Consumer complaint received 2016-06-29
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: NM
Product: Bank account or service
Sub-product: Other bank product/service
Issue: Account opening, closing, or management

Complaint:
My wife, XXXX, and I applied to Bank of America for a Home Equity Loan ( HEL ). The BOA person we communicated with was : XXXX. 

While we greatly need this loan, we are very concerned about our privacy, so on XXXX XXXX, 2016, we emailed XXXX XXXX : " Hello. 
We received your list of documents you require for BOA to process our home equity loan request. Thank you very much. We do understand your need for these documents. These requested documents contain a lot of very personal and private information. Bank of America is a huge global company. We now live in a very dangerous world, so of course, we are very concerned about how BOA will use our personal and private info. We have found that in the past, when dealing with financial companies, whether to open up an account or seek a loan, they apparently sell and distribute your personal and private information to just about anyone and everyone willing to pay for it. We know this for a fact because since contacting financial companies about getting a loan ( eg : reverse mortgage ), for example, the amount of email scam spams I get at this email address has increased by a factor of about 5 - mostly scams related to XXXX, get-rich-quick, work-at-home, and payday loan schemes. Because people need loans, does not give crooked financial companies the right to victimize them. 

Consequently, we want a clear WRITTEN confidentiality promise from Bank of America that it will : ( 1 ) Never sell any of our personal or private info to anyone, and ( 2 ) Never provide, distribute or report any of our personal or private info to anyone who is not both a responsible BOA employee and one who has a fully justifiable and legitimate need to know our info for the sole purpose of processing our loan application. 
Please respond by email. We await your email response. '' We never got an email response to this email. A few days later, both my wife and I got letters dated XXXX XXXX from BOA disapproving of our HEL application. We believe that BOA retaliated against us because we have the nerve to try to protect our personal and private data from BOA 's greedy exploitations of our data for profit. Likely, a common practice with financial companies. 

OTHER ISSUE # 1 : One of the reasons BOA gave for refusing us was, " Too Many Inquiries Last 12 Months. '' CFPB must stop this abusive practice because it is illegitimate to punish people trying to comparison shop for the best financial product for them, forcing poor people into rip-off deals with financial companies. It is Restraint of Trade. For example, what if you went to XXXX stores to look for a hat, and found it in the XXXX store, and was told that because you inquired in XXXX other stores, he/she ca n't sell you the hat or must sell it to you at a higher price because your other visits lowered your credit score? 

OTHER ISSUE # 2 : The CFPB must put Credit Scores ( CS ) out of business! Your CS goes down for many reasons, many of them erroneous and false reasons. Americans are now enslaved by the CS. Poor people typically have low CS, which accelerates them into greater poverty and bars any possible recovery. CS is one of the main reasons for the transfer of wealth to the rich at the expense of the middle class and poor. CS is a criminal tool for thieves.

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 non-monetary relief