Consumer complaint received 2016-07-18
Product: Bank account or service — Other bank product/service
Issue: Problems caused by my funds being low — 
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (NY)

After years of being with bank of america, my wife and I switched to XXXX when a friend landed a XXXX gig there. I XXXX, all my accounts at BOA out and ended up going as far as calling my wife 's student loan company to change all of the automatic payment options out. The XXXX item I never changed was an automatic transfer set up between my wife 's account and our joint account ( used for paying bills etc ). When I went into the bank to close the account, I was told both of the parties needed to be present to close my wife 's account, and the joint. I accepted that and left. We both work ( i work nights and she works days ) and we have XXXX kids. Needless to say this job of closing the accounts fell by the wayside. I thought nothing of it, because I had moved all payments and automatic billing services off all of our BOA accounts. This happened ( I am told by BOA ) XX/XX/2015. I do not remember the date, but i distinctly remember it being XX/XX/2015. 
XX/XX/XXXX I see something from BOA that looks like a billing statement. Honestly, most mail in our house goes directly in the garbage with the exception of hand written cards. All of our important information, mortgage, car payments, credit card bills, tax statements, are all e mailed to me. I opened the mail up to see that there was a balance due of over {$2000.00}. I immediately thought I must have missed an automatic bill and I saw that my credit was being hit because of late payments. I checked and saw nothing on the credit card statement with the exception of overdraft. I checked the account and found that I had never turned off an automatic transfer from her checking to the joint account. I called up and moved everything back to the credit card and had all accounts closed ( suddenly, I was able to close the joint account AND my own account, but was unable to close my wife 's account without her available. Altogether, there are over {$400.00} worth of overdraft fees. Finally ( about a month later when my wife and I are finally together for more than 20 minutes ) I had her call up and I attempted to resolve the issue. The issue ended up being this : the automatic transfer would debit {$250.00} weekly to the account. Since there was no money in the account ( all had been XXXX out ) it went to overdraft, and overdraft hit the account with a {$12.00} fee. This happened over 30 times. 
I understand that because of my oversight money was moved. The money was moved because I had signed the overdraft agreement and would continue to do so indefinitely. I have no problem with that, and even no problem with a fee. But over {$400.00} is excessive. When I called at a later date to see if I could resolve this on a human level, not an automatic computer and legal response level, I was told that they could refund me {$24.00}. I explained that I understand some of this is my mistake, and that a fee might be leveled, but {$400.00} is over the top. I was willing to negotiate and pay a percentage or even {$120.00}. I was told that would not do. On a human level, with all the negative attention that banks have, I understand why.