It all started so innocently. One day I met with some guy who smiled as he took my money. He assured me that I could trust him. But then, before I knew it, I was sucked into a spiral of crime and deceit.
Theft, confidence games, fraud and lies begin to permeate my life. My money was no longer mine - it had become nothing more than a tool to serve this ruthless master's insatiable greed. I could never feed it enough money to cover my paltry needs. Never....
Last Friday, the institutional con artists at Bank of America debited my account for four charges. Fair enough, I had made the charges using a debit card, and the Bank of America immediately reflected the charge at the online banking web site and debited the appropriate amounts from the account. So far so good.
That was on the 23rd. Today, Bank of America redated those transactions to the 26th. Meanwhile, also on the 26th, a $1250 deposit was wired into the account. Bank of America did not credit the arrival of those funds until the 27th.
The net effect was that the withdrawals, cleverly relabeled as new, and none of them for more than a few dollars, were placed back in line to where a large withdrawal turned them into little overdrafts. The money was there to cover everything. Bank of America simply retimed everything - the charges re-labeled three days hence, and, get this, the deposit not credited until the overdrafts were charged first.
Bingo! $120 in overdraft fees! Another $120 captured from an American banking consumer. Another $120 extracted from the recourseless underclass.
Their explanation? Simple. A shill named Erick, at the Los Angeles Small Business department, his last name not available, explained it all.
He said that even though the charges were made on the 23rd, and even though the money was debited from the account on the 23rd, and even though the charges showed up online on the 23rd, and even though they were described as charges of the 23rd for the next three days, they changed the dates on the 27th because the charges didn't "clear" until the 26th.
Didn't "clear"? WTF are they talking about? Interesting how when they finally "cleared," they happened to "clear" just in the nick of time - just before the $1250 deposit "cleared".
That's a convenient way to clear charges, isn't it?
Bank of America is clearly a depraved criminal enterprise. Their thievery does not reflect any old-fashioned ethic that would have them earn money from their customers; it is all about capturing wealth from all of us. And then they leave no recourse, no one to talk to, just some cheap sociopathic pimp of theirs who gets off on being a little cog in a big, grinding gear.
Has this happened to you? Am I alone here?
I know it's going to involve a little inconvenience, but I'm going to patronize local banks from now on.