Consumer complaint received 2022-02-11
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: OH
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose prepaid card
Issue: Trouble using the card
Sub-issue: Trouble using the card to spend money in a store or online

Complaint:
My mother gave me a {$100.00} XXXX  Gift Card for XXXX, which she purchased at XXXX ( Address : XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX, KY ) XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX. When I went to register the card as instructed on XXXX, inputting the 16 digit card number on the front, I was given an error message that says " Oops ... .something went wrong. Please enter your card info below. '' When I input the same 16 digit number again, I repeatedly got - and continue to get - this error message. I then called customer service a total of three times. The first time I called the customer service # listed on the card ( XXXX ) on XX/XX/XXXX, I spoke to a lady who said she saw my card in the system, everything looked fine and she added my address and contact information to the card to register it. I thought everything was fine and the card was then ready for use. When I went to make a purchase yesterday ( XX/XX/XXXX ) using the gift card, I received an error message via XXXX. When I called the customer service number listed on the card a second time yesterday XX/XX/XXXX, I was told by the rep that they could not help me - that I had to go through the website to register the card. This is odd as I was previously told the card was already registered. I shared with the customer rep that when I go through the website, I repeatedly get the error message I mentioned above. He said there's nothing he can do, and he can not help me. I shared this with my mom, who made the purchase and has proof of purchase, who then visited the XXXX location today to see if they could offer any support. They, too, pulled up the receipt information and validated the purchase. The XXXX rep gave my mom instructions to call XXXX and to share the receipt and her card info. My mom did that several times, spoke with several rep and was disconnected every time- without any support or a callback. She even asked a rep if they had her contact information to call her back if they got disconnected, because she had been disconnected so many times. The rep assured her she had my mom 's number and would call her back. She, as well as the other reps, never did. The most information my mom was able to gather from a rep was that the funds had been placed on the card ; however, there was never a solution presented to my mom on how I'd be able to use those funds. This has been an extremely frustrating process, because a ) XXXX and my mom have proof of purchase for the gift card, b ) XXXX  confirmed that the funds were successfully loaded on the card but yet, I'm unable to use the card as it's not even being recognized on the site I'm advised to go to in order to activate it. I called the customer service number listed on my gift card again today to see if I could make some headway, and after waiting more than 40 minutes for someone to answer, I hung up. It should not take jumping through hoops to use a gift card that was paid for. Essentially, my mom paid for something and did not get the promised and agreed upon product in return, and this is unacceptable. Based on the runaround we've had to go through and XXXX 's lack of urgency, concern, and professionalism, I'm not confident neither my mom or I can resolve this without support - or wasting several more hours of our time trying to reach 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 explanation