If you’ve lost your remote and been unable to fast-forward through your DVRd shows — or heaven forbid you’ve had to watch something on live TV — in the last two months, you might have seen one of Bank of America’s commercials touting its “$0 Liability Guarantee” for all its credit and debit cards. But is all this just window decoration on guarantees you already have?

Over at the DefendYourDollars site operated by our kin at Consumers Union, they’ve asked the very same question.

The BofA “guarantee” says that consumers who discover unauthorized transactions or billing errors are not liable for those charges so long as they report the problem within 60 days.

But as CU points out, BofA is already required to do this under federal law.

And then there’s the claim that BofA will “usually” credit your account by the next business day if you dispute a transaction. However, the fine print of the guarantee says it can actually be up to 10 business days.

Writes CU:

[A]gain, this is just like the federal standard for debit transactions. In the case of credit cards, consumers cannot be charged for a transaction if they dispute it, at least while an investigation into the dispute is underway.

Have any BofA customers had to take advantage of this guarantee yet? We’d love to hear whether or not your experience was any better or worse than you would get elsewhere.

BofA’s “$0 Liability Guarantee” – Is It As Good As it Sounds? [DefendYourDollars.org]

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