Ruling may cost BofA millions

Charlotte Observer ^ | Decmber 31, 2004 | JOEL ROSENBLATT

[fish hawk]

Actually, they are.

[Lancey Howard]

Businesses who insist on remaining in Kalifornia and doing business there get exactly what they deserve.
They won't get any sympathy from me.

[ChefKeith]

Agreed- boa SUCKS!

I tried to cash checks drawn on them on several different occasions and they wanted to charge ME $10.00 each time because I did not have an account with them.

I said that the checks were written by customers that have accounts at boa and they just replied that "it is company policy to do this because I did not have an account"

I told them to shove it.

boa=A$$HOLES

[Grey Ghost II]

Just out of curiosity, do you reside in the US? If so, would you like to say which state?

Yes. No.

[TheBattman]

Actually - it IS a CALIFORNIA thing. And your reference to election troubles- California doesn't have such big election problems because the LIberals are firmly in charge of most of the state. The roaches are everywhere....

Now, on to this story. This is a CALIFORNIA case, brought in LIBERAL CALIFORNIA courts. This case (not to defend BofA in any way) is about people writing hot checks. The courts are TOTALLY wrong for this ruling. These folks were writing hot checks - the bank is entitled to it's fees, which are CLEARLY spelled out in all documents pertaining to the account (and signed when the account was opened).

Now, if this had been a case of the bank not crediting the auto deposit on the day received in an attempt to cause overdrafts - that would be different. That is NOT the case here.

[X-Servative]

American Express did the same type of thing with my business account.

[NorCalRepub]

well liberal are in charge of alot of voting precincts in the US.....so.....and B of A wrote those rules irregardless of where they are hq'd. I'm not commenting much on the decision as much as the Calif thing......listen....you hear all this crap about Christians being persecuted.....well where is that happening.......mostly back East and all the court cases are back east about this....well of course I blame the liberals but I don't generalize to the whole state and say it is their fault.....like I said.. i don't care if you blame the people but then you say "Calif....well i don't know if you have ever been here but when you get away from the coast I swear you wouldn't know if you were in Idaho. or New Hampshire or Colorado or Iowa. Calif is just too diverse......there are alot of ridiculous things happening in every state. Don't you hate it when foreigners bad mouth the US for everything........well us REpublicans don't appreciate out of staters who mostly never been her do the same thing..........plus there are many states like Illinois, Mass, NY that are even more liberal than Calif....really look at the electoral college......Calif is huge and you have no idea how different things are here and i only know that from being in 45 states and having all my relatives in the Midwest..........

[BJungNan]

I have NO sympathy for BofA. I have a charge account thru them, and it took me a few months to realize that by clicking for payment to be made on the "due date" at its site, I was subjecting myself to a $39 late fee ... because, you see, if my "due date" fell on a day the bank was closed, like a Saturday, my payment was late. Seems to me that if their payments had to be made to coincide with bank hours, they could at least set the "due date" on a bank business day. But no, that way they wouldn't collect all those $39 fees.

You likely could have gotten those fees back. Did you ask?

[paul51]

Yes. No.

Ashamed of something?

[Sally'sConcerns]

Is this thread only getting responses from people who have had bad experiences with BofA?

Full disclosure: I am medically retired from BofA and have been since 07/2000. When I call their customer service line for my bank accounts, I call the exact same number as anyone else who's a customer of theirs does. The only way they know I'm a retiree is if I tell them and they go to a separate screen.

I had to call their customer service line today because I had forgotten the 'associate' 800 number for personnel benefits. Now, I don't know which customer service lines they've supposedly transferring to India but I talked to an American who had no problem getting me the insider number for personnel. I sincerely doubt a call center employee in India would have had access to that information.

Are there problems at times when one deals with a big entity? Sure there are! I dealt with complaints years ago when I worked for Exxon. I dealt with complaints when I worked for BankOne. It's a trade-off. Do you want the services a large corporation is able to offer (ie; trust department, warehousing of mortgage loans, etc.) or do you want the limited options a locally owned bank can offer?

[EDINVA]

You likely could have gotten those fees back. Did you ask?

sure did .... but it was MY fault, don't you see?

[Grey Ghost II]

Ashamed of something?

No, are you? Give us your real name, Paul. What's the 151 stand for..your weight?

[Mr Rogers]

"Is this thread only getting responses from people who have had bad experiences with BofA?"

It's the percentages, I guess.

I had BoA try to charge me for being past due - on a purchase that had been made 7 days prior. I went thru 5 people before I found someone who could understand that I couldn't be 30 days past due on a purchase made 7 days ago.

FWIW, all 5 of the people I spoke to were in Arizona - so they can't complain about language problems. Public education problems, maybe, but not language...

[paul51]

little off topic, wouldn't you say?

[connectthedots]

BofA is run by a bunch of dishonest corrupt thugs. I suppose Washington Mutual is worse, but BofA sucks.

[Amerigomag]

This case (not to defend BofA in any way) is about people writing hot checks

Yes an no. Many were warrants written against insufficient balances but many were not. Simply screw ups by both the customer and the bank.

What got BofA in trouble was double dipping. BofA would withdraw funds from an account to cover the amount of the overdraft plus a penality. If that punative amount again overdrafted the account BofA would tack on another overdraft charge.

An example. You write a $100 check but it isn't covered by your deposit until the next banking day. On that day (2nd day) the bank withdraws $100 to cover the face value of the warrant and $15 penality to teach you a lesson. If there are insufficient funds in your account to cover the penality then the bank charges another $15 fee against a future deposit. Double dipping. They got caught.

This is only one of several class action suits filed against BofA over their insufficient funds practices in the 60s and 70s. As a consequence of these litilgations BofA has changed many of these pracitices.