The $29 fee that cost Bank of America so much more …
kosmo - See all 468 of my articles
Leave the First Comment
I once had a credit card through MBNA. I loved this card. It was an alumni card that proudly displayed my alma mater.
Then, Bank of America bought MBNA. Suddenly, things got bad. The web site functions no longer worked like they should. In particular, paying the card online became much more difficult. Many times, it didn’t work at all. Other times, it process the wrong amount (generally the minimum payment instead of the amount of the bill). I was double checking what I was doing, and clearly this was the fault of Bank of America. News stories at the time pointed to problems they were having with integration – apparently I was a victim.
One month, we didn’t get a bill. We didn’t notice until the next month, when we got a bill with the $29 late fee.
Typically, a credit card issuer will give you ONE freebie late fee. You simply call, and they will waive the fee.
This was not the case with Bank of Ameria. Not only did they refuse to waive the fee, but they refused to escalate our calls to a manager, and even hung up on me once (for no real apparent reason – I wasn’t using abusive language or anything, I was simply demanding to speak to a manager).
Finally, after repeated calls, we managed to get the fee waived. Honestly, I can remember exactly how this miracle occurred.
However, I was sick of Bank of America by this point. I cancelled by card. OK, we ran a fair amount of purchases through the card, so they lost a few bucks in transaction fees. No big loss, right?
We have our mortgage through CountryWide. As you know, CountryWide has been purchased by Bank of America. We are refinancing our mortgage on Monday (shaving 3/4 point off our rate). We are switching lenders. We didn’t even consider CountryWide/BofA as an option. We simply don’t trust Bank of America at this point. With all the problems we encountered with the credit cards, we have fears that they won’t handle the escrow properly or will make other errors.
Does anyone want to guess how much this will cost Bank of America over the course of the loan? It’s a rather large amount … certainly much larger than the $29 fee they fought to keep. If we had encountered positive customer service during the credit card debacle, we would probably be keeping our loan with CountryWide/BofA.
Kosmo is the founder of The Soap Boxers and writes on a variety of topics, including the Fiction Friday original short stories. You can purchase some of Kosmo's work at the company store. Like Kosmo's writing? You can leave a tip. Like this site? Subscribe via RSS, Subscribe via Email, or Follow us on Twitter. The permanent URL for this article is:http://www.thesoapboxers.com/the-29-fee-that-cost-bank-of-america-so-much-more/
Blago / Replacing a member of congress
kosmo - See all 468 of my articles
Leave the First Comment
The whole situation with the Illinois governor makes me wonder … when a member of congress leaves his/her seat for a better job (President, Vice President, cabinet, etc) why don’t we simply let them pick their successor? After all, if I voted for Senator X, I want a person who very closely fits Senator X’s [...]
→ Read the full article
Abuse of statistics – transitive property
kosmo - See all 468 of my articles
Leave the First Comment
This will likely become a mini-series … statistics are great, but can be abused. Today’s focus is on the “transitive” property of statistics. My example will be an issue that many people are well aware of. The issue is important and is a problematic societal issue. I am definitely not suggesting that the problem doesn’t [...]
→ Read the full article
Writers for The Soap Boxers are freelance writers who work as independent contractors. Opinions expressed by the writers may not necessarily reflect the opinion of management.
Copyright for all content belongs to the writer identified in the byline. Copyright for any content not associated with a particular writer belongs to Kosmo. Copyright for comments belongs to the writer of the comment.
Content from The Soap Boxers cannot be reused in any manner other than what is allowed under the fair use doctrine of US copyright law or the applicable copyright laws of your country.
© 2008-2010. All rights reserved.
Please email Kosmo at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com with any questions you may have.
The Soap Boxers is a division of Hyrax Publications
Soap Boxer Search
Just For Laughs
Category
Recent Posts
Search by Writer
Lazy Man and Money
Blogs Written By Us
Financial Blogs
Fun Blogs
