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I allowed Bank of America to screw me good.
Back in late May I got an offer for a 0% balance transfer on my BoA Visa. That month, I had about $22k balance on my Amex that I was going to pay off anyways, but hey, 0% thru May 2010 sounded pretty good - even with a 3% fee. So why not?
So I went online, click, click, click, enter my Amex account - done.
In a few days, checked my account online, it says payment due of $398. So cool, it's gonna be about $400 a month, so I go to my BoA checking account and set up bill pay to give them $500 a month, done.
Now comes the screwing part. I never checked my paper statements. If I had, I would have learned that the transfer was made at 24%, not 0%! I found out because a few days ago I got a call from this nice young man at BoA asking why I was late on my Visa card. So after numberous phone calls (of course, BoA never returns a call), explainations and threats I don't get very far. They agree to forego 2 months interest charges - that's it and the card to continue at 24%. This is a $30k limit card that I've had a perfect history since 1992. I have business and checking accounts in which hundreds of thousands of dollars pass each year. Plus a mortgage with them. Doesn't matter. They don't care if I close all my accounts. They don't see the potential long term lost profits - only the short term gain they think they can get on this card.
So I paid off the card yesterday. Actually I left it with a 1 penny negative balance so they can keep sending my those nice statements each month.
I'll probably wind down my checking accounts - there are no minimums required - to a low balance so they can continue to send those nice statements.
In the end, they've cheated me out of $1100 for 3 month's use of a balance transfer. Yes, it was my stupidity and greed. I can afford to make mistakes - lots of people can't - and it does make me very angry though. Short of writing a bunch of letters and filing complaints and posting to blogs, there isn't much I can do.
Back in late May I got an offer for a 0% balance transfer on my BoA Visa. That month, I had about $22k balance on my Amex that I was going to pay off anyways, but hey, 0% thru May 2010 sounded pretty good - even with a 3% fee. So why not?
So I went online, click, click, click, enter my Amex account - done.
In a few days, checked my account online, it says payment due of $398. So cool, it's gonna be about $400 a month, so I go to my BoA checking account and set up bill pay to give them $500 a month, done.
Now comes the screwing part. I never checked my paper statements. If I had, I would have learned that the transfer was made at 24%, not 0%! I found out because a few days ago I got a call from this nice young man at BoA asking why I was late on my Visa card. So after numberous phone calls (of course, BoA never returns a call), explainations and threats I don't get very far. They agree to forego 2 months interest charges - that's it and the card to continue at 24%. This is a $30k limit card that I've had a perfect history since 1992. I have business and checking accounts in which hundreds of thousands of dollars pass each year. Plus a mortgage with them. Doesn't matter. They don't care if I close all my accounts. They don't see the potential long term lost profits - only the short term gain they think they can get on this card.
So I paid off the card yesterday. Actually I left it with a 1 penny negative balance so they can keep sending my those nice statements each month.
I'll probably wind down my checking accounts - there are no minimums required - to a low balance so they can continue to send those nice statements.
In the end, they've cheated me out of $1100 for 3 month's use of a balance transfer. Yes, it was my stupidity and greed. I can afford to make mistakes - lots of people can't - and it does make me very angry though. Short of writing a bunch of letters and filing complaints and posting to blogs, there isn't much I can do.
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