Consumer complaint received 2022-02-09
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers — Confusing or misleading advertising about the credit card
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION (MN)

Bank of America, for at least the past one to two years, has allowed consumers to check for " personalized credit card offers '' via its website. This, on the surface, appears to be a way to see if consumers are pre-qualified or pre-selected for credit card offers with Bank of America by way of Bank of America performing a soft inquiry on the consumer 's credit report. Throughout the " personalized offer '' application process, I have been asked each and every time to provide my sensitive and confidential identifying information -- full name, date of birth, last XXXX digits of my Social Security number and home address and phone number. According to the personalized card offer process, entering this information will tailor credit cards to me according to my desired features in a credit card and according to my specific credit score. After entering all of the required information and proceeding with the personalized credit card application, the next screen does not, in any way, indicate that there are no " personalized credit card offers '' for me ; it gives the false and misleading impression that I have received their " personalized card offer '' according to the credit bureau information they have obtained on me at the time I submitted my personalized credit card offer application. After submitting my application and form with my personal information, Bank of America then takes me to the next screen that says : " XXXX, we recommend Unlimited Cash Rewards credit card XXXX Bank of America XXXX XXXX XXXX credit card, '' with an image of that particular credit card. Once again, Bank of America is falsely and intentionally leading me to believe that the Bank of America XXXX XXXX XXXX credit card was selected personally for me based on information Bank of America obtained during the soft credit inquiry that was obtained at the beginning of me completing the application and form for their personalized credit card offers. Because of this deliberately false and misleading marketing practice, I was enticed and led to reasonably believe that Bank of America did, in fact, match me with a personalized credit card offer and that I was encouraged to apply for the credit card based on the information they obtained about my credit history and other identifying information. I then applied for the credit card, under the misleading and false advertising by Bank of America that I was pre-selected and/or pre-qualified for their credit card offer. I entered in further personal information about myself on their credit application, which was required of me by Bank of America, in order to proceed with the false and misleading marketing and advertising that I had received a personalized, customized offer for their Bank of America XXXX XXXX XXXX credit card. In the end, I was denied for this product for reasons listed in the attached denial letter sent to me by Bank of America. I have used Bank of America 's " personalized credit card offers '' tool many, many times over the past two years. Each time, Bank of America has used knowingly false and misleading advertising and marketing to make me believe I had received a personalized credit card offer, based on my personal credit information, for which I'd be approved under their credit underwriting guidelines -- why else would Bank of America require all of my personal and confidential data and then invite me to apply for their credit card and NOT say there were no personalized credit card offers available to me? At no point does Bank of America 's website or online forms, or after the submission of my online forms, say that there is no personalized credit cards offers for me ; this is extremely misleading and deceptive marketing and lending practices. If Bank of America had indicated that no personalized credit card offers existed for me, and none of their screens " recommended '' a card to me, I would not have applied for their credit card products and thus not incurred the numerous hard inquiries from Bank of America on my credit report. Furthermore, Bank of America offers absolutely no way to speak to anyone directly about these misleading and deceptive marketing and lending practices ; they only offer a way to mail a letter to a post office box. I have attached one of the many credit denial letters I've received from Bank of America, along with screen shots of every step of the misleading and deceptive " personalized credit card offers '' process on their website.