Consumer complaint received 2020-02-09
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest — Problem with fees
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (NJ)

An automatic payment that had been scheduled for my Bank of America credit card was scheduled prior to the payment date. This automatic payment did not withdraw from my account automatically. Their website and app told me the pending payment would be deducted in the amount of the minimum balance due. They did not deduct this payment, and offered the explanation that their autopay system sometimes takes a few cycles to " kick in, '' and that I should have known this. This is not told to the customer in fact, the opposite is, both explicitly and implicitly, given the fact they they refer to these payments as automatic, and show the payment as pending with the due date. 

The wording of the bank 's website and confirmation emails does not say anything about there being a period where automatic payments will not work as promised. In fact, their emails, when they are sent out, promise the payment would be made on the next due date. They require the customer to opt-in to receiving any kind of email, but they display this information on their website. Their website reported that the payment would be deducted on the due date. Their records, if they are as the representative claimed to me, are incomplete and inconsistent with information given to the on their website. 

When I called the bank, they told me that this takes a few cycles to work as promised, and they will not waive the fee because I could have paid it manually. No other credit card bank works this way ; the industry standard is for automatic payments to begin on the date when they are scheduled. The bank also expected me to know this without being told. This is a limitation of their system which is not typical of this industry. The representative of the bank I spoke with claimed that it is common sense that automatic payments do not always happen immediately. Other banks, including XXXX XXXX and XXXX, do not work this way. Their expectation is that I should have seen a promise to deduct on a certain date, and known that this may not happen as the promised. That is the opposite of common sense. Automatic payments are supposed to be automatic, and to have them work any other way is deceptive. Manual payments can be made on the due date and be received in time, so there is an expectation that automatic payments made before the due date would work the same. 

The automatic payment is for the minimum balance due, which can be a small amount or even XXXX, so even when I monitor my checking account, not seeing my checking account balance decrease significantly does not mean I should not have expected the payment was not satisfied. Their promise is that they will take the amount due each cycle from my checking account, even if that amount is XXXX dollars. 

The bank 's autopay system is also unusually difficult to navigate for the industry. For example, in their mobile app, they offer a virtual assistant to which the customer can ask basic questions. When asked to set up an automatic payment, it does not direct the customer to a screen where this can be done. The automatic payment to which this complaint refers is one I set up after a previous one, which had been working, suddenly stopped working without warning or notification from the bank. 

The bank 's autopay system promises automatic payments on a certain date, but they do not always fulfill this promise, and the bank expects customers to know this without being told. The bank 's policies are deceptive. There was a promise to do something at a date. This promise was unfulfilled by the bank, and they expect me to pay a fee for their failure.