Consumer complaint received 2022-05-24
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 (MA)

Bank of America unreasonably charged me a late fee and interest, as a result of its credit card auto-pay failure ( even though I paid manually immediately on the next day after discovering this failure ). I called them more than once, but they only refunded me the late fee and refused to return the one-day interest of {$51.00}. 

I opened a new Bank of America credit card ( ending in XXXX ) at the end of this XXXX and used it in the following XXXX. My first statement came for the period of XX/XX/XXXX- XX/XX/2022, with a balance total of {$4600.00} due on XX/XX/XXXX. On XX/XX/XXXX, I set up the automatic e-bill payment within my Bank of America checking account ( ending in XXXX ) for that statement and I selected to pay the full statement amount. On XX/XX/XXXX about XXXX AM ( just past the due date ), I found that this auto payment did not happen as scheduled, so I promptly paid {$4600.00} manually from my Bank of America checking account at about XXXX XXXX However, I was charged a late fee {$29.00} later on that day, and was charged an interest of {$51.00} two days later on XX/XX/XXXX. 

I contacted Bank of America on XX/XX/XXXX when the late fee was posted, and they returned me the {$29.00} charge. At that time, the interest was not posted, and I thought the issue was resolved. A few weeks later, I realized the interest charge and contacted Bank of America again. Their representative understood my situation and agreed to return the {$51.00} charge to my checking account. However, this did not happen subsequently, and I recently received a letter from Bank of America where they said they could not return me the charge. 

It is worth mentioning that Bank of America XXXX XXXX do not support a real automatic payment function, which was already supported by almost all major US banks for a long time. The credit card account should be able to pull money from any of your bank account to pay the statement. They however only provide a workaround when you also have a Bank of America checking account ( which I am using ) : use the bill payment function and treat the credit card statement as an e-bill, which is to push your money to the credit card account. There are a few drawbacks : 1. Your money might be stored in another bank/investment account rather than the Bank of America checking account, so you may still need to manually transfer the sufficient money for the credit card.

2. The two accounts are separate and can only talk via the statement bill, so they may not be well synchronized. When paying from the checking account, it may take one or more days to show in the credit card account. 
3. The bill payment option in their mobile-app and website is not easy to find and has a bad user experience. Many of my friends complained to me that Bank of America credit cards can not pay automatically.

4. The first-time setup may fail to pay as I experienced this time. I believe I am not the only one who suffered.

The unfriendly and limited autopayment makes people easy to pay late, for which the bank will charge late fees. It is hard to believe this is not what they expect to happen and why they did not improve.

All in all, I dont think the {$51.00} charge is fair for a one-day late payment due to the technical autopay failure on their side, especially considering that I have done my best to pay on time but fall into the pit of late payment vs duplicate payments. More importantly and generally, I think they should improve their auto-payment system that I believe troubles not only me but also many others.