted as particularly useful for my trips. Not being very versed in these matters and aware of my inattention due to my health, I asked the BoA clerk to set up automatic payments from my checking account. Since then, I summarily checked each month that the charges on the credit card account were legitimate, simply glancing at the app. This past week I discovered that there was an outstanding balance on the account, which included over {$1900.00} in Finance Charges! After an hour long meeting with the current Small Business Accounts specialist at the BoA branch in XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ), I was told that the card had a promotion of 7 months with zero interests, such that the clerk had initially set up the Autopay for the minimum due each month ; it would have been up to me to change the Autopay to the full amount once the promotion ended but nobody told me so! 

I lay claim against Bank of Americas Mastercard for a complete refund of ALL the finance charges on the following grounds : 1 ) it was not made clear to me that there was a limited promotional zero interest rate period which would require my modifying the Autopay at the end of that period ; 2 ) I received no notice warning me of the ending of that promotional zero interest period ( nor any instruction on how to change the Autopay setting ) ; 3 ) the resulting outstanding balance and fees were additionally disguised in the app because this is a corporate account which, as explained by XXXX this past week, sweeps the balances from the credit card into the corporate account ; for an individual who has no business activity nor dependents and who has XXXX XXXX XXXX, this is at best unnecessarily confusing ; 5 ) I have always maintained a positive balance over XXXX $ at BoA, and there has never been any time when I may have needed to postpone any payment in fact, I am adamant about having no outstanding bills due to my health, which often requires long hospital stays ; XXXX reportedly did obtain from BoA MasterCard a gesture canceling the last three months of finance charges but I feel this is deeply unfair : BoA was already earning interests simply from the funds in my checking account and should have no reason to let the credit card that they offered me charge me interest fees. 

This appears a return to the early XXXX when unscrupulous corporations lured consumers towards financial products that look great at first, but open the door to banks and credit cards to siphon their finances. In the era of Sustainability and efforts to end corporate greed, clearly we still can not trust these entities that always prove too powerful to regulate. When will this end??? 

Thank you for whatever assistance you can provide.

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