Consumer complaint received 2025-02-25 00:00:00
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Problem caused by your funds being low — Late or other fees
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
My father is a XXXX veteran, and for a while I had his Social Security payments sent to a XXXX XXXX account at Bank of America. Each month, for years, an XXXX payment came into the account, and a rent payment came out of the account. 

When XXXX payments stopped being directed to this BofA account in XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, I thought the minimum balance to avoid fees was {$1000.00}. Apparently it was {$1500.00}. The account contained {$1200.00}, which I intended to save for my ( XXXX veteran! ) father. I left it safe in the bank. 

The next thing I knew, I received a letter from Bank of America stating that because there had been no activity in the account, they planned to turn the funds over to the State of California as lost property. I went into a branch on XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX, where I sat down with a banker who looked in the system and told me that BofA had in fact already sent the money to the State of California and closed the account. She told me to follow the instructions in the letter to retrieve the " lost property '' from the state. 

If only BofA had actually turned the money over! What actually happened was that they kept the money and the account, debiting it by {$12.00} every month. I pursued the money from the State of California and got nowhere, because the state did not have the money. I kept letting time pass and then re-trying, figuring maybe it took a while to show up in the state system. 

Then one day I thought to try to log in to the BofA website to see if I could get information about where the funds went that way. Lo and behold, the account was still open, and BofA still had the money, and was taking {$12.00} per month as a " maintenance fee '' _even though they were actually hiding the money from me and there was no way I could access it_. 

I went to a branch again, XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXX/XX/XXXX, this time on XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX XXXX XXXX. At that point, a mere {$420.00} in fees had been charged. At this branch, a banker was able to easily find the account. She told me that she first needed to re-activate the account, which took some time, and then she would reverse the fees that had been charged, because there had been no transactions whatsoever in the account and obviously it's not a good look to charge monthly fees for hiding peoples money from them. I told her I was leaving the country soon and she said she would take care of it. I never heard about it again. 

Today, I returned in person to the same branch. The bankers I spoke to submitted an internal request for fee reversal but it did not seem like they fully understood the situation or took any time to consider what a fair outcome could be. When I tried to explain it to them, they cut me off after one sentence. So I don't have much confidence in their internal request. 

For the record, after the account was left with {$1200.00} in XX/XX/XXXX, it has had {$12.00} removed from it each month such that today it only has {$660.00} in it. I first went to a branch to close the account as soon as I got the letter about sending the funds to the State of California. I have sat down with BofA bankers to close the account and recover the fees on three separate occasions, and to this day the account is being debited $ XXXX month, for nothing, and as far as I can tell BofA intends to hold onto the money until they have charged it all away. They've already taken {$560.00}.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief