Consumer complaint received 2017-08-11
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: WA
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:
Problem : Bank of America ( BOA ) accessed my account without my authorization via a system override to create a pay to account to pay themselves. I noticed this when I received an Email stating : " a pay to account has been set up for account xxxx ... If you did not create this pay to account please contact us. '' I do not use the bill pay system at BOA to pay my credit card. I pay my credit card balance in full ever month ( sometimes twice ). I use the balance transfer process to pay my balance for this credit card. I felt violated that BOA misused my financial information for their benefit - without my authorization. When I contacted BOA to get it addressed I was told that " I created the pay to account. '' To which I advised that I did not, and requested that the representative check the records to validate payment process used to pay the card every month. I further noted that I did receive an Email from BOA to contact them in the event that I did not create this pay to account - and was following the guidance of the Email by contacting them and making them aware of the problem. I requested a supervisor and was given the XXXX XXXX in the XXXX PA office, who agreed - this was a misuse of my financial information for their benefit, and should not have occurred without my authorization. She then warm transferred me to a Online Banking representative ( XXXX, Lastname unknown ) who advised that a " system override '' was used by BOA to authorize them to access my account to create this pay to account on my behalf - confirming this was not done by me - the customer but by BOA. I feel like BOA has taken advantage of my trust in creating a direct route to access my financial resources to pay themselves. The account has never been past due and I have always paid my balance on time and in full. Customers should be aware that this is happening. If they can access your account to set a payment account for themselves, whats to stop them from creating a system override to filter money from your account. This is wrong, it is an unauthorized misuse of my information. They should not have the right to go into my account to make this change. This leads me to believe that my account information is not protected from BOA employees. For the purposes of this complaint the manager in XXXX PA and the online banking representative was very helpful. Please redact their names for publishing purposes so they are not retaliated against by BOA. Their names were provided to benefit the investigation. I did ask for a policy, procedure or other documentation where BOA has notified customers that they can make this type of change, and was advised there was no such documentation. I also asked for a customer inquiry, reference, or other tracking number to document the call today, and was advised that there was no such reference number. ( Which is why the manager in PA provided her name. )

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