Bank of America

[Jmillerdoc]

I don't know how many of you feel about the banking industry these days but I am disgusted with them all around. The upper management and owners are some of the greediest and shameless scum on the planet IMO. They have become so powerful they have now been granted immunity from making mistakes that will ultimately come at our expense. Remember "to big to fail"? Outrageous! Although I am an avid conspiracy theorist I will avoid that discussion for now.

I just wanted to warn anyone watching about a very unscrupulous and greedy practice BOA is engaging in. Hopefully someone here will at least avoid getting hit with a fee they didn't even know was possible, preferably after reading this some of you will dump them and use a more ethical bank like Arvest or Regions (although all of them corporately are scum).

Earlier this week I found a forum member who was willing to split a new projector with me for harvesting the new 9mm 445 diodes. This member is an outstanding member of the community who, although we have never met, I trust enough to pay in cash in advance without the protection PayPal and others offer. To avoid PayPal fees on $600+ I offered to do a direct money transfer to his bank account. Usually the transferee incurs the fee but my bank does not charge me to do this.

The member unfortunately gave me the wrong account number. He transposed a single digit. My bank notified me the next day that his account couldn't be verified and the transfer would not go through. About the same time the member realized the same error and sent me the correct information. No big deal right? That's what I thought.

As it turns out Bank of America charges a "service fee" for this! $40 at that!

I discussed this with the manager of my banks wire transfer division and learned a few things. First I learned that BOA is one of the few that do this. Second I learned that the "service" being charged is no service at all. All that they did to "earn" this fee is RECEIVE an electronic request on one of their routing numbers that did not match the account number with the name given on the account and push REJECT on the computer. So a person sitting in front of a computer screen receives an incoming wire transfer, notices the account number is not valid and/or does not match the name given as the owner, and pushes a reject button. For this "service" they charge $40 and it is supposedly legal!

Of the five banks I hold accounts with, four of them do not charge any fee for an incoming wire transfer that cannot be verified. Soon it will be the four banks I have accounts with. I am in the process of closing out a few CD's I carry at BOA as we speak.

Lastly, had I not decided to resend this money with the corrected information I would have been charged the "service fee". I'm not sure how that can be legal but apparently it is.

So, word of warning: if you decide to make a direct account to account wire transfer from your bank, make sure the person who your sending it to gave you the correct number because if their bank is like BOA (according to my bank they are one of few who do this) you could end up with an outrageous service fee.

This is just another story of how banks are licensed to steal from you, BOA being one of the worst offenders.

Hope this saves someone some "service fee" down the road.

Jmilerdoc

 

[hakzaw1]

Compass Bank pulled a similar thing on me when trying to send $$ to JL in China- the teller who ahndled me was doing her first ever wire overseas- all was correct EXCEPT for ONE misspelled name- Photoics intead of Photonics-- I had to pay the wire transfer fee twice- and was told it was MY JOB to read all the info and make any corrections- my bad and I knew she was new as she had to keep going to another bank employee with questions.
so I got charged twice for one transfer- I closed both my Compass accts.- & learned a lesson--
This was for a GB and I did not 'pad' the laser costs to allow for something like this.
NEVER again-- so unless you have 'been there done that' do not accuse any GB host of doing anything that you may THINK is not fair. As you have NO IDEA--and no one is forcing you to join any GB. AND you have NO right to ask any host what these items are costing as long as the host is doing the biggest share of the work involved.
Hosting a GB or joining one is NOT for everybody.

hk

 

[BShanahan14rulz]

BofA has stolen several hundred dollars from me in fees. After a class action lawsuit (or something, iono, I didn't activly do anything or sign up for anything), I received a check in the mail as compensation for these fees.

The total amount was like, $7-8.

Last time I called them, they had a menu option in the MAIN MENU OF THE PHONE SYSTEM that stated, "To send money to Mexico, press 7" or some crap like that. Bank of America, more like Bank of Mexico.

I won't even start to go into how they handle housing loans... Several of my coworkers had home loans with BofA, and were so annoyed with it that they refinanced with a different institution, only to have the institutions be bought out by bofa.

The last straw was when I walked up to a BofA teller and they greeted me in Spanish. 1: this is America, idiot! 2: Bank of AMERICA 3: not everybody with black hair and swarthy skin is Mexican

I'm moving to a credit union once my checks come in. Not that my money will matter much to BofA, but it's the principle of the thing...

BofA has one, single, solitary benefit, and that is its size. It's big enough to have ATMs all over the place, and it's one of those banks that can do whatever they want to, because the government will bail them out.

 

[hakzaw1]

^^^ +5 Shan-
good to know=
I was looking for a good bank and can skip BoA-

 

[Trevor]

My brother worked in large corporate lending at Bank of America for a couple years.

His experience is largely why I am pursuing graduate studies and staying in the field of research and academia.

Big banks. Bleh.

Trevor

 

[steve001]

I don't know how many of you feel about the banking industry these days but I am disgusted with them all around. The upper management and owners are some of the greediest and shameless scum on the planet IMO. They have become so powerful they have now been granted immunity from making mistakes that will ultimately come at our expense. Remember "to big to fail"? Outrageous! Although I am an avid conspiracy theorist I will avoid that discussion for now.

I just wanted to warn anyone watching about a very unscrupulous and greedy practice BOA is engaging in. Hopefully someone here will at least avoid getting hit with a fee they didn't even know was possible, preferably after reading this some of you will dump them and use a more ethical bank like Arvest or Regions (although all of them corporately are scum).

Earlier this week I found a forum member who was willing to split a new projector with me for harvesting the new 9mm 445 diodes. This member is an outstanding member of the community who, although we have never met, I trust enough to pay in cash in advance without the protection PayPal and others offer. To avoid PayPal fees on $600+ I offered to do a direct money transfer to his bank account. Usually the transferee incurs the fee but my bank does not charge me to do this.

The member unfortunately gave me the wrong account number. He transposed a single digit. My bank notified me the next day that his account couldn't be verified and the transfer would not go through. About the same time the member realized the same error and sent me the correct information. No big deal right? That's what I thought.

As it turns out Bank of America charges a "service fee" for this! $40 at that!

I discussed this with the manager of my banks wire transfer division and learned a few things. First I learned that BOA is one of the few that do this. Second I learned that the "service" being charged is no service at all. All that they did to "earn" this fee is RECEIVE an electronic request on one of their routing numbers that did not match the account number with the name given on the account and push REJECT on the computer. So a person sitting in front of a computer screen receives an incoming wire transfer, notices the account number is not valid and/or does not match the name given as the owner, and pushes a reject button. For this "service" they charge $40 and it is supposedly legal!

Of the five banks I hold accounts with, four of them do not charge any fee for an incoming wire transfer that cannot be verified. Soon it will be the four banks I have accounts with. I am in the process of closing out a few CD's I carry at BOA as we speak.

Lastly, had I not decided to resend this money with the corrected information I would have been charged the "service fee". I'm not sure how that can be legal but apparently it is.

So, word of warning: if you decide to make a direct account to account wire transfer from your bank, make sure the person who your sending it to gave you the correct number because if their bank is like BOA (according to my bank they are one of few who do this) you could end up with an outrageous service fee.

This is just another story of how banks are licensed to steal from you, BOA being one of the worst offenders.

Hope this saves someone some "service fee" down the road.

Jmilerdoc

Stop complaining here and go directly to the branch you bank at and complain there nicely. There is a chance that charge will be removed. You did personally go to the bank? If they do not, close out the account.
Next time double check that you have recieved the correct info.

 

[Jmillerdoc]

Steve,
While there may be a time of complaining, I'm more interested in people being aware of what they are dealing with these days in the banking industry. If you will read my post again you'll see the charge did not come from my bank. It came from BOA and there is nothing my bank can do about it. Trust me in this, I am personal friends with the VP in my region and I called him on his cell today. I've already "nicely" complained to the person who could do the most for me. And that's my point. I made the wire transfer to a BOA account and the money left my bank (electronically) arrived at there's, they deducted $40, rejected the transfer, and sent back my money minus $40. My bank is out of the loop on this one. I did have three pretty good sized CD's at a BOA branch that I cashed out and transferred elsewhere today after this fiasco.

Basically if you initiate a wire transfer from your bank with a correct routing number the money leaves and goes to that banks routing number. You are at the mercy of that bank at that juncture. Your bank is no longer part of the equation, this is why I think this practice is suspect. This is how the manager of my banks wire transfer division explained it.

 

[IsaacT]

God I hate Bank of America. I am a Credit Union customer all the way. There is a lot to be said for decency when I am handing people my money. I feel I can trust the people at my FCU, not so at BOA.

 

[KapHn8d]

/sigh

BoA has scraped their fair share from me over the years... including a recent wire fee for helping out my mother-in-law. My favorite "love" from BoA was one time, several years ago, a plane ticket I purchased placed my checking balance very near the low watermark. I got paid and on the date of my direct deposit, 3 debit charges from the airport posted... a sandwich, a newspaper, and a coffee (each of which was less than $5). BoA posted the debits before the deposit even those the money was there... along with a $50 overdraft fee for each of the sub-$5 debits. So, $150 in fees later when the money was in the account, just timestamped in their favor, I am over the barrel.

The worst part of this is that all of the big banks are the same in this regard. Nickel and dime ya to the very end.

Unfortunately, you have to accept this as reality and move on... there is not personal banker that cares these days... well, at least not in a large city.

c

 

[NKO29]

By far the worst bank is PayPal at least for sellers IMO. Their fees are horrendous and the only thing I see that could justify are the assholes who scam sellers with false disputes etc! They take ages to transfer my funds to my bank acc, and my guess would be because they earn interest for the extra day or two they hold my money... Don't forget eBay owns PayPal so they double hit you with fees. However as a buyer PayPal is quite desirable and convenient.

 

[ru124t]

Here in Canada we don't use banks very often, we just stuff our mattresses full of cash. When the mattresses get too full, we use it as insulation in the walls and ceiling!
But seriously, I had an issue like this with a bank here. I signed up for an account that was supposed to be charged no fees for anything .To get this service they charged 25.00 per month. I did a bunch of out of country and out of province transfers and they charged me 50.00 per transaction. They said it was a "phone Call" charge. I promptly went digging through my contracts and pulled out the original one I signed with them some 18 years earlier and also found out something else. If I kept a balance of over 5000.00 in the account, I would not even be charged the 25.00 fee as well. Armed with all this info I went back to the bank. After 2 hours, they understood. Three days later I got back all the fees I had paid for the past 18+ years! It worked out to something like 9500.00. Remember, if you sign anything at a bank, keep the forms ! I wonder how many other people are out there that have 10 grand worth of fees or more that know nothing of this! The banks are legalized mafia!!!!!

 

[steve001]

Steve,
While there may be a time of complaining, I'm more interested in people being aware of what they are dealing with these days in the banking industry. If you will read my post again you'll see the charge did not come from my bank. It came from BOA and there is nothing my bank can do about it. Trust me in this, I am personal friends with the VP in my region and I called him on his cell today. I've already "nicely" complained to the person who could do the most for me. And that's my point. I made the wire transfer to a BOA account and the money left my bank (electronically) arrived at there's, they deducted $40, rejected the transfer, and sent back my money minus $40. My bank is out of the loop on this one. I did have three pretty good sized CD's at a BOA branch that I cashed out and transferred elsewhere today after this fiasco.

Basically if you initiate a wire transfer from your bank with a correct routing number the money leaves and goes to that banks routing number. You are at the mercy of that bank at that juncture. Your bank is no longer part of the equation, this is why I think this practice is suspect. This is how the manager of my banks wire transfer division explained it.

Reading over it again it is a bit confusing. I mistakenly thought by "my bank" you meant BoA

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Another common problem, that very specifically hits low income families disproportionately, is that of overdraft fees.

A few years ago my personal experience left a very sour taste.

You would think that a bank debits your account in a chronological manner. That a payment you make on a monday, would be debited from your account before a payment made on say a friday.

You would be wrong.

A lot of banks will take the money from your account in order from largest to smallest instead.

What happened to me, was that I made a number of payments, and wrote a couple of checks, over a four day weekend.

I made a deposit before the weekend started, but apparently not according to the banks, who only credited $100 from my deposit into my account.

The rest of the balance clears next business day.

Adding insult to injury, despite the deposit being done before checks or payments were made, my account was first debited for everything else, only then credited for the deposit.

Unfortunately, my bank, Commerce, was bought out by TD. Commerce made the full balance of payroll checks available immediately. TD scrapped that policy, and lots of others.

Fine, even letting go of the fact that I should have made the deposit earlier, it was especially slimy of them to take out the debits in order from largest to smallest, which surprise surprise, led to the most overdraft fees. One of my payments was larger significantly larger than all the rest, and it was also the last one I made.

End result, instead of having no fees, had they kept the original policy, or having one overdraft fee of $40, I was instead stuck with seven overdraft fees. Three of them for purchases under $20 using my debit card.

I was able to have all but one of the fees removed, but only due to the fact that they could not provide proof that they notified me of the policy change, when commerce was bought out.

/rant

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

Congratulations on finally getting the loan!

Fair chance the bastards simply realized that they will profit more from allowing you to keep it, then they would if they were to auction it off. There are still many homes out there that are simply vacant. They also know that should they move to evict you, you may leave the house in a condition that would make it difficult to sell.

 

[spyrorocks]

Hak = 100% legit. Many many many A+++ transactions.

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

People have full rights to know what they are paying for. Why would hide the fact you're padding a GB? That goes against the rules of a GB. If you want to blind your customers of hidden fees then its a sale thread not a GB and should not be presented as a GB.

Its clearly outlined here.

You sound like the banks people are describing here. EX; hiding fees without full disclosure. If you want to charge extra money you need to tell that to everyone in the GB so people can decide if they want to pay it or not. If you cant handle the risks you should not be doing GBs. Its all right there in the What is a GB thread.

I think you somewhat misread what Hak was saying. He is extremely trustworthy and honest.

In this case a new additional cost came up that was not factored into the GB, and he ended up stuck with it.