Consumer complaint received 2017-11-15
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 (AZ)

Context : Visiting XXXX for a XXXX conference and staying at a hotel in downtown XXXX. Hung out with a friend from XXXX and the night and morning below follows events leading to XXXX dollars being stolen from my BUSINESS BOFA BANKING account. 

XXXX XXXX ish go out with a friend in downtown XXXX XXXX XXXX am estimated. : I 'm out with a friend who becomes very sick and starts to throw up on the sidewalk and ca n't walk. We have a couple of passerbys ask if hes ok. I tell 'him ' I need to call an ambulance and take you to the hospital and he becomes very upset and tells me no. 
XXXX XXXX am estimated. : XXXX suv pulls up and XXXX XXXX women in their late thirties and XXXX 's ask if my friends is ok and he does n't look good. I tell them we ca n't find a cab because no one will pick him up because he 's throwing up and it 's too far to walk to our hotel. They tell us " we can give you a ride sweetie '' and one of them helps load my friend into their car. 
XXXX XXXX min later we ( myself and the two women ) help carry my friend into his hotel ( different than my hotel ) room and make sure he gets water and is ok. During the trip my friend had thrown up in their SUV and had made a mess. They were sort of upset but considering what happened they were very nice about it. 
XXXX After taking my friend to his hotel room I told them thank you so much you saved us and I would like to compensate you for the hotel ride and my friend throwing up in your car. Let me go get cash from the ATM hotel for you guys. Surprisingly they say ... " thank you sweetie '' and they start parking the car. I 'm a bit confused and I tell them I will just go in and get the cash out and come back to the car. And they say there is n't any parking on the street so this is easier. They walk in with me to the hotel and one of them mentions she has to go to the bathroom? The ATM is on the same floor as bathroom I go to get cash. 
XXXX Right after I turn around and Im getting ready to give them XXXX bucks for the ride and my friend puking in the car. They dont take cash and one of them says she could n't find bathroom and can I use the one in your hotel. I tell her I dont think so and she insists. I feel bad because they drove my friend and helped get him into the hotel room. Once in the hotel room I tell them theres the bathroom and Im talking to the other one shes acting strange picking up a drink and snack from the snack bar in hotel and acting flirty. I told her to please put that down as its very expensive. Her friend comes out and they start flirting and Im starting to feel uncomfortable and asking them to leave. Eventually after what seemed like an eternity I finally convince them to take the XXXX $ in cash and they tell me thank you sweetie and give me a hug and exit out the door. I go to the bathroom and go to bed. 
XXXX The next morning I wake up around XXXX ( ish ) and Im getting ready to go down and grab breakfast in the hotel lobby. I look for my phone and cant find it and I assume I must have left in bar or maybe the car or maybe in my pants. I then look for my wallet and notice that is gone. Now Im panicked and I dont know if I left this at the bar but then I remembered I got cash. Oh no I wonder if those two grabbed my wallet and phone. 
XXXX I go down to the hotel lobby and ask to use their phone and internet to look up BofA ccard lost or stolen. I call BofA and tell them I believe my card is stolen 99 % but maybe Ieft at bar or something. I should probably cancel. I tell the operator my ccard is holding my hotel reservation and is there any complications? He tells me that if the card is stolen you will covered by BofA and not to worry. Confirm the bar doesnt have your card and cancel with me or at a branch later in the day. Im thinking ok sounds good. After an hour I have breakfast at hotel lobby and I just have an uneasy feeling about it and I decide to go down to the local BofA branch and just cancel in person. 
XXXX XXXX or XXXX ( ish? ) I walk into the BofA downtown XXXX branch and theyre very nice. I tell them I believe my card was stolen and I need to cancel and re-issue temp cards. The branch employee sits down and goes over everything and issues me new temporary cards and everything looks great. After about 15 min I thank them and go to ATM to activate my temp cards and move on with my day. When I go to do a balance inquiry I notice that the balance is $ XXXX below what Im expecting. What the heck!? I go back in and tell them that Im missing a lot of money. She immediately gasps and says oh my gosh. We need to contact someone in fraud about this. She looks at my account and there is a ton of XXXX and XXXX charges that had been charged from the morning until XXXX or later and some were still pending totaling over {$20000.00}. Im in shock and just dont know what the heck is going on. She puts on the phone with the fraud guy and he keeps asking me if I had the pin in my wallet. And I told him no. I said the only thing I can think of is I months ago put my bofa web password ( not the same at ATM pin ) in my wallet but how the heck could they have known my pin from that ( only has two numbers the same? ) Again in a haze and he says oh so you probably left your pin in your wallet. I said no I dont think so I had my password but that should be at home in XXXX I havent had that in my wallet in months. He hangs up the phone and I ask him and the BofA employees if I should file a police report? He says you can but it really doesnt matter for our purposes its not necessary but if you want to for your own record you can. I had a flight the next morning so I decided to not file police report and instead go get a new phone at the XXXX store. 

( Later evening ) I get back to the hotel and ask the concierge if they have any hotel footage ( I was robbed ) and he said you would need to talk to the security guy whos in tomorrow. I tell him what happened and he said we wouldnt have footage outside of your room but maybe get their face when entering lobby. I have a flight next morning so I decide I would wait. 
XXXX Im back home in XXXX, NY. My assistant and I find the piece of paper in file cabinet with login password so I now know they did not have my password or pin with 100 % certainty. I call BofA immediately to file a claim and tell the guy I found this piece of paper and give him new info. I talk to him for XXXX min explaining what happened. Again asking me over and over about pin because he thinks they must have had pin for transactions. He says sounds good after conversation and he said he would submit claim and see what happens. 
I wait and ask about claim. I dont hear anything and after many call attempts I get a hold of someone that tells me my claim was denied and they sent to another address. I ask them why? Its in letter. You said you had pin in your wallet. What?! No I didnt. And I found the piece of paper with my assistant that had the password! They said just resubmit a claim with the new information. So I resubmit new claim. Sure enough it gets denied again. They tell me to resubmit another claim. 
This time I decide XXXX XXXX weeks or a month+ ) after that I need to file a police report. I file a police report telling them in detail of what happened and to please notify BofA of new information they said the would investigate and get back to me. The financial services XXXX investigator told me that BofA was stonewalling her and would not divulge details without a subpoena. She said she would send a copy of report and victims notification and I should attach with a new claim. 

I called the hotel and asked if I get a copy of the hotel footage that night and they said they delete footage a week after or so and they would not have footage that far back. 

I asked for copies of transcripts of all phone calls including the next morning when I wanted to cancel my ccards. They denied my claim and said I needed a subpoena to get phone transcripts. 

Months pass by I receive paperwork from XXXX PD and its not the police report but a notification of victims crime unit. Not helpful to attach. I go into the local BofA XXXX branch and she hears my story and says she will follow up and at this time Im fed up and Im getting ready to move. So I decide I need to consult an attorney. My attorney advises me to get a copy of credit card terms agreement and before spending a ton of money on fees look at CFPB and see if they can help once you get all of your information together. 

So here I am