I recently had some interaction with Bank Of America that got my blood pressure up. Due to an admitted error on my part, two transactions hit my checking account over the weekend causing my balance to dip below zero by approximately $15. This resulted in $70 in overdraft fees. The lack of funds in my account is my fault, an oversight for which I take full responsibility. However, to charge me $70 for such an error seemed a bit egregious and I took issue with it.
This is not the first time I've taken issue with Bank Of America policies or their application of them, and that's why this situation really got my blood boiling. There's more to this story than just a knucklehead (that's me) with too many accounts that forgot to transfer money to the right one. This is about customer service, and it's something that I, as a consumer, take pretty seriously. So let me fill you in.
My very first checking account was opened in 1996 with Bank Of America (BofA) in California. For thirteen years I've had that same account, and I still do (for now). When I moved to Texas, I quickly discovered that BofA in California does not play well with the rest of the country. I could still use my ATM card to make purchases and withdraw money, but deposits now required a visit inside the branch to see a teller. Most of my life is paperless now, but since my wife and I are still fortunate to have birthdays, we do occasionally have a need to deposit checks. To make our lives more convenient, we opened a new checking account at BofA in the great state of Texas.
Let's pause for a moment, because I'd like to start keeping score. Every time I am inconvenienced by BofA, they will lose a point. When they provide positive customer service, they will gain a point. Here's the first example. While it might appear they did a noble thing by making life more convenient for us so we don't have to go inside the bank every time we make a deposit, the whole reason it became necessary was because they were no longer providing a service we once had. That's minus one for the bank.
Running Score: -1
This arrangement worked out just fine for awhile. For the most part we let the California BofA account just sit while we used the new Texas account. There was one instance I can remember when I decided to buy a song on iTunes for $.99 and forgot that the billing was still tied to my California BofA account. After taxes, the account became a few cents negative and I was assessed a $35 overdraft fee. Realizing the absurdity, they promptly returned the fee, but they lose another point for the fact that I was inconvenienced and had to call them to resolve the silly issue.
Running Score: -2
After our daughter was born, people started to give us money on her behalf. My wife, ever the doting mommy, thought it prudent to open a savings account for our little princess. She walked into the bank one day and set it all up, proudly announcing to me that it was all free. We mostly ignored the account until several months later, when we noticed the savings account was overdrawn. For several months, BofA had been charging us a hefty maintenance fee of about $15 on the account because the balance was below a threshold we were never told about. Eventually the account went negative and the overdraft fees started piling up. So did my anger.
Let's assess the damage: Minus one for lying to us in the branch. Minus one for even having a policy that includes charging for a savings account (that's just silly). Minus one for not contacting us directly when the account went negative.
Running Score: -5
My wife and I fought over who was going to make the call. She won. After a heated discussion with the customer angering agent, we ended up with the overdraft fees reversed. They kept all the other money they robbed from my daughter. The account was immediately closed. The entire transaction was brutal, and my wife had to fight to even get the overdraft fees back, so the bank earns no points here for that "gesture", and they lose another point for keeping the other fees.
Running Score: -6
When I found out they had essentially drained what little money had been in our daughter's account, I was furious. Bank of America had just purchased Countrywide who happened to be our home mortgage lender. I had been thinking about refinancing our home loan and after the savings account debacle, I was ready to march into the branch the next day, close my remaining accounts and threaten to take my mortgage to another company regardless of the rate.
Let me be clear about why I was upset. I believe a company can and should charge whatever they want for their services. At issue here is the fact that we were not sufficiently informed about those charges and when we, in good faith, brought this to their attention, we were essentially accused of lying. Why else would a company, when faced with the loss of business, refuse to budge in an arbitrary disagreement with a customer?
I suspect companies that operate this way assume that most consumers are probably not vindictive to the point they are willing to endure the costs and hardship associated with taking their business elsewhere. In truth, this is what ultimately happened to me with the savings account debacle. I was overcome by more important life events and let the issue drop. But I did not forget.
Yesterday that bad taste in my mouth came back when I got hit with those overdraft fees from our big $15 weekend on the town. Adding insult to injury, if I still had a savings account the money could have instantly been transferred to cover the deficit, thus saving me an unnecessary headache. Minus one.
Running Score: -7
This story gets worse before it gets better. When I noticed on Wednesday that my pending transactions were going to put me in the red, I immediately transferred $100 into the account. That should have put the account around a positive $85. Thursday, I logged in to verify my transfer. The balance: $10. My running total never showed the account going negative, but it did show two $35 overdraft fees. How could I incur overdraft fees if the account never balanced out officially to zero? I called the customer angering number and made the inquiry.
My mother always told me you catch more bees with honey, so whenever I am involved in a customer service confrontation I try to start out as calm and polite as possible. I did that here...at first.
The customer angering agent on the phone told me that regardless of the "pending" status, my "available balance history" showed two transactions against an account with insufficient funds, thus the two $35 overdraft fees. One of the transactions was literally three dollars and fifty cents.
"Thirty-five dollars for a three dollar charge that hadn't even been processed yet?" I asked incredulously.
She replied: "Yeah, it's a lot, isn't it?"
Of all the things she could have said to me in response, that was the wrong choice. Minus one for being unprofessional. Her apparent lack of awareness at how unprofessional the response was left me wondering why I was still doing business with this company. The bees took cover as my pleasant honey-like demeanor immediately took on the pungent odor of vinegar. With steam coming out of my ears, I told the customer angering agent that my relationship with the bank did not have much of a future. She then had the audacity to ask me if there was anything else she could help me with. I guess she was hanging her hat on raising my blood pressure.
Minus one for pissing me off.
Running Score: -9After I hung up I replayed the conversation in my head and I started to boil. The overdraft started a fire that, admittedly, I contributed to by playing with matches. But now "customer service" had just fanned the flames. I started to reflect on the savings account debacle. Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice and it's time to find a new bank. I decided I would be making a stop at the branch on my way home and I posted my intention on Twitter.
I pause here briefly to explain something about Twitter that you may not be aware of. Many companies, in an effort to leverage social networking to their advantage, have started using Twitter as a customer service tool. They run searches of Twitter posts looking for their company name and when they find people like me (read: irate customers) they reach out to try and mitigate the issue "proactively". This morning, I noticed I have a new follower, David Knapp, alias BofA_help. Putting the bank on the board, plus one for not having their heads completely where the sun doesn't shine. David, pay attention, this next part is for you.
Running Score: -8
By the time I reached the bank I was seething. I had about four paragraphs of rage ready to go in my head. I didn't even care about the money anymore, this was about thirteen years of patronage being disregarded over a very insignificant amount of money considering my various mortgage, checking, and credit accounts with the BofA machine. They own most of my house but they feel the need to stick it to me for a $15 oversight? Those were the thoughts going through my head when I walked into the branch.
I was immediately greeted by two women asking how they could help me. One of them led me to her office and I managed to get through the first paragraph and a half with most of the bees still buzzing about. Paragraph three is where the message was going to get sour, but I never got to it. This customer service experience was positive, which will earn the bank another point and here's why:
- She offered solutions to help prevent the situation in the future.
- She recognized the absurdity of the situation and refunded the fees.
- She was gracious, thanked me for coming in, and didn't act like my business was a burden.
I left fairly calm, with my money back in my account, and feeling like the bank and I were at least on speaking terms again. We'll see if we end up being friends (that refinance thing is still pending, with the potential of becoming another debacle). Hopefully there is a lesson here for David and the BofA customer service team. They've ended this inning down by seven, and frankly it should be more.
Running Score: -7Everything that occurred was at the convenience of the bank, not the customer. At the top of my bank statement reads the message:
"Customer since 1996. Bank of America appreciates your business and we enjoy serving you."I find this ironic because, in the situations I've described, the bank did nothing to serve me. I had to call them. I had to drive to the branch. After thirteen years, why don't they know me better? Why don't they remember that time when a $.99 iTunes download caused a similar overdraft incident? Can't they see that between then and now the only thing that's happened is I've made every payment to every creditor including them on time? Or do they know all that and just don't care? Are they assuming I won't expend the effort to change banks?
Here's a hint: I expended the effort to drive to the branch with the intention of closing my account. In the past two years I've ditched my telephone and television provider, mostly for poor customer service. Don't test me.
Banking technology has come a long way over the years. The twenty-first century allows us to transfer money anywhere in the world over the web, deposit checks without an envelope, and use a cell phone to check an account balance. Customer service however is still in the dark ages. It's time to step it up guys. If you're reading about a problem on Twitter, you're already too late.