An identity thief robbed Scott’s Bank of America account of $600. Adding to the pain, the bank spun its wheels on offering a refund, bludgeoning him with a $35 overdraft fee.
Scott escaped the trap by appealing to BofA via Twitter, where a customer service rep came to his rescue, hooking him up with a refund, dropping the overdraft charge and coughing up a $100 gift card.
Here’s his original, pre-Twitter message:
It’s now 2 weeks before Christmas and I currently only have enough money to put food on my table. This week I had $635 taken from my account, $35 of which is an “overdraft” fee (money was transferred from my savings the second I determined there were issues). I had never authorized this charge, but customer service’s attitude was to dispute the charge and wait for the lengthy process to get my money back. I have contacted the faulty charger, and am getting my money back, but needed the $35 back from bank of america immediately. They refused, despite the lack of due diligence on their part to ensure the transaction was legitimate in the first place.
And now for his happily ever after postscript:
Brandy of their twitter team went above & beyond in handling my issue and gave me a $100 gift card for the horrible service I received this week, while ensuring those I dealt with earlier in the week got held responsible for the service they gave me. Wish I had dealt with their twitter team first.
If you’ve used social networking to score a customer service victory, share your tale in the comments.
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Shouldn’t the title of the article be “BofA Charges Me $35 Overdraft Fee After Identity Theft, But BofA Rescues Me”? Twitter didn’t do anything other than provide a communication medium.
Heh, I was just going to post something along the lines of “Yay, Twitter! For refunding the customers… oh wait.”
Yeah, well if it wasn’t as public a forum as Twitter I’m sure BoA would have continued to toe the company line and drag their heels in dealing with Scott. It’s only because of the public nature of Twitter that companies like BoA feel shamed into actually providing reasonable customer service.
I think that $100 gift card came out my TARP payment. Can you buy me some socks or maybe a bottle of good booze?
It’s too bad a company will treat their twitter team as an important resource and give them abilities beyond that of a traditional customer service agent, yet treat their main custtomer service department as a cost center.
Unfortunately, a BoA gift card can only redeemed to pay for other BoA fees.
How exactly does Twitter work? Did the OP post something that only friends could see (like Facebook) and it indirectly made it to BoA or did he somehow send the message directly to them?
On your twitter account, you would post your complaint labeled with “@BofA_help”.
For example if you wanted them to know “Bank of America are a bunch of crooks” you would post:
“@BofA_help Bank of America are a bunch of crooks”.
They are able to monitor messages other users are posting that’re labeled with “@BofA_help”.
Twitter lets you “tweet” something that everyone can see if they look at your feed, tweet something directed at someone specific (that is still viewable to the public) and send direct messages (like an email via twitter). Simplified but it gets the point across.
This is so like BofA. I opened a checking account in the early 90s, in person. About a year ago BofA, in it’s infinite wisdom, started charging a annual fee for all checking accounts that weren’t opened online. I called saying I wanted to get the annual fee waived. CS over the phone told me to cancel my present account and open a new one online, then there would be no fee. I told him it seems a little crazy to make me jump through hoops just to end up with the same outcome as waiving the fee. Well, I when in to a branch to closed my account. When I told the teller about what had happened with CS she said I should have just asked at the branch in person. She was willing to waive the fee right then and there. Needless to say, I closed the account and went to another bank. Now, why do you think I left BofA? How can I trust a company with my money who can’t coordinate it’s own company policy?
It’s stories like this that make me HATE these big banks. I work at a store where, if you buy $25? Sign a slip, never show the card, leave. They’ve made it SO EASY to spend anyone’s money, and then they drag their feet to fix the situation. It’s disgusting. My larger credit union refuses to follow suit, thankfully.
If you spend under $25 at the local grocery stores, you don’t even have to sign a slip. Just slide the card through and you’re done.
gee, great, but I still hate twitter and find it is for the type of people I cannot stand-those who feel they are so important that people actually care what they say- like now, no one on this site will care what I type…blah blah blah
I agree. Twitter is for the Kevin Smiths of the world.
I had an issue once where after requesting my interest rate to be lowered on a BofA credit card they ended up cutting my credit line — I complained on twitter and eventually had the credit line brought back and the interest rate slightly lowered. BofA’s customer service on Twitter is great.