Consumer complaint received 2024-02-01
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments — Problem during payment process
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (CO)

Bank of America 's mobile app makes it exceedingly hard if not impossible to pay your credit card, and I believe that this is intentional so that more customers incur late fees and interest for failure to pay. I don't believe I can attach screenshots here, which makes it harder to describe the issue, but I'll try. I should clarify that I am a BoA credit card customer who does NOT have a BoA checking or savings account, and I do not know if this issue also applies to those who do. 

On BoA 's credit card mobile app, under your credit card balance, there is a pay button. For the first few months of having the credit card, I would click the pay button and it would give me an error and prompt me to call customer service. My card was on a 0 % intro APR deal so I waited some time to handle this, because it was annoying to have to call them. I finally called them after I got a late fee and asked them to reverse it as well as advise why in the world I wasn't able to pay my cc bill from the app. They took my external bank account info over the phone for payment, processed the payment, and reversed the late fee. They also sent over an instruction document on how to pay bills, which was zero help : hXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX. 

My bank account is now added/connected to my BoA account from when I initiated the over-the-phone payment. The instructions in the above say : Log in to the Mobile app and select Pay & Transfer then Pay. 
Tap on the blue square next to the account you want to pay from and select Pay.

Complete required fields and tap Pay youll receive confirmation. 

Except there is no blue square icon, and I'm not able to schedule a payment from that area of the app. 

Additionally, when I click " Pay '' from the app, the app shows a different set of instructions, saying that I have to go to Pay and Transfer, click Pay Bills, then " Tap Add Payee '', which also does not exist on the app. There is no add payee button. 

I tried to do this from the desktop site as well and got this error when I tried to click Pay and Transfer, Pay my Credit Card, AND Make a payment " There was a problem processing your request. 
An error occurred in the processing of your request. The request has not been performed. You have been taken to the Accounts Overview Screen. You will want to resubmit the request. '' So apparently the only way I can make a payment to my credit card is to call Bank of America and speak with an agent over the phone to schedule one, waiting upwards of XXXX minutes on hold to do so. 

I find this all extremely frustrating and archaic ( I have many credit cards through different institutions and literally every single one it is extremely easy and quite literally seamless to make a payment, as it should be ), but worse, I am highly suspicious that this is by design, not by mistake. The harder ( or more impossible, seemingly ), Bank of America makes it for customers to make payments, the more they can rack up profit in the form of late fees and interest. 

I am highly disturbed at this shady and ridiculous practice by massive Bank of America, and would like to see a class action lawsuit against BoA for their unlawful and deceptive practices.