Problems with Bank of America's Balance Liquidation Program

Well, I have managed to experience another reason for me to think that Bank of America's Balance Liquidation Program still sucks. I have had to put the majority of my credit cards on balance liquidation programs in order to turn the tide in my war against debt, but Bank of America has once again given me a reason to doubt my once favorite bank.

A requirement of the balance liquidation program is to have the payments set up on an automatic payment plan. For the past seven months that has worked out great for me, but the bank had decided to take this months payment early and caused my checking account to be overdrawn. This of course did not make me happy as I will have more payments coming due within the next few days and with things as tight as they are right now I needed this like a hole in the head.

My main beef with Bank of America was the less than pleasing offer they gave me compared to the offers other creditors had given me. This is what bank of America offered me:

Interest rates from 2% to 5% on various accounts
Waiver of any future late payments
5 year repayment plan

Now Bank of America didn't have to help me at all, but compared to Chase I think Chase's balance Liquidation program is fantastic. Here is what Chase offered me:

All interest rates dropped to 0%
Waiver of past late and over the limit fees
Thousands in back owed accrued interest waived

For me Chase really wants to help their customers. I truly felt like a valued customer with them and that really wanted to help. I think they understand that they have more to lose by not helping make a borrowers payment more affordable, but with my latest adventure with Bank of America, they are really pushing my buttons.

Once I discovered the overdraft I immediately called the bank about the payment that was taken early. I figured it would be no big deal and they would just refund the payment and take it out as originally agreed. This however was not the case. They gave me such a run around it really pissed me off. They didn't want to do anything. I couldn't believe it. It was like, "Too bad you have other bills to pay. We got our money." I had to get firm with them and finally they agreed to correct the problem. I shouldn't have had to get firm with them. This should have been a no brainer. It was an obvious mistake and should have been offered to be corrected right away. There wasn't even an offer to refund the overdraft fee charged to my checking account originally.

On a positive note, they did follow up with me today and gave the status on the refund. Not only of the refund of the payment, but for the overdraft charge on my checking account.

In the end it was great that they followed up with me, but with Bank of America always tooting their own horn on how they want to help their customers, I say they are full of it. Dave Ramsey always talks about how these collectors make minimum wage and never last and I think he's right. Bank of America, if you truly want to help your customers, you need to hire a better class of employee and maybe even pay these folks a little better. It also wouldn't hurt to do the right thing for the customer. I know you have to deal with a lot of deadbeats, but I am not one of them. I truly am trying to do the right thing and pay you back. The least you can do is treat me with more respect.

[This post is written and copyrighted by Financial Elite (http://financialelite.blogspot.com/ ).]

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