If you are a customer of a big bank, and you have not yet pulled your money out and put it in a credit union or a local bank, I think you need to do it. Not just out of principle, but out of long-term economic health. I myself and my wife-to-be decided a couple of months ago that we had finally had enough of Bank of America, and so we pulled our money out. Now with BofA starting these new debit card fees on their customers, I am even more convinced that we did the right thing. I only wish we had done it sooner.
I wish everyone had thought of it sooner.
My first major issue with Bank of America happened in November 2010. I am a volunteer police officer, and I was down at the police station working on some IT projects. I was putting in a decent amount of hours essentially working as an unpaid intern, but since I was unemployed anyway it felt good to be doing something constructive.
Well, one day I was getting ready to head out to grab some lunch and I briefly checked by bank balance on the computer. It was off by about $150. I was surprised, thinking maybe I had set up a bill for automatic payment and had forgotten about it or something. I figured I better check to be sure. Sure enough, there were two transactions for 74.99 that I could not account for, so I started digging deeper. It looked like someone had used my debit card to buy points on XBox Live. I was very, very unhappy, because I knew that I had done a transaction on XBox Live just a couple of weeks before, and that this was likely a result of someone compromising the information on the Microsoft end. I work in IT Security, and I have just started getting my feet wet in electronic crimes, so I do know a little bit about it. The way the money was spent indicated that the people who had gotten my information had bought the most expensive thing they could on the XBox Live website. if they had gotten my info some other way they could have used it to actually buy things rather than Xbox Live points. I contacted the Microsoft XBox Live people, and filled them in on what happened. One of the two people who had done this had already spent all of their points they bought with MY money, and the other one had not. So both accounts were banned, and I got all of the info I could from them before walking downstairs to a detective I knew in electronic crime to open a new case - my own. So we opened up the case, and then I headed back to my desk to call my bank while he started the paperwork for subpoenas to Microsoft to get their records of the users.
So I called my bank - Bank of America. And then the real fun began. And for those of you who may not have read any of my other diaries, know this: I absolutely loathe bureaucracies. It pains me to navigate them. So wyou know this is going to be lots of fun.
It seemed pretty straightforward. Someone had committed fraud by using my debit card information to buy themselves something. So all they needed to do was cancel the debit card for that account, issue me a new one, and then start work on getting me my money back. It seemed so simple.
Alas, no.
When I got off the phone, I thought things were rolling in the right direction. So that night I stopped by the grocery store to get a few things. I used my OTHER debit card, the one for a different account with Bank of America. It was declined. I knew there was money in that account, so you can imagine my surprise and utter mortification. So I left my groceries, did a walk of shame outside the store, and called Bank of America on my cell phone to figure out what the hell happened.
Essentially, they canceled the wrong card. And they insisted that they could not un-cancel it. And they still had not canceled the card that was compromised. To say I was pissed would have been an understatement. So now I had to get them to cancel the correct card, and they would have to mail me new cards for both accounts.
So I went a few days without having easy access to my money. Annoying and inconvenient to say the least. Then I get a letter from the Bank talking about how they needed documentation and whatnot so I sent it to them, including the case number for the police report and the name of the detective working the case. I even faxed it to them so it would go faster, with "Attn:" and whatnot to the correct person. Then I get my new debit card in the mail. And it doesn't work.
I am beside myself with anger. I go down to the bank nearest hour house to deal with an actual person rather than try to get someone on the phone. After waiting about half an hour or so to see the rep (which annoyed me because I had to keep dropping quarters in the meter) I finally got to talk to someone who said they would fix my problem by issuing me a temporary card until the new one arrived in the mail. Good.
Then I get another letter in the mail. "We're sorry, but we cannot find any evidence of an error." An error? An error?!? Excuse me, but did anyone listen to a damn thing I said on the phone? Or in person? I said that it was FRAUD. Someone stole my information and used it to buy themselves shit. I even gave you the goddamn police report number and the contact info for the detective. You think I would have done that if it was all over some goddamn accounting mistake? So I call them up, and this time I very politely (meaning without profanity and very calmly) proceed to tear them a new one. They apologize profusely and insist that they will send me the RIGHT form this time.
So I wait for the correct form to get to me in the mail. And guess what arrives? A warning letter. If you don't give us the information we need by X date, we will assume that there was no error and close the incident report yadda yadda yada. By this time I am ready to start throwing furniture through windows. So I call them up yet again. They insist that it was all a mistake, and that maybe it would be better if they just faxed me the form and I faxed it back. So I fill out the paperwork yet again and send it to them yet again. Finally they give me a credit for the amount of money lost ($149.98) and we manage to get all working debit cards again.
Over the next few months, as my fiancee and I discussed changing banks, we began to see more and more evidence that Bank of America was involved in all sorts of shady dealings. We saw articles about how they foreclosed on people without having proper documentation on the mortgages. We saw articles about how they inserted extra fees into the mortgages of vets on the sly. It was a steady stream of new information that made us want to leave more and more. Then earlier this year I did my taxes, and what did I discover? I owed about $10,000. I had been unemployed for all of 2010, and had not taken out enough money from my unemployment checks. I had cashed out my 401 (k) to help pay bills, like the nearly $6,000 repair bill on my trusty old truck. And then I read where Bank of America not only paid no income tax for 2010, but actually got $1 billion back.
I couldn't believe it. What is wrong with our system when an unemployed vet who has to cash out his nest egg to survive owes tax money, but the biggest bank in the country, one that was responsible for all sorts of financial shenanigans, not only owes nothing but gets a billion dollars back from the government? Why does the tax code allow them to write off their losses but someone like me can't catch a break like that? And BofA kept fighting for less regulation and for the right to raise fees on other things, spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress and whatnot. And once we got wind of a possible impending increase in fees, we said "enough" and got out. We closed all of our accounts and moved our money to our new bank. One that treated us with far more dignity. We went in person to close our accounts. They asked us why we were leaving, especially since my better half had been with them for 12 years. We said their fees were getting to be too much and we refused to pay them anymore. The guy didn't seem to want to accept our answer, and actually tried to "correct" us. Wow, what nice customer service. If we are already angry enough to leave, don't compound it by trying to tell us we don't know what we are talking about.
So we were especially glad we left when we got word of the new $5 monthly fee for using our debit card. How screwed up is it that they spend all this time and effort convincing people to use the damn things, and then once we are dependent on its use, start charging us like that? Do they really have such contempt for their customers? Just yesterday we got a check from Bank of America for the last of our money that got trapped in the system somehow. The check was for three cents. We felt it was a fitting end to our relationship with them, as we thought that was about as much as the bank thought we were worth, judging by the quality of the service we got.
Occupy Wall Street has singled out Bank of America for some of their protests. Good. That bank and its influence is a gigantic symptom of the illness that infects Wall Street, our economy, and our politics.
So get out while the getting is good, everyone. I anticipate that BofA will have to be bailed out again, and probably sooner rather than later. They insist on making themselves bigger and more unwieldy, come hell or high water. So get your money out before they find a way to suck it all out of you through fees and charges.
You won't regret it.
7:17 PM PT: It was suggested by BeeDeeS that I include a reference to the November 5th Change Your Bank movement. I don't know why that didn't occur to me, especially since I had just read something about that yesterday. Mea culpa.
So join the movement today if you haven't already!