A strange day in la-la land

I had 2 interesting things happen to me today:

1. I got an email from Bank of America telling me I was overdrawn on my checking account! What a shock! Well, it was, since I hardly use that account very much anymore and I knew (I knew, I'm telling you) that I was not overdrawn.

As it turns out, Bank of America decided to start charging me a monthly fee out of the clear blue sky (probably because I'm not using the account). I asked the customer service woman when I was informed about this policy. She said, "When you opened the account."

I asked her, "You mean in 1985?"

YAH

She took the fee off the account and advised me that to avoid such an event happening in the future, I should deposit $2,000 into the account post haste and not let my balance fall below said $2,000.

I laughed. Then I told her that as soon as my automatic payment to my car insurance goes through next week, I'd be canceling the account.

She seemed stunned that I would consider such a thing, even after I told her I had another account at another bank in town that does not charge me one penny in monthly fees. That bank is open 7 days/week until 6 p.m., I informed her.

She started spouting some psycho-babble, and I had to wonder: do they go to some kind of special training to learn that?

Yikes!

2. I tried to order something through Amazon.com, only to discover Amazon.com is not working today. At first I was told everything would be fine in one half hour, but after one-half hour, I was told everything would be fine in 24 hrs.

Well, after all the trouble I've been having with Newburyport Business, this bizarre turn of events made me feel a little better.

I curse Bank of America and the Internet, I tell you, I really do!

And a certain policeman in a certain seaside town north of here who made a circus event out of the fact that my front license plate was stolen about 3 yrs. ago and is still listed as stolen.

When will these police understand that, if I also have the back plate and my registration, I probably am the owner of the vehicle?

Must get new plates ... I consulted w/Marshal Howard at last night's City Council meeting, and he agrees ...

Have a great day, Debbie!

So I signed up to be a "fan" of Bank of America, on Facebook. As you know, I'm nowhere near a fan of Bank of America, so of course I felt free to throw in my 2 cents, along with a lot of other people. I got into this exchange with, as it turns out, a woman who is the banking center manager in New Port Richey, Florida.

This is another complaint I have - this is the line BOA feeds their people and they stick to it (i.e., you're not smart enough to maintain a check register), no matter whether the bank is under investigation by the Senate Banking Committee for charging excessive overdraft fees and the methods it uses to charge them, or just whatever your complaint is. It gets real personal, real fast.

Wow, my "guess" is that she's not real happy right about now.

Beware

This morning I had an email in my Windows Mail inbox, allegedly from Bank of America, telling me I had only $1.68 in my checking account and to sign in to online banking through the email. Since I knew this was not my correct balance (and I never get alerts about my balance, ever), I called BOA immediately.

This is a fraud - but the scariest part is that the email did have the last 4 digits of my account number correct.

I was told by BOA customer service to forward the email to abuse@bankofamerica.com and that emails like this one have been going out in the last few days.

No more online banking for me.

Bank of America has finally lost me

It takes a lot for me to abandon anything - or anyone, for that matter.

But Bank of America, with its ever-increasing corporate greed, has pushed me over the ledge.

Now I read the giant corporation is charging/going to charge not only a $35 overdraft fee (no matter the amount of the overdraft) but if you don't pay off the overdraft in I guess what it has concluded to be a 'reasonable' amount of time, they hit you with an "extended overdraft fee."

I still say no one is forcing them to allow anyone to go into overdraft. Time was, you didn't have enough funds, your check bounced and you paid the penalty. Period.

You will recall the situation I had some months ago when I had a check to me bounce and I had paid bills against the check and I went into serious overdraft mode because the bank cleared all the payments I had made AND processed the automatic check I had set up to pay my rent, even though I was already in overdraft.

They claimed it was to help me avoid embarrassment.

Well now the Senate Banking Committee is about to step in.

Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, has joined Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and others in sponsoring the Fairness and Accountability in Receiving (F.A.I.R.) Overdraft Coverage Act, designed to protect bank customers from excessive overdraft fees that, according to a release from Brown's office, may run upwards of $30 per charge. (TheMariettaTimes.com)

Oh and even the large bank's only have a 4.3% profit margin - poor them.

I do believe in personal responsibility but these banks are exploiting a situation they helped create with fake "overdraft protection" and other such crap.

Yeah, I fell for it too, but now I see that it's just another way to encourage irresponsibility and it fosters poverty.

Because once you're in the hole, and they start digging deeper with the "extended overdraft fee," it gets harder and harder to crawl out of the hole.

An afternoon with NPR

I've been listening to NPR all afternoon so I'm just full of info.

First - I just heard some report about money approved for wind turbines and at the end, it said there was some approved project in Newburyport.

HUH? I was only half listening since I was writing. I can't find anything about this on line.

Anyone know what this is about?

This NPR reporter on now keeps saying, "relator." Very annoying.

Second, there was a report about debit cards and how banks have managed to make them into credit cards.

It's simple - and I've had a rant about this before - the bank "covers" your overdrafts and then charges you $35 for this "help."

I had a similar situation to the one they described happen a few months ago when I put a $2.09 latte on my debit card and got slammed with a $35 fee because I forgot about a check I wrote (I hardly ever write checks anymore). I think I could have scrounged up the $2.09 out of my laundry quarters and change I have strewn about the car.

I politely asked Bank of America to stop authorizing charges if it put me in overdraft. I was told that small charges don't require bank approval and they have no control. Further, I was told, most customers like it because it saves them embarrassment.

They removed the $35 fee.

But now NPR has told me that they will probably have to allow me to opt out of this "service," which is what I tried unsuccessfully to do.

The government is looking into this, NPR told me.

Good.

Bank of America love

I have to say - again - that Bank of America has really come through for me.

From Kim Baldinelli in the State Street branch right on up to the man from the Chairman's office, Matthew Taft, the bank delivered.

I know in today's world, people love to hop around jobs and banks and credit cards, but I've stayed with my BofA accounts and credit cards, inherited by them through BayBank, BankBoston and Fleet.

This week I settled with the bank over my credit card debt - and wow it feels good.

And of course I have to also thank my dad, who made that part possible ...

Between that and finally getting my 2007 tax situation squared away (thanks to my brother-in-law, Phil), I now have nothing to agitate about when I wake up in the morning.

It may be the economy, but the bank could have been much harder on me than they were (although some of the whipper-snappers who called me could have been more polite).

I said it before and I'll say it again: loyalty and longevity have their rewards.

Even with big, "impersonal" banking institutions.

And it helps to have a supportive family.

I still grieve, though, for the people who don't have these familial relationships, or who are hesitant to approach big banking executives. I certainly was.

(So here I have to thank my neighbor, Lisa, who encouraged me to go into the branch and talk to someone, which led me to Kim.)

Hell, I was hesitant to approach my dad. I thought I was way too old for that (and it's not as if he has money sprouting from trees).

I know it's hard for people to talk about their financial situation, but I do hope that I have - by doing so myself - given at least one person some hope or some impetus to straighten things out.

Procrastination and fear do not help. Stand up and fight.

Bank of America comes through

Doo doo doo dee doo ...

Hey, guess who called me a while ago?

A man from the Office of the Chairman of - BANK OF AMERICA!

Yay, my faith in having been "good" all these years actually paying off somehow has been restored.

All my issues have been resolved.

End of story.

OMG

I cannot get this video to download off YouTube.

Why does Blogger make this so difficult? Or is it RealPlayer? Who knows? Who cares?

It's the first 37 seconds of Real Time with Bill Maher, which aired last Friday.

Thanks to my sister Sarah for bringing it to my attention.

(I still can't get no) satisfaction

So ... I took the advice of Ari Herzog and contacted BOA via Twitter.

This guy ... this David Knapp ... gave me the same old line of "you have to keep closer track of your bank account."

What, he thinks that I don't know how much money I have?

Later in the conversation, I tell him I have a receipt in front of me showing that I had $XX in my account and not only that, I had spoken to a BOA customer rep who confirmed that balance ... oh, he says, well we don't know what checks you've written ... (I tell him that I know what I'd spent, and I rattle it off to him) ... don't trust your ATM receipt or your customer service rep.

So ... my keeping track is flawed and their keeping track is flawed ... he suggested that I go to my local banking center (that's what they call branches, I gather) to get "educated" about the posting process.

OH NO, Mr. Bill! I'm just a dumb woman.

Why bother to give balances on ATM receipts at all, I have to ask myself?

They just confuse the feeble minded - you know, me. (Just for the record, I write about 3 checks/year. I'm a debit card person. My checks still have my Boston address on them and still say "Fleet.")

In all fairness, Mr. Knapp does vow to send my case to "the team," who will get right on it, on Monday. No promises.

And that is all he is prepared to say to me. He does not even say, "Goodbye, have a nice day!"

He is impatient with me and he insults my intelligence. I've only had a bank account for - let's see - at least 35 years ... what do I know?

I am now so angry that I am prepared on Monday to write to Rep. John Tierney (US Congress), senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry; State Rep. Michael Costello and State Sen. Stephen Baddour.

I'm spelling out all their names so that when their staff searches for their names on Monday, this post will pop up (although I know the staff of at least some of them already read this blog).

Who's the head of the (congressional) banking committee now? I'll write to him/her also.

Mr. Knapp was kind of enough to say, after I said I now realized it was legal for the bank to put me in overdraft through creative posting, "Well, I wouldn't say it's legal ..."

Awww, it's so I won't be embarrassed by them denying charges to my debit card when I had the money in there all along, or gave specific instructions (at least 3 times) not to pay anything when they think I don't have the funds to cover it.

Screw legality - Bank of America really, really cares about me.

When being good is bad

I was just talking to one of my neighbors; she is a manager at a branch of one of the local banks.

I asked her about these fees and ACH payments and all the problems I've been having with Bank of America.

Much to my surprise, she told me it was legal for the bank to "let" you go into overdraft and then turn around and charge you fees.

Apparently it's something they do for people with a good credit history (said she) ... or it's a legal scam (says me).

Somehow, this is not a comfort to me.

I was making a deposit the other day and the teller told me my checks from [insert name of payee] should go in as CASH since they are drawn on BOA.

Thus, she continued, I should not be having any issues with checks clearing/subsequent payments putting me in the red.

So why did it happen?

I think because they can get away with pretending otherwise.

I still long for the days when, if you didn't have the money, the bank did not pay the bill. All this courtesy because I've been a good customer is killing me.

That being said, I am cancelling all automatic payments I have set up because it encourages me to be lazy about paying my bills myself. Obviously, all the convenience and courtesy is not a good thing when you're dealing with the likes of me ...

Where is the "service" in customer service?

So in the last week, I've had three interactions with customer service for some very large companies - Microsoft, Symantec and Bank of America.

I've already written a rant about my unfortunate experience with Symantec that resulted in my removing their Norton anti-virus product from my laptop.

So ... what I want to know is, where does it say in the customer service manuals that it's the latest and greatest thing to blame the customer for the problems they are having?

Now I've got Bank of America claiming I am responsible because the bank decided to authorize a $145 charge on my debit card that it claims I did not have funds to cover.

I look at my online statement, and it says I had plenty of funds to cover the payment I made over the phone to Comcast, having just made a deposit and all.

But no, the customer service dept. tells, me. They AUTHORIZED the charge at a time right before my deposit posted to my account. (I would also note that they used to credit you with at least part of a deposit at the time you make it, but they don't seem to do that anymore.)

Authorization, it seems, equals $125 in fees on my account because authorizing the charge meant that the last five places where I had charged something put me in overdraft - and only by about $30 at that, I might add.

The fact that the actual charge from Comcast doesn't show up until AFTER the deposit in the online account activity means nothing because they AUTHORIZED it before the deposit posted.

"I don't see any red numbers there," I say to the woman.

"That doesn't mean anything," she replies, "because we authorized it before the deposit posted."

She keeps saying that, over and over.

Well ... since I was blissfully unaware of the $125 deduction in my balance, I continued on as if it were still there, resulting in an additional $210 overdraft fees that could have been easily avoided.

I ask her why the hell the bank authorized anything that I did not have the funds to cover (although I still maintain that I did have the funds). And mind you, I'm going to the ATM this whole time, and the receipts never indicate that I have a negative balance ...

"We authorized the Comcast payment as a courtesy to you," the customer service woman informs me primly.

Yeah, right ... a courtesy off which they made $125. And a week later, they made $35 off the "courtesy" of allowing a $5.39 charge at Dunkin' Donuts ... and on and on it went until I went online to pay my propane bill and discovered that I had $335 less in my account than I thought.

The same day I'm talking to the customer service persons, I get in the (snail) mail a notification from Bank of America that this is all going down.

So I demand to speak to a supervisor, who continues the tack of telling me that it's all my fault ... How is it my fault that the bank authorized Comcast to take $145 if they truly thought I did not have it, or for that matter, the $5.35 at Dunkin' Donuts? She says she understands what I'm saying, but ... Ultimately, she puts back into my account the original fees totalling $125.

She refuses to put back the rest, even though she has already admitted that it was a "snowball" effect from the original fees.

She says restoring the $125 not an admission that the bank did anything wrong, it's another "courtesy."

"That's all I can do," she says. I tell her I'm not hanging up the phone until she puts all of it back.

Once she realizes I am really not going anywhere, she gives me a mailing address that I can write to, to perhaps "resolve" this issue. Of course, it's not an email address; why would it be?

I liked it better when things were not all electronic because back then, banks could not run scams like this. I admit that I have in the past been somewhat careless with keeping track of my actual bank balance, but these days I am very careful.

Not authorizing the Comcast payment I could have dealt with - I would have paid the bill online, like I usually do. I just happened to be on the phone, negotiating my new digital package (which gives me less services for $10 more, I might add) and told the guy while I had him on the phone, I'd pay my bill, if there were no fees involved in doing that. Ha ha on me.

So beware of "courtesies," because I'm pretty sure that a courtesy is not supposed to pad the coffers of the entity extending it.