Bank of America Mistakenly Shuts Down Access To Your Account, Charges You For The Pleasure

Poor Jacob. He only wanted to deposit a $2,019 check with Bank of America. Apparently, this was enough to provoke the bank into shutting down his account, leading to overdraft fees whenever Jacob tried to access his money.

He writes:

Hello, I am writing to “vent” in a way about my latest experience with Bank of America. So last Friday I made a deposit of $2019 into my check account and had my balance printed out to see what kind of shenanigans BOA was going to try and pull this time. Well I apparently had access to roughly $366 if I remember correctly. I figured as much because apparently this is standard for any large deposit, but hey I figured I could live on that for the weekend. Well the next day I went to seven eleven to buy myself a pack of cigarettes and when I swiped my card the cashier says “cards been denied” and I didnt think twice about it because there was a post it on the register saying the debit was not working and I never use credit. So I bought my cigs with some cash and headed to the hardware store. I picked out about $21 of nuts and bolts and went to the register. Can you guess what happened? Card denied!!! So I had the cashier run it through again. Same result so I had to leave the store with nothing.

I get home and decided to give BOA a call to figure out whats going on. While I was on hold I logged onto my online account access and saw in bold red letter “HOLD”. When I finally did speak with someone he verified that indeed my account was on hold. So I didn’t have access to any of my money not even what was in there before my large deposit. I was told that Tuesday at 9:00 AM my money would become available. I was frustrated but I had to deal with it.

So an hour ago about 8 hours after the hold was released I check my account to find I have 3 overdraft fees and immediately call BOA. After waiting 15 minutes to speak to someone I was told that as a “courtesy” they would remove the charges for me today. Wow, what happened to “sorry we made a mistake”. Which is all i was really hoping to hear. Then when I asked why it was a courtesy to remove unwarranted overdraft fees, the phone operator told me it was my fault? Just WOW! Then she said that there was never a hold and that the credit just hadn’t been applied yet. Then I asked her well why was my card denied? Why did it say my account had a hold on it online? Why did the phone operator i talked to the other day tell me there was a hold? Why couldn’t I access the money I already had in the account? All I heard was dead silence, followed by “As a courtesy I have removed the charges from your account today.” Bank of Americas wonderful service is about to lose another customer…

Bank of America doesn’t want your service nearly as much as they want to win our Worst Company in America contest. Ditch the monolithic banking monster in favor of a friendly local credit union.

RELATED: How To Find And Join A Credit Union

(Photo: meghannmarco)

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