Consumer complaint received 2021-12-16
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: MA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments
Sub-issue: Problem during payment process

Complaint:
On XXXX XXXX 2021, I made an online payment of {$1400.00} to my Bank of America ( BofA ) credit card ending in XXXX. The payment was supposed to go out of my checking account at XXXX Bank. Instead, the BofA tried to withdraw the {$1400.00} from my checking account at XXXX Bank. ( Both checking accounts are stored in my BofA online profile. ) As a result, I was charged a {$35.00} NSF fee. When I called on XXXX XXXX to rectify this, I was told that BofA tried to withdraw {$1400.00} from my XXXX  Bank account ( despite being instructed to do that this time from my XXXX Bank account ), because, apparently, my XXXX  Bank account is a DEFAULT payment source for my BofA credit card. I never knew about that ( nor does it say that anywhere in my BofA online profile ). Anyway, this was only the beginning of my issues with that payment... 

When I called on XXXX XXXX, I asked to correct the source of my payment ( from XXXX Bank to XXXX Bank ) -- as I still wanted my payment to be applied to my BofA credit card account. I was told that this was not possible, that payments " in process '' can not be cancelled or altered, and that I would have to submit a new payment if I wanted the source of payment to go back to the XXXX Bank account. I then specifically asked how I could be assured that BofA won't make another unauthorized withdrawal from my XXXX  Bank account, and that I wouldn't end up with TWO payments being processed for the same amount. I was then explicitly told that this would not happen as the original payment was already rejected by XXXX Bank ( for NSF ) and BofA would not try to do another ACH debit from my XXXX Bank account. Unfortunately, this was not true ... Today BofA just tried to make another ACH debit from my XXXX  Bank checking account ( as well as withdrawing {$1400.00} by ACH debit from my XXXX Bank account ). I was now charged TWO {$35.00} NSF fees by XXXX Bank and BofA is not willing to do anything about it because they say it is not them who charged those fees... Yet, I was charged those fees due to issues on their end. Worse, I have no way to insure that this will not happen again tomorrow or sometime next week. In fact, based on my past experience with BofA, they are very likely to make a fourth ( and possibly a fifth or sixth ) unauthorized ACH debit from my XXXX  Bank account ( each costing me {$35.00} in NSF fees ). 

And all this despite spending nearly two hours on the phone on XXXX and more than three hours on the phone today ( i.e. XXXX  ) trying to resolve this issue ... After one succeeds to talk to an actual human, the BofA Customer Service is either unable or unwilling to help. Different supervisors contradict each other which leads me to believe that at least some of them are lying. Whenever I asked for a manager, I was either hung up on or put on hold for excessively long times ( 30min+ ) and then hung up on. A few times, I was promised a call back from the Corporate Office, but that promise never came through, either... This has to stop. I hope that something can be done about it ... We just lost our father due to XXXX  this week and this is NOT FAIR for BofA to take advantage of and abuse customers in times like this... 

BTW, how do I know that this not a one-time mistake, but a systemic pattern of fraud and deception on behalf of BofA? It is not the first time that BofA executed repetitive unauthorized debits from one of my accounts... I am still out of $ 400+ that BofA stole a few years back from my other credit card account, but this is probably a topic for a separate complaint ... FYI, the CFPB database currently shows XXXX complaints from other wronged consumers against the Bank of America . How long can this last?

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 monetary relief