Consumer complaint received 2017-01-12
Product: Credit card — 
Issue: Billing disputes — 
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (MA)

Summary : Bank of America issued me with a fraudulent credit card charge of over {$1100.00} and has not taken any action to reverse the fraudulent charge for me, despite my multiple pleas to them. The most ridiculous part of it was that I had already closed my account long ago ( more than a year before they charged me ), so it should not have even been possible to use that credit card. Bank of America was hitting me with a charge on an account that no longer existed! They could not explain how the charge could have possibly happened, yet were demanding that I pay it back and they were doing nothing to help me resolve it. This is an extortion of consumers at its worst. 

Detail : I closed my Bank of America checking account and credit card account XX/XX/XXXX. Then XX/XX/XXXX I suddenly received a billing statement ( I had not received any statements since closing my account ) for a charge of {$1100.00}. I thought this was some kind of scam because my account had been closed long ago, so I ignored it at first. 

However, I continued to receive statements from Bank of America, and now they were adding late fees, interest and penalty charges. I opened a fraud claims case with Bank of America. Every time I spoke with them I was told they could not understand where the charge came from. They also could not explain how the charge was even possible on an account that was closed more than a year ago. I was also told that it looked like the charge was manually placed on my account by a Bank of America employee and they could n't explain why! I was told they would reach out to that employee and and they would call me back later. Yet I never received a call back. So I would have to call back fraud claims to follow it up, and every time I called I had to speak to a different person who said there was no record of any case or follow up on my account, so I would have to explain my whole issue all over again. And again and again, I was told somebody would follow it up. 

Eventually I received a letter from Bank of America that my debt was going to be charged off to a debt collector. I was alarmed and called fraud claims, and yet once again was told that nobody had done anything about my case! So instead of trying to get to the bottom of it for me, they just treated it as money owed and sent it off to billing collections. They told me not to worry because fraud would continue looking into it, but that they could not do anything about it because it was already charged off. 

This is a problem where I hope the CFPB can help protect my rights as a banking consumer as I feel powerless in a circumstance where I am being extorted by the bank and have no means to fix it. It is also negatively and unfairly impacting my credit and I am supporting a young family. The fact that ( 1 ) Bank of America can not explain how this charge was even possible when my account was closed more than a year ago, ( 2 ) nobody at BoA can understand how the charge got there or why it was put there by one of their OWN employees, ( 3 ) that my fraud claim was never taken seriously enough for anyone to do anything about it or even bother to call me back and ( 4 ) that I am suffering the consequences of unfair and extortive behaviour by Bank of America - makes all of this very upsetting. Please help me force Bank of America into treating this matter with the respect and attention it deserves, as I have tried for over a year with zero success and am being repeatedly ignored and given the run around ( " we 'll look into it and call you back '' is the same thing I hear ). Especially now that they have already charged it off, I believe they no longer feel the need to deal with it as they have wiped their hands " clean '' of it. Unfortunately, it has lasting implications for aninnocent consumer that they ripped off.