Consumer complaint received 2016-11-02
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: MD
Product: Credit card
Issue: Billing disputes

Complaint:
BOA does not allow reasonable charge backs on its credit cards. It avoids them principally through XXXX methods : ( 1 ) a dysfunctional, buggy and excessively onerous website that it falsely claims can be used to request them, and, ( 2 ) an acute shortage of live representatives that result in a minimum of half an hour on the phone, dropped calls, and a typical encounter with them resulting in one hour of lost time each time you need to contact tehm. 

I have XXXX charges on my XXXX Mastercard that are illicit that should be credited as a charge back to the merchant immediately. XXXX of them, for {$77.00} on XX/XX/XXXX and {$27.00} on XX/XX/XXXX were for merchandize not received because the merchant ignored explicit shipping instructions provided as a condition of the purchase. Specifically, they were told that there is no US Postal Service delivery address to the shipping address and that the items would need to be sent via XXXX or XXXX which do deliver to the shipping address. Despite these instructions, the items were handed over to the USPS, which then falsely claimed to have left " notice '' of an attempted delivery. This is also deliberately falsified since USPS does not deliver to the address in question, as stated ; hence it did not leave notice of an attempted delivery to an address it does not deliver to. Since all of this information was provided weeks ago, AS A CONDITION OF PURCHASING THE ITEMS, there should be no further wait time for this clear merchant error. Why is the consumer disadvantaged in a clear case of merchant error? 

The XXXX charge for {$39.00} on XX/XX/XXXX was for an item received but which was not the item ordered. Again, this is a case of clear merchant error. A week or more ago it was told to mail its return label to the billing address. Since it failed to follow these instuctions as well, with no return label available, why should the consumer be disadvantaged by repeated merchant errors? Obviously, this is an habitual and recurring problem on BOA credit cards : blaming the credit card consumer for repeated, habitual merchant errors in an effort to discourage the credit card user from obtaining a charge back to the merchant. 

Although BOA claims that it is possible to dispute a charge through its website and online banking, this is effectively a lie. The mechanism for doing so is full of software errors, dysfunctionally restrictive such that facts can not be accurately reported, and generally are structured to discourage charge backs. 

Upon discovering BOA 's lies about online disputations of charges, I then tried to call someone in its customer service department. Since I have received this card ( which is branded with some cooperative agreement with a semi-federal agency, XXXX rewards ), the minimum amount of time I have been on the phone with them is half an hour. Recordings come on that indicate, habitually, that they are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls. Since these recordings always come on, this is another falsification by BOA. Along the way, I was asked by a robot on the call to enter the last XXXX digits of the card number. Yet after I did, I was then told to enter the full account number ; when you go to search for that, you are disconnected, despite more lies that suggest that if you " push 1 '' you will be given more time to get the number they should not be demanding on a phone call due to security risks on wireless calls. Yet, the sloppiness does not end there : if you do n't want to enter the full account number, you are instructed to enter your full social security number on phone calls that are easily intercepted instead. 

The CFPB needs to sanction BOA for its multitudinous ways it avoids issuing charge backs that should be made, while pretending to make disputations for false and errant charges available. It should particularly examine the number of consume

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