Reader David wants to close his Bank of America account and move on. He was in no hurry: he began the process last spring, and slowly moved regular payments over to an account at a local bank and stopped making deposits in his Bank of America account. He wanted to bring his relationship with the bank to a graceful, amicable close. BoA isn’t interested in an amicable breakup, though. This account simply refuses to close.

He writes:

I never really had a bad experience with Bank of America until last March when I decided to move my accounts to a locally based institution. While I was letting my old accounts dwindle I stopped making deposits in my BOA checking account and thought I had stopped all payments issued from that account.

Long story short, by the time I noticed that I had an insurance payment that had been rejected several times the service fees were about $115 bucks. I decided to go into a branch and close the accounts once and for all and pay any fees at that time. I did go into a main branch in [redacted] and sat with a Customer Service manager and after talking about the account, he said he could wave the fees and if I paid the overdrawn amount (about $12) he would go ahead and close my checking and savings.

I was going to close my credit card accounts at the same time, but thought they had been so accommodating that I would keep both and even switched them over to get better rewards. OK, great.

But not for long. About 2 months later I got a letter from BOA saying my account had not been closed and I owed the original amount with the original fees. This time I called Customer Service, explained that I had closed the accounts and the helpful person did some checking, had me hold for about 25 minutes, then came on to say that it was all settled, no fees and the accounts were definitely closed. Really? Yes, definitely.

Until about 2 weeks ago. I received another letter saying my accounts were not closed and that I still owed the service fees which I had been told twice had been removed. I don’t know what else to do at this point. I am cancelling my cards and plan to spend the rest of my days telling anyone who will listen what a terrible place BOA is to bank, so thought I’d start with you and your readers.

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