Consumer complaint received 2015-10-27
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: FL
Product: Credit card
Issue: Rewards

Complaint:
I believe BoA and its XXXX Rewards partners have worked together to engage in conduct that can be best characterized as an unfair and deceptive " bait and switch '' scheme that could impact thousands of consumers, not to mention breaching its cardholder agreements. I suspect this deceptive and unfair practice has impacted other consumers, but the time, trouble and cost of fighting BoA is typically not worth it relative to the value of the reward points redemptions. The details are as follows : We have a BoA Signature Visa rewards card. Under the cardholder agreement, there are " no blackouts '' on using reward points to acquire any plane tickets available from airlines. That is why we have used that card for years to purchase virtually everything. When we finally tried to redeem our points for a round trip ticket for a once-in-a-lifetime-trip to XXXX, BoA unilaterally increased the price of the airline ticket we wanted beyond the quoted price was available from the airline, making it impossible for us to acquire the ticket with the points we had worked so hard to accumulate. 
To redeem our points, we needed only call the BoA Signature Visa travel department ( I will call them a " travel agent '' for easy reference ) and book any flight we wanted as long as we had enough points. Here, we had accumulated over XXXX points which entitled us to book any round trip flight to XXXX, so long as the ticket cost less than {$5000.00}. The XXXX flight we found from XXXX to XXXX, XXXX was available ( with a connection through XXXX ), and cost well under the {$5000.00} dollar limit. We purchased XXXX such ticket and paid for it ourselves ( so we know it was available ), but when we next tried to use the BoA Visa Signature points to pay for the XXXX ticket, we were told that BoA 's appointed " travel agent '' could n't " find the flight '' on their system. Troublingly, they could see the XXXX to XXXX flight on the internet. Worse, BoA 's travel agent admitted they could have booked our desired flight using their internal system ( so it was " available '' ), but only as XXXX separated flights : XXXX from XXXX to XXXX as a " US to XXXX '' flight, plus another " inter-XXXX '' flight from XXXX to XXXX ( the problem is that those separated legs of that flight required over over XXXX points ). At the minimum, that practice " baits '' consumers to use the card to thinking points good for any airline flight available in the market, but then " switching '' to artificial restrictions and pricing upon redemption. That was not disclosed and is deceptive, at best. 
Nothing in any any of the literature I have governing our Signature Visa Points card that says that our right to book tickets is restricted based on some arbitrary availability imposed by BoA 's chosen travel coordination agency. Even after I have asked several representatives at BoA to send me the provision ( s ) of the cardholder agreement they believe impose this limitation, I have received nothing specific ( b/c it does n't exist, I bet ). 
In theory, BoA travel agency 's system could ( as here ) arbitrarily " not find '' any number of otherwise available flights, or ( again, as here ) can arbitrarily " break up '' otherwise seamless flights into their constituent legs in order to force consumers to use more points that should be required. None of that was never disclosed to us, and seems like a form of price fixing. I am not in privity with whatever vendor BoA has elected to use as its " booking agent '' for this points program, so I do n't know what they can and can not do. 
In addition to dozens of hours spent on the phone with BOA to ensure we could get our second seat on the flight to XXXX, we ultimately had to come out of pocket for our ticket. I demanded that BoA reimburse me for that expense offered to simultaneously tender XXXX of my points to BoA in return. They refused.

Company public response: Company chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation