Consumer complaint received 2017-07-20
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: TX
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest
Sub-issue: Problem with fees

Complaint:
This is a serious problem~ regarding Bank of America 's Faulty & Misleading Accounting System across the board for all my 3 checking accounts with this bank, when using my Debit Card linked to any of my given BOA checking bank accounts. Here is the problem : When I use any of my debit cards to pay for a transaction, and the charge is, of course, immediately placed against my respective bank checking account to which it is linked, there is NO transaction number that Bank of America assigns to that transaction! SO I ca n't keep track of it! ~ or ANY of my transactions, so that I never know what my day-to-day ACCURATE balance really is in my accounts. What often happens is that even though the merchant has not actually claimed for that amount of money~ yet~ Bank of America deducts the amount of that charge from my respective bank account, and IF the merchant does n't really ask or claim for that amount of money IN 5 DAYS, Bank of America deletes it from its Telephone Banking System. And this same item that had shown up in my online banking account page, showing as still " processing '', has no Transaction Number assigned to it, but this amount is ADDED BACK INTO my bank account, AS IF THIS transaction had never taken place~ leading me to believe that I have more money in my balance than I really do! ~ because BOA knows that this merchant will rightfully come back at some future time and really claim for their money ( unless the bank puts it into a Claims Dispute, which has not happened to these charges, & BOA knows this ). THEN in either 3 or 6 or 10 or 12 days, when this same merchant decides to really claim for its money ( the charge I had made ), this merchant goes back to Bank of America & THIS TIME actually withdraws the money from my account, which then is reflected in my balance, of course. Again! SO BOA 's system of deducting, then adding back into my bank account in 5 days if the merchant has n't truly claimed for its money, then deducting same again in 6 or 10 days, is VERY misleading! Another PROBLEM associated with BOA 's accounting system is that, as I pointed out to a phone BOA teller this past Friday ( XXXX XXXX 2017 ), there is a duplication of this same transaction that then shows up on my online bank account balance page, where he could see that this charge is showing as " processing '' which has NO transaction #, and yet at same time, it is showing on same page that it has been paid in actuality at some later time~ all of which is reflected in the current " Available Balance ''. The problem here is that NO one could keep track of his or her account balance at BOA with this kind of misleading system & information! Hence, I have had multiple, multiple {$35.00} overdraft fees on all my 3 bank accounts with BOA, and while BOA has refunded some of them, many have NOT been refunded, and I have lost a tremendous amount of money because of this problem. I have repeatedly asked Bank of America to give us an ACCURATE balance on both its online and telephone banking system, and the various tellers & supervisors have said they think I have a good idea, and will " pass it along '' to whom (? ) at BOA, but nothing is ever done about it! Bank of America has tried to tell me also that it is up to the merchant ( to whom I paid a charge for a service, or made a payment ) to provide a transaction number to the bank, but regardless of whether a merchant does this, BOA SHOULD provide US, their customers, a tracking number, because it is on ITS OWN WEBSITE, WHICH THEY DO HAVE CONTROL OVER! But BOA denies any responsibility for this! I have told BOA that regardless of what a merchant does, it is incumbent upon BOA, as OUR bank, to give us a transaction number, so that we can keep track of it, until it is finally paid! Otherwise, I am always on shifting ground, like quick-sand, with BOA 's flimsy & misleading accounting, whereby they deduct such a charge, which has not really been withdrawn YET, then when a merchant has n't claimed for its money in just 5 Days, BOA puts back into our account that money, & then when merchant decides in about a week later to claim for that money, the money is suddenly withdrawn again, and this time, legitimately, without any prior warning to me ( because by that time, BOA has wiped it off my telephone account balance system, and as to BOA 's online system, as mentioned above, the same transaction has been assigned NO transaction number whereby I can see IF it has been paid, and when ), the bottom in my bank account drops out, and I am charged {$35.00} overdraft fees! THIS is LUDICROUS! WHAT a slick system BOA is operating! ~ VERY clever on their part, as a way to scam its customers out of money with these MULTITUDINOUS {$35.00} overdraft fees assessed on millions of customers at BOA! ~ because of its fraudulent, misleading accounting system which gives us defective, inaccurate, & incomplete information! BOA is and can get rich collecting ALL these {$35.00} overdraft fees, when you consider how many transactions I do every week, PLUS if you multiply that TIMES the number of OTHER BOA customers who also have to put up with such a fraudulent accounting system! I am asking that BOA would refund all my {$35.00} overdraft fees, and until BOA will change its online & telephone bank account systems to provide customers with complete & accurate information on each & every transaction, I will not do any more business there. I have repeatedly asked BOA to have a feature on its telephone system, in which we would be able to dial a number on our phone for our actual true balance, where all my transactions have CLEARED my bank account, and then we can dial another number on our phone to get a list of all the PROCESSING or " waiting in the wings to be paid '' charges, which would have a Transaction Number for each of them, which we could add up and KNOW to deduct from our actual true balance given on the other phone button. THIS is what I used to be able to do at XXXX XXXX ( I no longer bank there ). BOA just says that 's a good idea & then never does anything about it!!! Consequently, I have been caught in this misleading type of bank accounting system of BOA 's, to where I 've had to pay all these crazy {$35.00} overdraft fees!, which have caused me to go broke! On top of that, when I spoke with that telephone bank teller at BOA on Friday, XXXX XXXX, he was going to have a supervisor to call me back, to place a hold on my {$35.00} overdraft fees accrued on that & previous day, but NO one at BOA called me back, and even on Monday, after I 'd put more money into my accounts over the weekend, when their business dept is closed, so that I could cover for these {$35.00} charges coming in, I never got a call back, so I called BOA AGAIN on Monday to request for a Supervisor to call me back, but no one ever did. SO THEN I called at XXXX XXXX later that day, holding on phone for ONE HOUR to speak with one finally, and she said she was n't going to refund any of my {$35.00} overdraft fees. THAT is when I decided to contact CFPB, to see if you could intervene on my behalf, and ask them to refund all my {$35.00} overdraft fees, given their faulty & misleading bank accounting in which it is impossible for anyone to keep an accurate balance in our bank accounts, without having any transaction number assigned by BOA to each transaction, using our debit card~ plus the other problems with their balance system as described above. IF you need further information about this, please contact me at Cell XXXX. Thank you for helping me on this. I ca n't help but think many other BOA customers suffer under similar fraudulent & misleading accounting at BOA. Sincerely, XXXX XXXX XXXX

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