Bank of America AutoPay Stupidity

[feelyat]

I use autopay on all of my credit cards to pay the statement balance. On other major cards (citi, chase, amex, Barclay) the autopay keeps track of the remaining statement balance and pays what's left of it on the statement due date. It seems like the BOA autopay feature simply schedules a future transaction and pushes it through on the due date, no matter what, including when doing so will push the card balance into negative territory.

Here's what happened:

In a fit of "trying to get ahead of things", the day before last month's statement closing date, I paid my BOA card balance using the web site. BOA withdrew the money immediately, but didn't post it to my card for a few days. As a result, they closed my statement with a balance and a pending payment for the balance amount. A day after closing, the card balance dropped to zero. Further activity ensued on the card -- it's my son's "emergency use" card, which apparently means groceries -- and  this month's due date approached again. Knowing that the balance had already been paid, I fully expected the autopay system to just cancel the transaction, or worst-case, they'd adjust the amount to the current balance. Nope. Their system pulled the full statement balance, driving my CC balance negative.

I'm not in a position where giving my credit card company a loan is going to destroy me financially, but why on earth are there no safeguards against this sort of thing? I now need to explain to my budgeting system (YNAB -- try it!) where my payment came from. Also, the amounts are not insane -- the negative balance is around $300.

[Remedios]

If you call today, they have 7 business days to issue you a refund, some will let you pick refund method, some are still checks only.

I never had an overpayment with BoA but I had overpayments with Citi, Chase and Disco, all did direct deposit within 4 days. 

[feelyat]

Thanks. I might call and request a refund, but if it comes in the form of a check in the mail, it might be more trouble than it's worth. I'm mostly just flabbergasted that the systems they have in place are so simplistic that something like this can happen. I've never had autopay initiate an overpayment with citi, chase, amex or barclay, all of which I use regularly. In fact, I'm often surprised when they auto-withdraw less than the full statement balance because of a return or other credit on the statement cycle.

[coldfusion]

As an aside, what day of the week did you schedule the initial manual payment of the card balance and did you use Bill Pay or did you do a direct transfer from a BoA deposit account to the card's account? 

Emperically BoA does not process all transaction types every night of the week.  For example, some transactions performed over the weekend might not get 100% reconciled until Monday night. 

[feelyat]

I don't recall, but it might have fallen on a weekend. My deposit account is not with BoA, so it was an ACH transfer initiated from the BoA website. Does that count as Bill Pay? The delay in the initial payment is not really my main issue -- payment posting delays are to be expected, especially when the CC institution initiates the transaction.

[Anonymous]

I have this experience with a few other lenders, mostly CUs from what I remember, and it is unexpected (and wrong!) when other lenders do it right.  On these CUs, you can see the scheduled autopay payment and it will happen unless you cancel.   Actually, USAlliance has a way of preventing the issue but in some ways it is more annoying than the problem!

So, some time during the current billing cycle, you see the scheduled payment for statement balance on due date, say $400.  The current balance is $600, and for some reason you want to pay it all now.   When you try, it will tell you there is $400 payment pending and you cannot pay more than $200.  You would have to cancel the scheduled autopay for this month then you can pay the whole thing.  Yes, stops overpayment!

[coldfusion]

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@feelyat wrote:

I don't recall, but it might have fallen on a weekend. My deposit account is not with BoA, so it was an ACH transfer initiated from the BoA website. Does that count as Bill Pay? The delay in the initial payment is not really my main issue -- payment posting delays are to be expected, especially when the CC institution initiates the transaction.

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Yes, as AFAIK the only way you can pull funds directly from an external account to a credit card account is via Bill Pay where you have explicitly enabled and verified that external account via the Bill Pay Manage Accounts feature.     External accounts (only) enabled and verified through the Transfer/Zelle feature will not be offered as an option when trying to initiate a transfer to a CC account nor will they be offered as an option when looking to pay your BoA card via Bill Pay. 

[hackersmovie]

Very similar thing happened to me with Truist last month. I got a new card from them and didn't know when the first statement would close so I paid the card in full using my BofA account. That payment happened to be the same exact day the statment closed. When I got the card, or any card for that matter, I set up auto pay of statment balance. Apparently Truist will pay the statement on the statement date and not the "due date" because I can't think of another reason for the double payment. I kept the negative balance as it's my 'catchall' card and I used it up pretty quick anyway.

[1LostArk]

I've run into this with BofA where a credit will post during the grace period and the autopay will deduct the statement balance, leaving a negative balance on the card. If you have a BofA deposit account, you can call and they'll deposit the balance very quickly, last time it happened to me the credit posted to my BofA checking account the next day. I don't find this to be an issue at all imho — if a negative card balance leaves one starved for cash, there are bigger problems at play. Speaking of YNAB, it can handle negative card balances, just categorize the credit(s) as inflow and then immediately assign it back to the card under credit card payments. 

[markbeiser]

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@hackersmovie wrote:

Very similar thing happened to me with Truist last month. I got a new card from them and didn't know when the first statement would close so I paid the card in full using my BofA account. That payment happened to be the same exact day the statment closed. When I got the card, or any card for that matter, I set up auto pay of statment balance. Apparently Truist will pay the statement on the statement date and not the "due date" because I can't think of another reason for the double payment. I kept the negative balance as it's my 'catchall' card and I used it up pretty quick anyway.

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My Truist Enjoy Cash card has been autopaying the statement balance on the 18th of every month since I got the card, even though I never set it up to do so, and there are no indications that such is turned on when I look on the web site.
Kinda makes it impossible to take advantage of the 0% APR introductory period, or use it has my AZEO card...

I've called their CS, and they had no idea why it was happening, so sent it to "research."
I've not heard back from them since I called about it 1/19.
If it happens again in February, I'll just sock drawer the card forever. I've heard of too many people dealing with stupidity involving Truist, I'm not going to bother with trying to sort it out.