Yes, I hate Bank of America so much that I’m writing an extra Monday post to rant about it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am to be congratulated. I just closed my Bank of America account (as I’ve been promising to do for months). But before it could happen, there was one last moment of bullshit.
Very nice lady on the phone who I’m sure is only doing her job: “We want to make absolutely sure that all of your checks have cleared and all of your automatic payments have been canceled, because if, after we close the account, a request comes through to pay anyone, the account will automatically open back up again.”
Me: “WAIT. What? That is not acceptable. It’s my account; it’s my right for it not to exist. I don’t want an account that pops back open sometime in the future, simply because I’ve forgotten about some yearly charge or something. How can we do this so that when we close the account today, it’s gone for good and it’s closed forever?”
Nice lady on the phone: “I can do that. I just need to make a note here that that’s what you want.”
Why did this piss me off so much? A few reasons. First, you know what would happen if a payment request suddenly popped my account back open again? Bank of America would charge me an overdraft fee, essentially for bouncing a check. And not only that: suddenly, I would have a bank account again — but my balance ($0.00) would be WAY below my minimum balance! Bank Of America would charge me its monthly fee for dropping below my minimum balance. Once again, Bank of America would be nickel and diming me out of my money with their crappy policies — AND now I would have to go through the process of closing the account again.
And you know why else it pissed me off? Because this is apparently the bank’s default: closing accounts so that the slightest thing can pop them back open again. And even worse, not only is it their default, but they don’t explain that you have another option — that you have the right to close your account for good — unless you ask them for it. Nor do they explain the consequences of the account popping back open, unless you ask! This just strikes me as even more evidence that Bank of America deliberately takes advantage of unsophisticated consumers, of busy people who don’t have time to learn or understand all this crap, of the way we do banking today… of every single way they can harvest the mistakes people make to LEGALLY make that extra bit of money off of us.
Rant over.
