Complaint Review: Bank Of America

Below is a letter written to Bank of America Executive Offices. I was referred to "mail in my complaint" after repeated attempts to escalate my issue unsuccessfully. I'm sure the the "Executive Offices" won't even open this. I would be shocked if I received a response:

I am writing to explain to the executives of the Bank of America Corporation why my husband and I are closing all of our accounts and why we will not do business with Bank of America in the future.

My husband and I have three accounts. Checking, savings and credit card. We have maintained these accounts in good standing since we became customers of Bank of America. We needed to open a second checking account. I went online and opened a My Access Checking account. This account was to be used for sales and vendor payments for my husbands art work.

I followed the instructions online to open the account. Two days later, September 7th, I checked our accounts online. Our personal checking account that we have had for years was removed, along with the $2500 in it, from online banking. I called customer service and spent over two hours on the phone getting the account reinstated. I was told that when I opened the second checking account they assumed I wanted to close our other account. There are two main concerns I have with this; (1) my husband did not give any authorization or approval to close this joint checking account (2) I never authorized that this account be closed.

Does a gigantic corporation like Bank of America not have proper policies in place to ensure that accounts are not closed without the account holders consent? Not only did they attempt to close this account without consent but they removed my bill pay.

This might not sound like a very important issue but all of our personal billing accounts are loaded into bill pay. I do not receive paper statements but rely on my banks bill pay service to ensure that bills are paid on time. My husband and I have good credit and this mistake could have been catastrophic had I not noticed it in time.

Once this issue was resolved, I noticed that my last name had been changed from xxxx (my married name) to xxxx (my maiden name) without permission. We were married in July of 2006 and my name was changed then on all of our accounts. I physically went into the Bank of America branch in Orange City, FL and gave them copies of our marriage certificate.

Now, because of a computer or human error, my name was changed without permission. I have checks, a debit card and a credit card all with the name Ramieri listed. I've spent hours on the phone trying to get this resolved. I needed someone from 'customer care' to fix the problem that was caused by an error made by Bank of America. I continually received the same answer; 'You have to go back into the banking branch with your marriage certificate and ID for them to change the name'. My husband and I work full time and Saturdays are reserved for little league.

Why am I being asked to correct mistakes made by Bank of America? Because of this massive mistake that Bank of America made and refused to correct I do not have a debit card that is usable. I have spent precious time pleading with customer service and nothing has been resolved.

You will note that I addressed this letter 'To whom it may concern'. I was not able to get a number to the corporate office to call. I was not able to get the name of a person in the executive office that I could address this letter to. I have never done business with a company who's escalation procedures are this vague.

Please note that there was not one person in the customer care organization who could explain to me why this happened or what caused it. With that said, they still would not correct the problem.

I would also like to note that I searched consumer websites that I could post my complaint and find information regarding some type of legal action I might take. I noted 689 complaints about Bank of America on www.ripoffreport.com. This is just one of the many sites on which I found derogatory postings regarding Bank of America customer relations. I'm positive that your shareholders would be disappointed to learn that they company they have a stake in treats their customers in such ill mannered ways.

Jackie
Deltona, Florida
U.S.A.

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