Consumer complaint received 2022-11-10
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: TX
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Improper use of your report
Sub-issue: Credit inquiries on your report that you don't recognize

Complaint:
Bank of America sent a pre-approved offer for an XXXX  XXXX XXXX XXXX card to my previous address. Someone intercepted the offer and completed the application, resulting in a 3 bureau credit check on my social security number. I normally have my credit frozen, but had purchased a car earlier in the year and forgot to re-freeze my data. 

The date of the inquiry was XX/XX/22. I was in XXXX on business when I received the notification of inquiry from multiple credit monitoring sources and immediately contacted Bank of America. The phone number provided requires jumping through many hoops to get through to a fraud specialist because the initial firewall asks for customer information. Not being a BofA customer makes it extremely difficult to get through to a human being and it took several attempts to make the correct combination of verbal requests to not be disconnected. This was at great expense, as I was calling from XXXX. 

BofA informed me that the account was not opened due to incorrect date of birth. I asked them to have the inquiry removed from all three bureaus and place a fraud alert under my social security number. Their response was for me to contact all three bureaus and do it myself. 

This is not the correct response. I did not initiate a business relationship with Bank of America. It should not be MY responsibility to go through the long and drawn out process of contacting each of the three credit bureaus to dispute an inquiry that I did not initiate, nor authorize. 

Bank of America is careless and does not act in the interest of consumers. Later, I received two items of correspondence from BofA. the first was a request for more information in order to open the account. Thankfully, it was XXXX class mail and was forwarded to my new address. In the request, it asked for more information to open the account and it also provided my credit score. Had this not been forwarded to my new address, it would have assisted the perpetrator in continuing their attempt to defraud me. 

They also sent a letter to my current address with a case number. The letter stated : " Unfortunately, we couldn't complete your request because we need additional information. If you have any questions about what to send, give us a call at XXXX. We look forward to hearing from you soon. '' When I contacted them at the number provided, they said that case number meant nothing to them and they had no way of looking it up. Why would BofA send out a letter like this, requesting a call and then not be able to address it? 

Bank of America 's careless handling of my personal credit information and lack of action to correct the damage they have caused has caused my credit score to drop and make it appear as if I am seeking credit. This is personally damaging if I needed to apply for legitimate credit with a lender. I am afraid that my only option will be to take legal action against Bank of America. They have XXXX acountability.

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