Consumer complaint received 2016-08-18
Product: Bank account or service — Other bank product/service
Issue: Making/receiving payments, sending money — 
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (NY)

I am unfortunately writing to BCFP because I do not know where to turn to given the multiple failures at Bank of America. 
My family and I just moved to XXXX and attempted XXXX international wires ( amounts vary from {$68.00} to {$10000.00} ) to XXXX different entities in XXXX and XXXX. All the international wires failed miserably between XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX. 
The failure continued despite calling BofA five times, spending about 7 hours on the phone ( a portion of it includes international roaming and XXXX charges ) while I was in XXXX. I spoke to about XXXX Bank of America employees and managers in customer service, on line banking, international wires and digital services ; to no avail! I was given many reasons why the wires failed. I was told last week, when I was still in XXXX, that if I wanted to access my money I needed to travel back to the U.S. and go to a local branch!!! I was also sent an email stating that Dodd-Frank triggered the cancellation of my wires, including the one for {$60.00}! I came back to the U.S. this week and went to the NY headquarter. On Tuesday XX/XX/XXXX, BofA managed to send a wire to my personal XXXX account in XXXX, but I am told that I still can not make international wires through my online banking. At first, it was implied that I should travel to the U.S. for my international wires! After complaining, BofA offered to set-up a telephone wire account, which is still more expensive and inconvenience especially when abroad, compared to a functional online account. 
The entities to whom I am sending wires, are receiving funds from their other clients with the same account, routing, XXXX, XXXX numbers, address, etc information. The problem could have been with XXXX entity but not XXXX!. At each wire attempt, I received online confirmation that the wires were set-up correctly and would go through. No one at BofA still understands the reason for the failure ... In my humble opinion there are bigger issue of competency, customer service, management, etc. 
Besides losing control over aspects of my personal finances, I lost credibility with various entities in XXXX when I am their only customer with these unbelievable issues. This is definitely not the type of first impression I want to make, especially in XXXX. 
We moved to XXXX in 3 week and have been there a month, so there is pressure to settle in and organize our lives : secure housing and school for our son, control interim expenses such as hotel, moving out soon of a friends house to not be undesirable guests, minimize avoidable ATM and XXXX fees, when our XXXX XXXX is not accepted, etc. 
Important personal administrative and logistic issues took a back seat to this nonsense. 
XXXX housing opportunities were lost besides wasting time. The rental vacancy rate XXXX is worse than XXXX or XXXX ( less than XXXX % ) ... Paper checks are not accepted in XXXX so payment to others or myself are not feasible. Traveling to drop cash to various entities is XXXX century, a waste of time and expensive. This experience was very stressful and frustrating. 
In addition XXXX now lost my signature card, so my wife can not withdraw money from our XXXX joint account until the beginning of next week once I return to XXXX and sign a new customer card! 
I wasted hours on the phone, holding BofA staff 's hand, coordinating their effort with their various departments. I am sure you will agree, it is not the client 's responsibility to ensure a seamless experience or bluntly said to solve BofA 's problems.