Consumer complaint received 2018-04-12
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: NC
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Problem using a debit or ATM card

Complaint:
I've noticed that recently while shopping at XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX my Visa debit card has been processed as a " Pinless-debit '' even after I have explicitly chosen to process the transaction as " Credit '' When this happens the merchant strips my ability to be protected under any XXXX agreements which I would normally have had the merchant processed my payment as I requested. I have brought my concerns to local management at my XXXX XXXX and nearly every XXXX. Most of the people I told about this are clueless about what I am talking about. There are multiple faucets across the internet detailing my same experience. I've called corporate XXXX XXXX and XXXX to make reports and NO one ever follows up. This is a big deal to me because I have been the victim of debit card fraud and merchants processing transactions in this matter infuriate me. Signature Debit network protections have historically been stronger than those of PIN networks, and those banking at smaller financial institutions such as myself where unauthenticated small ticket purchases may now become subject to PIN debit fees. I'm also impacted in incentive and reward programs and I lose benefits that are based on signature debit card activity. MOST PINless Debit consumers will swipe their debit cards to make unauthenticated purchases under {$50.00} without seeing any difference at the POS. However, in the background, the merchant ( XXXX XXXX ) least-cost routing processes will look at the routing options available and route the payment down the path most beneficial to the merchant. The result is a payment flipping from Signature Debit ( XXXX and XXXX ) to the PINless form of PIN debit without the consumer 's ( my ) knowledge or explicit consent. Here 's my biggest issue with this : If someone steals my debit card they can go around to multiple XXXX or XXXX XXXX locations spend less than {$50.00} and turn around and return those transactions for cash. All the while I'm in the hole for all these transactions because the bank sees them as debit transactions and while they MAY choose to reverse them they have to now write those transactions off as shrink which in turn raises the fees I get charged overall. I'm not blaming the merchant entirely because the bank or financial institutions are at fault as well. There are multiple banks out there proactively blocking all debit signature transactions and some blocking all debit transactions. I only wish I had that option so I could be better protected. 

There's even a news article where XXXX stores allowed 165 insecure PINLESS DEBIT transactions and that consumer lost {$50000.00} I DO NOT want to be in that statistic. I'd like something to be done about payment processing at your stores because it's totally against my wishes and really unethical because you don't have any signage posted about your process of switching payment methods without consumer consent. 

This is obviously egregious activity at a high level in both XXXX XXXX and XXXX 's back office systems. In fact your parent company XXXX sued XXXX over signature based transactions via Chip. I'm fairly confident this was because you wanted to push PINLESS DEBIT processing. I don't know if this complaint will even do anything to encourage correctly processing my transaction as I requested but it's a start and I'll do everything in my power to make sure that you don't overlook my requests because it's very disrespectful that your employees or call center employees are totally clueless as to what I am talking about. Not only are they clueless but the XXXX XXXX in XXXX NC has a male manager there that thought it was funny I was bringing this activity to his attention and actually laughed at me. I want a full refund of my membership fees and you all can continue to rip others off at your benefit. You do not get to dictate the protections offered to me by XXXX or XXXX and I will ensure that this issue is not swept under the rug. 

Specifically I brought this to Bank of America 's attention via calling their call center. Nearly every employee I spoke with including supervisors were absolutely CLUELESS as to what I am talking about and literally shrugged my issue off. I asked for a follow up and they still fail to follow up with me.

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