Consumer complaint received 2019-12-14
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: NJ
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:
The AutoPay feature for the Bank of America credit card is either flawed or deliberately designed to be confusing and/or deceptive. When setting up AutoPay, there are four options : Amount Due, Minimum Amount Due, Account Balance, or Fixed Amount. 

I wanted to set up an automatic payment of the Statement Balance but there is no option for Statement Balance so I had to select Amount Due. However, on the due date, only the Minimum Amount Due was automatically processed, resulting in an unpaid balance and therefore interest charged. 

XX/XX/19 Statement Balance {$140.00} due XX/XX/19 XX/XX/19 auto payment of {$25.00}, which is the Minimum Amount Due. 
XX/XX/19 Interest charged on purchases based on 19.99 % APR, {$1.00} XX/XX/19 Statement Balance {$83.00} due XX/XX/19 XX/XX/19 auto payment of {$25.00}, which is the Minimum Amount Due XX/XX/19 Interest charged on purchases based on 19.99 %, {$1.00} Realizing that only payment of the Minimum Amount Due was being processed towards the monthly statement and not the Statement Balance, I called to complain and received credits for the interest charges. I was told when I selected the option of paying Amount Due, it really means paying the minimum amount due. When I questioned what the other option for Minimum Amount Due was for, I was told that also results in the minimum amount due. It is not logical to me why two of the four possible payment options result in the same thing. It is confusing to the customer. 

I decided to change the autopay option to Account Balance. For the next statement, once again the Minimum Amount Due was processed. I was told that my change two weeks before the statement due date was too late and I had to wait for the next payment cycle before payment of Account Balance would be in effect. 

XX/XX/19 Statement Balance {$39.00} due XX/XX/19 XX/XX/19 auto payment of {$25.00}, which is the Minimum Amount Due XX/XX/19 Interest charged on purchases based on 19.99 %, {$1.00} XX/XX/19 Statement Balance {$90.00} due XX/XX/19 XX/XX/19 credit of {$1.00} for interest charged XX/XX/19 one time payment of {$88.00} I called to complain and received a credit for the interests charged. After receiving the credits for the interest charged, I made a one-time payment to pay off the account balance, leaving a XXXX  balance on XX/XX/19. 

With my autopay option set to Account Balance, and my account balance at {$0.00}, Bank of America still processed an automatic payment of {$90.00} on the due date, which happened to be the Statement Balance. 

I called to complain that my autopay option was set to Account Balance and not Statement Balance and asked why if over the last 3 weeks my current balance was {$0.00}, why then did a payment process for {$90.00}, which was the Statement Balance. 

XX/XX/19 auto payment of {$90.00}, which is the Statement Balance The AutoPay feature for the Bank of America credit card is either flawed or deliberately designed to be confusing and/or deceptive.

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