Consumer complaint received 2017-05-28
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement — Card was charged for something you did not purchase with the card
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (MD)

Bank of America refuses to credit credit cards for false and fraudulent charges. I recently noticed two false charges on my card : one for {$130.00} by XXXX that posted on XXXX and a second for {$97.00} by XXXX that posted on XXXX. The first occurred the same day that I charged {$7.00} for an ad on XXXX, so it appears that card information was stolen from internet usage on XXXX. The second was for live plants that never arrived. <P/>I tried to dispute both of these illegitimate charges through online banking and then by phone. However, BOAs procedure for doing so is excessively restrictive to the customers disadvantage. It demands specific names of people I spoke to and specific dates of interactions with the merchant. These are unreasonable because they are unnecessary. The XXXX charge almost certainly is an internet scam and the XXXX charge clearly was for live plants that were not delivered at all, let alone when they said they would be delivered and let alone the need to deliver them before they died in transit. There is no proof of delivery or services provided by either merchant for either of these charges. Yet BOAs position demands that I prove a negative event, an oxymoron from a company with usurious procedures. I have a string of email exchanges with XXXX in which it is documented that they lied about the ship date and lied about XXXX leaving messages in a non-existant mailbox in an isolated and rural area in the XXXX XXXX. At one point XXXX claimed that I was given a notice by XXXX in the non-existent mailbox advising me of an attempted delivery and advising me that I could make a 2.5 hours round trip to the XXXX center in XXXX, MD to pick up some dead plants. This was also told to me for the first time on a date I was departing on a trip for several days. Delivery instructions on the XXXX shipment were that the plants should be delivered to the front porch of the house. We were home the day the alleged attempted delivery notice was left and no one from XXXX came to the house in attempt to follow delivery instructions. However, XXXX had delivered something to the front porch of the house the previous day from another merchant, so it is clear that XXXX knows how to make a real delivery from another merchant to the same delivery address. XXXX claims about its alleged shipment are patently false and they have no proof of delivery from us with one of our signatures of what they claimed they shipped. I also called a few times and asked to speak with the owners of XXXX. They would never take or return my phone call. They simply stonewall the public while levying fraudulent charges on your card. <P/>After being unable to dispute these false charges through BOAs online dispute form, I called BOA to dispute the charge. I was put on hold for roughly 20 minutes before reaching the first person who answered. Then I was put on hold for another 10-15 minutes while she allegedly tried to reach someone else to dispute the charge. I had to listen to endless and irrelevant drivel from BOAs automated phone system. When I finally reached the second person I was told I had to talk to, she wanted the same irrelevant information about these fraudulent charges that the online form had demanded ; furthermore, she said that she would not credit the card for the false charges without them. She also wanted dates of interactions with the company. In XXXX case, there were no dates of contact with it, as there were no interactions with XXXX whatsoever ; yet because I had no contact with the very company that levied a false charge on my credit card, BOA said it would not issue the credit. I finally had to hang up to get some work done, after I repeatedly requested that my credit card be credited for these charges.
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It is clear that BOA refuses to credit false charges in a reasonable manner and deters many customers from obtaining credits on their accounts for false and fraudulent charges. This amounts to a widespread, systemic scam on BOAs part that is quite lucrative to it.