I got my Bank of America Choice Rewards Visa statement today and was shocked to find a late fee of $39 and finance charge of $1.50 on my bill. I was fairly sure that I had set it to automatically pay the minimum payment (I have a 0% BT on there). Then I noticed that my payment was posted on 7/12 but the late fee posted on 7/10. I signed on, and I see that they just credited me the $39 late fee back on Tuesday, so obviously someone already caught this and complained. I do not see the finance charge removed so I emailed them about this.
I had already been trying to cancel their billpay service. It uses Checkfree but I would rather use the native Mycheckfree that I use for other accounts (less places to sign on). But apparently you can't register the card on MyCheckfree so long as it's registered at the BofA site, and there is no way to delete that registration yourself (and after a few emails to them it appears that I have to *call* to do it). I never got around to calling, but after this fiasco, I intend to call them tomorrow to have it taken care of, although given that the payment is issued through Mycheckfree, I don't see that there would have been a big difference where I use it.
Oh yeah, and to show how screwed up they are, on the Finance Charge Summary page, they show the $1.50 charge as being on purchases, and the Annual Percentage Rate is shown as 172.91%.
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posted: Jul. 27, 2006 @ 12:34a
gt0138d
Member
posted: Jul. 27, 2006 @ 8:59a
Interesting that BofA messed up for me also recently. I signed up for AutoPay. Not only did my ebill not shown up at BofA (it was a Citibank Mastercard statement) but I got slapped with a charge. Now, I asked them to investigate what went wrong.
codename47
Senior Member - 3K
posted: Jul. 27, 2006 @ 9:12a
I had that happen with Chase on my mortgage. Using their own 100% guaranteed "we'll pay your late fee" system, they dorked up a payment to themselves. It got fixed in a hurry, and I didn't even have to sue them!
unknownshopper
Senior Member<br>6K
posted: Jul. 27, 2006 @ 10:20a
codename47 said: It got fixed in a hurry, and I didn't even have to sue them!
WHAT???
But didn't you just sue them anyway just to stay in practice???
... just when you think there's something, anything in this crazy world that you can rely up, thing go and change on you.
codename47
Senior Member - 3K
posted: Jul. 27, 2006 @ 10:33a
Oh, don't worry I get plenty of practice between stupid creditors and the credit bureaus.
Donedealzz said: I am glad this was posted. Something to watch out for. What is the most reliable bill paying service.I've been fairly happy with Mycheckfree, which is free. It doesn't do everything, but it does most. One problem: you can only set up Autopay for the minimum payment due on most credit cards. This means you have to remember to logon to change the amount being paid, which I forgot to do this past month with AMEX, so I paid the rest of the bill a day late. I am probably going to have to call and plead with them to waive the finance charge.
Ironically, it's Checkfree that does the BofA Bill Pay. So I might have had the same problem if I had been using MyCheckfree. I think that BofA just screwed up and applied the late fee too early. And it wasn't even a weekend.
BTW I emailed them about the finance charge not being removed and I got this reply "Since you are a valued client of Bank of America, the $1.50 charge has been reversed. This credit will show on your next statement". Wow, that is so generous of them, given that it was clearly their fault (as witnessed by the fact that they refunded the late fee without my even having had to call!
Seriously, folks are trying to auomate and be lazy but it will HURT you in the end! At least setup the payments manually (such as using MBNA bllay) and monitor it every few days to make sure things are proceeding nicely.
Frankly, if you cant be bothered to stay on top of your bills and pay them ontime, seriously consider moving to all cash. I know there can be several bills for those who play BT games, but "setting and forgetting" ESPECIALLY when doing 0% deals is just ASKING for trouble.
Even with all the billpay "guarantees" against late fees, mostare NOT going to get your 0% promo back for you.
SeekKnowledge
Member
posted: Jul. 28, 2006 @ 8:46a
YUP. Another thing to consider is setting up AUTOPAY and NOT forgeting it.
Just keep an eye probably twice a month. (thas what I do with by BoF and Chase autopay).
With BoF you have an option to pay your amount (fixed sum,minimum or full) either on the statement received date or on the due date. Pick the former so you would still have time if they mess up. With Chase good luck.. so far I have not seen any issues with autopay
I have never had problems with Autopay - neither with Chase or Citi or Mycheckfree. I think this was just an error on BofA's website, assessing a late fee before the due date. Strangely, I think I was only charged a finance charge on the $39 late fee. If my payment were really late, I would have expected a much larger finance charge on a $13,000 balance than $1.50.
Citi shorted my credit card autopay by the amount of a small disputed charge even though they had told me they had never given me credit for that pending dispute. They then charged me $168 interest for their own error! I am still fighting them on this....wish me luck. I am waiting to call them today until a real American csr will answer their phone.
So here's the latest with these idiots. After emailing them and telling them that they had not credited me back the $1.50 finance charge, they wrote back and said they had fixed it, then I got a letter in the mail telling me that they had changed my finance charge to 0%, which seemed very strange. Then I got the online statement yesterday and it turns out they credited the $12k+ I owed and recharged it and I got charged $90+ in finance charges -- under purchases! So somehow they put it back as a purchase rather than cash advance.
Is Bofa customer service usually this incompetent???
"No Sir, I PAID the $12K to the account. Don't you see that on my statement. Fools."
vamos
Senior Member
posted: Aug. 20, 2006 @ 2:27p
i've found BofA back office people have no clue and could care less. the only way to get things resolved is usually to go into a branch and talk to one of the personal bankers who have access to tier 2-3 support vs the tier 1 twinks.
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