Heads are going to ROLL at Bank of America!

Waters isn't a Congresswoman you want to piss of BoA, this is a woman who has proven she'll get stuff done.

Well, at least she didn't get preferential treatment because that would be bullsh!t.

Personally, I applaud Bank of America for this. Proving that they do not treat people differently because they are "powerful" or "influential."

Way to go, Bank of America, for upholding the American Dream and giving everyone equally shitty service.

@henwy:

I am Maxine Waters! Don't you know who I am?!

@Jage: Only because whoever answered the phones at first didn't know who she was! I guarantee you if any of the higher-ups knew she was on the line, she'd be treated like royalty.

yikes. 2 hours! its true though, if you're current you're not going to get much help from your mtg servicer.

I hope this is enough for her to push for a serious smackdown on the financial industry. All that money we gave them, where did it go? Nobody seems to really know. Free market capitalism can go piss up a rope. The financial industry needs to be seriously over regulated or babysat right now since they clearly can't be left to their own devices.

Please explain to me why dealing with BOA is better or more efficient than dealing with a govt. agency?

@Jage: i had the same thought. having her actually experience what the average customer does is great.

otherwise, how else can the complaints be addressed? if she had been treated deferentially and not known any different, then she may have considered any constituent complaints as being anomalies.

i hope some good comes from this with regard to all the banks and how they serve their various accounts.

All I have to say is MBNA had a two-ring policy. The phone was answered within two rings, usually by a person. It even applied to internal customers(People, a.k.a employees). If your phone rang more than twice, and wasn't set to farward, it was automatically forwarded, and the not answering was logged and went against our daily satisfaction score.

Bank of America is just doing their part to fight "the Man."

And the point of this article is -- WHAT?

Who give's a rat's a** if some know-nothing unskilled politician was put on hold? The whole financial meltdown was caused by the politicians meddling in the first place -- why would anyone want to let them meddle further?

The politicians are supposed to work for US, remember? They're not "royalty", despite what they may think of themselves, and they should have to wait LONGER than actual customers using their OWN money.

In fact, I'd go so far as to support a phone system that automatically identifies politicians calling from their taxpayer-funded offices and puts them at the END of the hold queue. The politicos have f**ked the economy up enough yet the majority of financially-illiterate morons in the country seem to not understand that fact.

Maybe they realized what a complete and utter moron the caller was and chose to ditch her. If there is a human being less qualified to be in Congress I pity them.

@Jage: @ShadowWylde:

Clearly she wouldn't have; otherwise she would not have bothered making the phone calls in the first place. She made the phone calls because she knew they were having issues and being given the run around. I imagine she expected her clout would help her deal with her constituents' problem more expediently. If it had, though, I don't think she would have been any less equipped to understand or address the complaint.

This sure is great publicity for Congresswoman Waters.

@shortwave8669: Barney Frank D-MA would like to have a word with you.

@FuryOfFirestorm: Yes, thank goodness the higher ups have that golden parachute to save them from the failing economy when they're out looking for a job.

@VRWC: Did you not read the committees she's on. I would hardly call her a "know-nothing unskilled politician."

@numberoneasa: Yes. Like successfully preventing oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at the very time they were expanding their efforts to give loans to people who could not afford them.

We are trying to fix something that isn't broke (sic). We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae.

@cmdrsass: Also Chris Dodd, and Charlie Rangel.

@shortwave8669: How original -- targeting congressmen as incompetent. Most of them, incredibly, are actually very intelligent and skilled at what they do. If they don't meet your approval, it doesn't mean they are morons. Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you, seriously, could do a better job.

@VRWC: The whole financial meltdown was caused by the politicians meddling in the first place

Um... how so?

@VRWC: Yes, on what basis do you make the claim that she is a know-nothing, unskilled politician? Or that she or other politicians *caused* the financial meltdown with their meddling? Please enlighten us.

@VRWC: You mean un-meddling. The whole financial mess was caused by DE-REGULATTION, or essentially the opposite of meddling. Or do you interpret reducing control over the financial industry a form of meddling in of itself, the whole "inaction is in of itself an action" line? So, if by meddling you mean "making changes to reduce control over the financial industry, such that it is free to do as it wants", would you then say a LACK of meddling is re-instating regulations?

Or would you like to cut the foreplay and just admit you don't know anything?

For once, Bank of of America's lousy customer service actually did something good, keeping a corrupt member of congress (yes, it is redundant, since to be a member of congress you have to be corrupt) from creating more worthless needless pork laden legislation or getting sweet talked by scumbag lobbyists.

Bank of America, I salute you!

@shortwave8669: @shortwave8669: I think Phil Gramm, Jim Leach, and Thomas Bliley would have a lot more to add to the discussion.

@Edge101: And Maxine Waters is definitely not one of these. I did not say all politicians are idiots or morons, just this one- Maxine Waters. Her only talent or skill is shrill outrage

@shortwave8669:
[mayorsam.blogspot.com]

"To add to the fun, Maxine, who never met a race card she hasn't dealt, has earned yet another dubious honor - being named by the blog "Beyond DeLay" as one of the 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress. She's the only one on the list from the Metro LA area and only one of two Democrats on the list (the other is William Jefferson of Louisiana - need we say more?).

Among Maxine's alleged corrupt activities include her daughter shaking down local pols for big dough to appear on Maxine's slate mailers, her husband working as a part-time consultant for a government bond firm seeking introductions to decisionmakers, and a lucrative deal for Waters' husband and son getting a county golf course concession with support from Supervisor Yvonne Burke whom Waters had campaigned for in a close election."

Her being on the Financial Services Committee is like hiring an arsonist as Fire Chief. Her ignorance, racism, and/or corruption helped create this mess.

The only thing that would make me happier is if BofA admitted they were giving her the runaround after they saw her name come up on the Caller ID.

Did she think she could refinance someone else's loan over the phone? Sure, that makes sense.

@Edge101: I'm going to have to side with the OP, here. Maxine Waters has a reputation for being extraordinarily corrupt. The cynical ones among us might say that makes her overqualified to be a congresswoman.

@ShadowWylde: Somehow, I think that being a black woman, she has been on the receiving end of some shitty treatment in her life. She knows.

@bilups: Oh lord, give me a break. Guess what, 4 years ago there WASNT a issue. Much of this mess didnt start coming to light till 2006, 2 years AFTER this video was made.

@shortwave8669: Strictly speaking, one does not "deal" the race card, one "plays" the race card.

I didn't say I liked Waters or that she's a great Congresswoman but her years in the CA Assembly were productive, she was the author of quite a few bills that made revolutionary changes to the state government and, if she chooses to make as much noise on the Federal level, I think her dealings with BoA can be positive for the consumer public.

@FuryOfFirestorm: Roll?

Don't you mean spin, as in pretending this was an "isolated incident"?

It's only an isolated incident insofar as Waters only experienced it once, not a thousand times. But what do you call it when it happens to a thousand people once each?

@shortwave8669: Nepotism, cronyism, and fundraising are hardly "corruption" no matter how undesirable they may be. And please explain how anything on that list is any different than anything any of the other 500 members have done within the bounds of the law. It certainly doesn't make her a "moron" or a "know nothing'.

And I am SICK TO DEATH of people complaining about "playing the race card." Just because you are sick of hearing about racism doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Grow up.

Quite frankly, Maxine Waters has a lot of currency with me because she was one of the few people who had the courage to try to stop GWB from stealing the presidency in 2001. If just one senator had had the courage and good sense to do what was right, we would have been spared the 8-year national nightmare named George W. Bush. There probably wouldn't BE a banking crisis, at least not one of this depth.

@henwy: No no no... Penn and Teller's T.V. program on Showtime is Bullsh!t....

@PunditGuy: Um... how so?

When Phil Gramm and John McCain had the laws loosened in 1999 to allow unethical lending practices, that's when. (Although I doubt that's what VRWC was "thinking" about, if you can call it thinking.)

Hi, Consumerist - please proofread at least your headlines. ;o)

I'm hoping this experience will motivate Ms. Waters to actually do something with the power of her office that will help all consumers, not just the two constituents she was trying to help - it would be a lot more efficient use of her time.

According to how I read this story she is calling on behalf of people who have been paying their mortgage to ask for help how to pay LESS of a mortgage. How is this any different then a restaurant patron demanding lower menu prices halfway through their meal?

I've always wanted lawmakers to hear what I've occasionally gone through to get a customer service issue resolved, but I knew none of them would listen to a 1 or 2 hour recording even if I did record it. This story is even better! I bet she would get the same ghastly treatment if she called Sprint. What some large companies call "customer service" amounts to a brush-off, and a bad faith breach of the service they are legally bound to provide, IMHO.

Bank of America vs. Maxine Waters. Hmm, can they both lose?

The thing about "they don't check to see if you have a computer" is lame victim-seeking. Are there people who don't have at least a local library with terminals, albeit maybe with a wait? Yes, but vanishingly few.

@bobpence: @bobpence: Sure, more and more people have access to a computer, but it certainly is overstating the case to say that she is "victim-seeking." Fewer people than you think are attached to a computer 24-7, and I've never heard of a national company all but *requiring* access to a computer in order to take advantage of their services. If my recently departed grandmother had received the same treatment, she wouldn't know what to do with a computer even if she had one.

@henwy: I'm ok with our elected representatives getting some preferential treatment when they're working on behalf of their constituencies. You know, us.

@OwenKlient: Debt securitization was deregulated in 1999, not during the Bush administration.

I'd like to see how long Ms Waters office would put me on hold when I want to complain to her about Congress's wasteful spending and inaction.

@Ben Miner: If you accept that some of the current crop of foreclosures are not the borrowers' fault, then no, it's not exactly the same thing. There are still a ton of adjustable rate mortgages (and worse) out there waiting to turn into foreclosures. ARMs were sold with the outright promise that you could refi before the payments went up, which you can't now. Maybe it's more like a random guy who's told that a swanky joint has $1 beers and finds out otherwise only after he's half-tanked.

So these constituents' mortgages might be eating through their savings at an alarming pace due to rate adjustments or under/unemployment. Or they might have just realized that they are not going to be able to refi out of a massive adjustment that's still a couple of months away.

Personally, I think you had to be pretty gullible to get into an ARM, but I certainly have more sympathy for people who are current and trying to avoid disaster than people who never really expected to have to pay at all.

@kexline: Yes, thanks to Gramm, Leach, and Bliley and the rest of the Republican Congress. And my point was that I doubt that a different president would have ignored the warning signs for 2 or more years before becoming concerned about the run up in home prices or the growing number of foreclosures.

@Jim Topoleski:

your joking right?

Thank you that was a good one. Over four years ago they starting giving out loans with no proof of income, at no time should this have been allowed. Thanks though you made me laugh.

@VRWC: So you want to punish congresspeople doing work for taxpayers when they call from their taxpayer funded offices?

Logic fail.