Consumer complaint received 2024-02-22 00:00:00
Product: Credit 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
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
My complaint is with Bank of America on their credit card issue. I use Bank of America because I have an XXXX  XXXX card, which only works with Bank of America. 

I applied for and received this card on XX/XX/XXXX. Like I do with all other credit cards, I immediately set up my funding account, which is my XXXX XXXX XXXX ( checking ) account. I also marked the selection for autopay, which is what I always do. I hold XXXX other credit cards : XXXX, XXXX XXXX, XXXX. I have never missed a payment on any of them because I always set up autopay right away. 

In XXXX, I got many emails that my payment was due. For example, on XX/XX/XXXX, I received a notification that Account Alert : Credit Card Payment Due Soon. I was not worried about this because I had already set up my funding account, and I hadnt received any calls, texts, in-app notifications, letters, or any emails that I would have problems paying. I had even logged into my account many times to see if I was spending the right amount of money. XXXX XXXX  cardholders need to spend around {$3000.00} in a short period of time to get a certain amount of miles for free. 

I assumed that my payment was eventually paid. I logged in a few days later on around XX/XX/XXXX ( which is XXXX  days after the original payment due date ) and was shocked to find that not only was my payment still not paid even though I had set up autopay, I was even charged {$87.00} in total. On XX/XX/XXXX, I was charged {$29.00} for Late Fee for Payment Due. On XX/XX/XXXX, I was charged {$58.00} for Interest Charged on Purchases. 

Immediately, on XX/XX/XXXX, Saturday morning, I called Bank of America customer service. I first paid the entire amount that I owed to Bank of America ( {$3300.00}, which includes my personal transactions as well as the {$87.00} late fee and interest fee ) over the phone. I did not speak to any customer service representative at this point ; I just entered my account details on my phone. It shows up on my Bank of America account page as Automated Phone Payment-Thank You.

I then went back to the phone menu to talk to an actual customer service representativea human, not robot. I told the human customer service representative that this late payment was uncalled for, given that I had gotten a bunch of emails from Bank of America from when I opened my account like credit card not present during this transaction or Your opinion matters and in particular, the email reminder that my payment was due, but never got a single email or notification saying that my funding account ( that XXXX checking account ) needs verification. 

The customer service representative agreed that it was not right for me to be charged {$87.00} in total for the late fee + interest. I asked her if she could refund the amount back to me as I have never missed an appointment and because I got all sorts of communications from BofA on completely unrelated things but nothing regarding my funding account. She did and said it would show up in my account as an adjustment. I asked for proof -- some kind of receiptbut she said it would just show up in my account activity section and I believed her. I asked her if she was taking notes in case the refund amount would not show up within the XXXX business days she talked aboutin which case I need to follow up with another customer service representativeand she responded saying that she was taking notes. 

Then, I asked if she could verify my funding account for XXXX. She said she was able to do it on the back-end and to wait XXXX business days for the verify your funding account message to be removed. I was not sure if I trusted what she said and so I called later that afternoon on XX/XX/XXXX to ensure that my funding account had been verified. 

However, this turned out not to be true. Even though by XX/XX/XXXX, I had gotten the {$87.00} credited back to me on my account ( I had set a reminder for myself to check to make sure I got the amount back ) with it showing up as - {$87.00}, it still said verify your funding account. 

I thought maybe there was an extra delay on this and it would at least show up by XX/XX/XXXX. I was also not willing to be on hold, waiting for someone to pick up, and have additional hours-long conversations with customer service representatives. I had also lost my voice again in XXXX ( I have doctors notes ). Therefore, I made sure not to spend ANY money using my Bank of America credit card knowing that my funding account was not verified. 

Today, on XX/XX/XXXX, I woke up to some horrifying emails from XXXX, saying that Alert : Your account may have insufficient funds. I was incredibly confused by this. I then see that the person who had taken {$3200.00} out of my XXXX checking account was Bank of America. I was completely shocked because I had made sure not to spend ANY money using my Bank of America credit card. I had also already paid off the amount I owed when I WAS using the credit card : {$3400.00}. I was also confused on what happened to the {$87.00} that I was supposed to get back. I thought if anything, it would go back to my XXXX funding account. However, I then realized that XXXX XXXX {$3200.00} = {$87.00}. For some reason, on money that I had NOT spent at all, they gave me that discount because of the interest/late fee refund that they owe me. In addition, I was extra confused because according to what I see on my end, my funding account ( XXXX ) was still not approved. Therefore, how could they have even withdrawn the money from my account? Additionally, the {$3200.00} amount showed up in my activity page as XX/XX/XXXX Ext Sch Payment Transfer. This was extra confusing to me. What is an External scheduled payment transfer? I definitely did not authorize this nor did I spend the amount of money needed. In fact, I spent {$0.00} from XX/XX/XXXX onwards. 

At XXXX XXXX  on XX/XX/XXXX, I called Bank of America to find out whats going on. I read them the majority of this report and indicated that because my issue had been ongoing for a month and because I am a student and can not be out this amount of money that I did not spend, I was writing a report to the CFPB. I also told them this so they could perhaps take me seriously. 

I was able to speak to someone on the credit card team eventually, and told him of my issue. He apologized for the problem and said that it was quite severe. 

He also agreed that I was double-charged and that he would refund me {$3300.00} ( which was the amount I had paid over the phone on XX/XX/XXXX ) to my XXXX account. He specifically said, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX which is my XXXX checking account that is my funding account. He said that this transaction can take XXXX  days and that this could even be denied, but he was going to put in the request. I asked if he could put in a very detailed explanation I asked for a receipt or some kind of confirmation ( e.g. on my BofA activity page that I was going to get this money back to me ) that this would go back to my XXXX XXXX account and he said that he is unable to provide it. I said I really did need it in case it doesnt go back in XXXX  days and especially since I have little trust/faith because my issue has been ongoing for a month. He said I should talk to XXXX about this. I gave up on this issue because theres no way that BofA and XXXX talk to each other, and this customer service representative knows this, and is unwilling to give me any kind of proof that I was actually going to get this money back. At this point, I have little faith. I also asked if he could refund me the interest I was losing on my XXXX savings account ( because my checking account is going to overdraft onto my savings account ) for the XXXX  days I am going to be out this money. I specifically opened up a savings account with XXXX because of the 4.30 % APY and now I am losing out that interest I could have earned with the thousands of dollars Bank of America has taken out. I also asked if I could have a direct line to talk to someone if after XXXX  days the amount of money is not returned to me because I can not keep calling for hours at a time ( I have been continuously losing my voice due to XXXX due to illness and who knows when it will go out again ) but he said he could not and I would just have to check. 

I was also confused on how come I did not get {$87.00} back to my XXXX bank account when the first ever customer service representative refunded me. And then he said thats not a bank thing, its a Bank of America credit card thing. I said I was still confused ( and was also worried because if I continue to spend {$0.00} on this card, how am I going to get {$87.00} back? ) But anyway, I decided not to press the issue further because he was going to refund it back to me {$3300.00} to my XXXX account. 

I also was asked why I even had money taken out in the first place. He said it was because I had set up Autopay. I was shocked. I said that according to my account page, my funding account wasnt verified! So they shouldnt even have been able to take money out of my account in the first place. I asked if it was maybe the previous customer service representative who had said she had fixed the autopay and perhaps she set it to always be around {$3000.00}. I also said that this does not make sense. When I set up autopay, I definitely did NOT say that I wanted to pay any amount around {$3000.00} every single month. I said with my other bank accounts, the autopay adjusts to how much I have spent. For example, on XXXX XXXX, some months I spend {$100.00}, some months I spend {$300.00}. Some months I even spend XXXX. Its not like XXXX XXXX takes out {$500.00} every single month from my account. The He then said Bank of America works differently and left it at that and said that next month, Bank of America will take out around {$3000.00} again ( even if I do not spend that amount of money! ) I asked to be connected to a supervisor after he makes his request for the refund so that perhaps they could give me a receipt. I talked to this supervisor a little bit until she purposely hung up the phone after muting herself for a short period of time. Nobody called me back and I have great cell service in my apartment ; so I am sure she hung up on purpose.

Bank of America has at this point stolen my money without due cause and the customer service rep has basically indicated that they will CONTINUE to steal money.

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