$273 Million Credit Card Co. Fraudulent Fees?
Posted by
IB ContributorDecember 19, 2006 9:21 PMTags:
None
Is Bank of America cheating its customers out of millions?
Bank of America tried to rip us off for $39.00 last month. How many times has your credit card company ripped you off? How many millions of dollars are they ripping us off for every month? Here is what happened.
On our Bank of America credit card statement for November 2006 we found a "Late Fee" charge of $39. According to the statement, our payment was posted on November 2nd and the "Late Fee" was posted on November 1st, the day the payment was due. Did we make our payment late?
Kimberly, my wife, likes making payments electronically. She paid the payment electrically from our BofA checking account, with instructions to make the payment on its due date, November 1st. According to our checking account statement the payment was deducted from our account and paid on November 1st.
So why the difference in dates of payment and posting? Why a $39 Late Fee? Is someone pulling a fast one here? Is this fraud?
Kimberly, called Bank of America to inquire. She was told that the electronic payment from our BofA checking account to our BofA credit card account was probably made after 3:00 p.m. on the due date and any payment received after 3:00 p.m. is posted to the next day. Therefore, our payment was late and a $39 Late Fee is due. WHAT?
So let me get this straight. BofA debits my checking account on November 1st for a payment to my BofA credit card but BofA credit card posts it to the next day because BofA transferred the money after 3:00 p.m. on the due date so I owe a Late Fee of $39.00? Is this insane or is this fraud?
There are 700 million credit card accounts in America. If one percent of the accounts are cheated this way once each year it would amount to $273 million dollars in bogus charges. This is big time fraud.
As I was going berserk at the Bank of America response, Kimberly calmly explained to the BofA operator that her husband was an attorney who loves to represent consumers against corporate rip-offs in class action lawsuits, that this smelled like a rip-off and would BofA like to withdraw this Late Fee charge. The operator told her since we have an excellent payment record they would waive the Late Fee this time. If I had any hair, I may have pulled it out, right then.
If you have experienced a wide scale corporate rip-off and would like to go after the wrongdoers, email me. Give me the details. Tell me what happened. I'll consider holding the cheats accountable to you and everyone else they ripped off.