Consumer complaint received 2020-01-15
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: NY
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Other transaction problem

Complaint:
Hello, on XX/XX/XXXX myself and my girlfriend were about to send our monthly rent transaction of {$1700.00} through Bank of America to our landlord. Bank of America is now partnered with the company XXXX for transactions so we figured we would try it out for this month because the usual ACH through Bank of America costs {$3.00} and takes a few days. With the Holiday coming up we didn't want to risk our rent money being late, past the XXXX of XXXX. We had previously had all our landlords bank information correctly inputted into the ACH transfer. We have 2 landlords, a woman who owns our building and we send the money to, and a man who we communicate with at XXXX, this is the only form of communication we've ever received from the 2 people. XXXX asks for a phone number or email so we sent the money through XXXX to the woman at XXXX. Immediately we realized our mistake that this was the man 's phone number and not the woman 's. XXXX says you can cancel a transfer if it is still pending, ours was never pending it automatically said confirmed. We contacted the man and asked him if he had received any money from us, he said no and he does not have a XXXX account. XXXX also says if the person does not have a XXXX account your money will be returned in 14 days, so we waited. 2 weeks passed, we contacted him again and he had no money from us in any bank accounts, and our money was never returned to my account. I have been playing phone tag with Bank of America for over a month now as well as calling XXXX which just told me to call my bank. Bank of America originally put in a claim for my money to be investigated which was quickly denied. They have told me they are calling whoever my money went to but can not tell me who it is, where it went, or why it did not go to the man. Bank of America said they are calling the exact number we sent the money to, we also called that number and it is the man, who hasn't received any communication from Bank of America. I called back after the new year after the claim was denied and was told another claim would be put in, it is XX/XX/XXXX and I have heard nothing back. I called Bank of America again today twice and now they are suggesting I go to the courthouse and subpoena the bank into telling me who has my money then sue that person. Please help me figure out how to get my money back. I have been on hold with Bank of America for so many hours, waited so many days hoping to receive help but got nothing in return. We made a simple mistake and have tried since the very beginning to fix it with nothing to show, I believe it is wrong for XXXX to say they will return your money or you can cancel the transaction when we were never even given the option. If the money was really transferred instantly to a wrong account this is fraud and we should be receiving help to fix it or reimbursed for our stolen money. If Bank of America is partnered with XXXX they should do more to inform their customers the risks of using XXXX compared to their usual ACH transfer, every transfer service has similar language to XXXX, it is not obvious that XXXX has zero protection at all. We just want our {$1700.00} back. Thank you for your time.

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