Bank Of America 0% TRANSFER OFFER, MISLEADING RIP-OFF, TRANSFER FEE BECOMES CASH ADVANCE AT HIGH INTEREST. Phoenix Arizona
I just discovered the latest and greatest credit card scam. Bank of America offered me a 0% balance transfer rate til 04/06 with a 4% fee and a max. fee of $75. After 04/06 the interest goes to 7.9%. Not a bad deal??? Well read on.
So, when I took them up on this great offer and received my statement, it showed the $75 as a finance charge, but they treated it as a cash advance at 22.24% interest. I called Bank of America about this and they said that that was part of the agreement for the 0% transfer. The fee of $75 is treated as a cash advance.
What a SCAM. The $75 fee posts to your account as a finance charge. Then in the breakdown for interest, a cash advance balance for that $75 fee shows up under the cash advance finance rate (in this case at 22.24%) and thus a finance charge is billed.
The rip-off is that you can't pay off this $75 fee because that fee is handled as a cash advance at 22.24% and all payments are applied to the lowest interest balance first. So, as you are making payments at 0% on your original transfer amount, this $75 cash advance balance keeps racking up interest charges at an exorbitant rate until you pay the whole mess off.
Marlene
Titusville, Florida
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Sir
Goodyear,Arizona,
U.S.A.
Read the fine print.
#2Consumer Suggestion
Tue, December 13, 2005
I too have seen these offers before which look attractive. However, you need to read the fine print because the specifics are outlined there and could have saved you this whole problem if you had read the fine print.