Consumer complaint received 2022-09-06
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: NY
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Problem using a debit or ATM card

Complaint:
After reporting several transactions that were made with my debit card fraudulently I received a letter from Bank of America stating that they don't believe me and they will not honor my claim because if the merchant was able to provide a receipt with a signature. This is totally nonsense because a fraudster does not hesitate to sign whatever they need to sign in this case a stupid credit card receipt. It's just unfair and I just can't believe that the bank has the authority to make a decision whether I'm right or wrong. 

What bothers me the most and this is my main reason for this complaint is that by law I am allowed to request all the documents and information that was used in order for them to come to the conclusion and deny my claim. 

I called in on XX/XX/XXXX and after being transferred back-and-forth at least nine times I finally spoke to the correct department. 
After explaining the representative how it's physically impossible that I made this transaction because in fact I myself reached out to the merchant pretending that I want a copy of the receipt and the receipt was clearly not my name and a total different address unrelated to me. 

I was hoping that they will respond by either telling me that they will do a more thorough research and I was prepared to ask them to give me all the documents that were used in the event they do not want to reevaluate my complaint. 

Without any hesitation the representative was harassing me, intimidated me, yelled at me, and after giving him time to yell at me I nicely asked if I can please say something, his response was absolutely no because we already made our conclusion and this is final and therefore we will not even allow you to talk or tell me anything. And then he began further mocking me belittling me and harassing me to and extend of which I've never seen before in my life. 

And after I was so intimidated and being called all kinds of XXXX names and XXXX totally embarrassed of how somebody can be so rude and so mean to another human being for absolutely no reason. 

But without hesitation I told him that I just want to say one thing if he can allow me and although he did not allow me he was constantly talking I decided that I will just say what I have to say and I was hoping that he might listen to me. 

What I said was basically the absolute truth, which is that I looked up the merchant which was the place where my debit card was used fraudulently and it came out to be a store in XXXX which is not even a United States and it came out to be that they sell luxury watches. I called in and I pretended that I am the actual customer that made the transaction and told them that I threw away the receipt when I got the package by mistake and I requested if they can email me a copy of the receipt from the purchase. And I guess they had no reason why to believe that it's not the actual person that made the purchase because all they are asking for is a copy of the receipt and therefore they did email me a copy of the receipt. 

It was an astonishing and amazing revelation as the receipt had my name completely misspelled and the address was a complete different address which was totally not associated with me in any way. And the signature was just a scrabble without even being similar to mine. And I just want to be clear that Bank of America definitely has my signature on file because I have been issuing hundreds of checks from that checking account and they can see that and they can see my signature on every single check. 

After I told this to the representative his anger began to rise dramatically and he began to raise his voice and told me that the reason we are denying your claim even though we know that you are right it's because we called you on XX/XX/XXXX to verify and ask you if you made this transaction and you told us yes that you did. And knowingly that this never ever happened I nicely requested if they can please prove it to me that they called me. He became so angry that he told me absolutely not we don't have to do anything for you and this is our final decision we don't care about anything. 

I am very nicely requesting to get all documents that was used by the investigator to come to the conclusion that I was indeed a person that made this purchase. I have the right by law to request it and I will need it in the event I file a lawsuit and request a grand jury. 

The entire amount and question is approximately {$2400.00}, I am very grateful that I am in no way in the position that {$2400.00} makes any difference to me. 

However, it didn't bother me that much that or at all that they will not help me recover my {$2400.00}, I absolutely don't care about the money, but I will definitely not tolerate being intimidated and being lied to and threatening me to close my account and the ability to bank with Bank of America for the rest of my life. 

I just can not tolerate corruption and I just can not tolerate being intimidated by a representative that is supposed to be there to help me. 

And I would like to make some thing very clear which is that I am not just a customer that has an account with Bank of America I am also a shareholder and the definition of a shareholder means ownership which means that I have a certain percent ownership in Bank of America which means that it's in my best interest of Bank of America should thrive and be the most profitable bank. And as a shareholder with folding rights I believe that it was totally unacceptable do use the kind of language that was used on this phone call.

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