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Thank you for your willingness to get involved. All I know is that they are located in Florida. I think there are many other people impacted by what this comapny is illegally doing! I have reached out to the OCC and I'm awaiting a response from them.
bank of america is a fken joke. always looking for new fees carries no documentation and even calling the swat team on their customers. why people still do business with them i have no clue.
@distantarray wrote:bank of america is a fken joke. always looking for new fees carries no documentation and even calling the swat team on their customers. why people still do business with them i have no clue.
Or even more generally, why people use anything other than internet banks these days....
But, BofA story. A few months ago I was refinancing my mortgage with Cedent Mortgage, and the underwriter (correctly in my opinion) was being very detailed in her analysis. One thing she wanted more documentation on concerned an international wire transfer from my UK account to my BofA account. I got the details and noticed that BofA had charged me a $35 fee, when it appeared that this should be waived because of my account type.
I contacted them, and was eventually told that the fee had not in fact be charged. It was very hard to tell because there was a single entry on the statement of the type
"$171443.23 (UK account info) $35 Wire Fee, 07/06/2012 11:23"
so the credit and the fee were wrapped into one, and with neither bank providing exchange rate info, I couldn't prove the fee had been charged, although the text sure makes it look like it had! But, in the middle of the mortage, dealing with much larger sums, so I just let it slide.
Later, I converted my BofA account to the simplest e-checking one, and moved nearly all of the money out to an internet bank. To my surprise, last week, my BofA account shows a $35 credit: "Wire transfer fee credit"
So, only took four months, but with no further action on my part, they somehow did the right thing.
But in general yes, avoid this bank!
Modern Money Mechanics doesn't exist in Florida. The only thing I can find is a guy in Arizona who calls himself The Money Mechanics.
http://www.themoneymechanics.net
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/themoneymechanics.net
He doesn't seem to have a business - just a sole propietorship.
There's also a Credit Mechanics Inc. doing business in Virginia but registered in Maryland.
I'm pretty good at finding companies (it's part of my job). "Modern Money Mechanics" doesn't exist in the US as an entity of any type.
On another note, that's quite a scam - write to a bank about someone else's secured card, have the bank close the card and send the deposit to you, profit. Well done, scammer. You'd think BoA would have something in place to prevent this. Well, it IS BoA, so maybe not.
@djrez4 wrote:
On another note, that's quite a scam - write to a bank about someone else's secured card, have the bank close the card and send the deposit to you, profit. Well done, scammer. You'd think BoA would have something in place to prevent this. Well, it IS BoA, so maybe not.
Wow, I did not even consider that the depost amount might be mailed to some scammer. Amazing.
@bs1234 wrote:
Later, I converted my BofA account to the simplest e-checking one, and moved nearly all of the money out to an internet bank. To my surprise, last week, my BofA account shows a $35 credit: "Wire transfer fee credit"
May I ask what internet banks (IB) you know of and trust? I still use a B&M bank, but would contemplate switching to an IB if they had outstanding customer service.
http://getoutofdebt.org/46253/bank-of-america-consumer-complaint-9-27-2012
Someone else posting about a similar problem.
As I admit that I didn't read the whole thread, I am confused.
If this is fraud, then it seems that it would be really easy to track. If an account was "turned over" to someone, then BOA would have wire transfer numbers, routing numbers, a signed document, notarized, court order, etc. BOA would have something to complete the authorization of turning the accounts over.
So when the affected parties call BOA up and say that this must have been fraud, BOA could track it. Could research it. Could send it over to Fraud and Legal to look it over.
I don't like BOA anymore than the next guy, but it would seem that in order for an account to be turned over, BOA would have had to complete the transaction with the requesting 3rd party Money Mechanics.
So I am not easily convinced that this is Fraud.
@bahbahd wrote:
@bs1234 wrote:Later, I converted my BofA account to the simplest e-checking one, and moved nearly all of the money out to an internet bank. To my surprise, last week, my BofA account shows a $35 credit: "Wire transfer fee credit"
May I ask what internet banks (IB) you know of and trust? I still use a B&M bank, but would contemplate switching to an IB if they had outstanding customer service.
I use Everbank, which has a promotion giving 1.25% interest on checking for 6 months, and TIAA Direct which currently gives 1.25% on savings accounts, but is closed to new users presently. I also use Capital One Internet Banking (which has almost no relationship with either with the B&M Capital One banks or the credit cards!) as that had a decent promotion at the time I opened it.
Like almost anything, if you search around you will find "best bank ever" and "horrible scam, run for your life" reviews for these and all internet banks.
People are tempted to chase rates (move from Bank A to Bank B to get say a 0.1% better rate) but you need to do a sanity check as well. On a $100K deposit (more than many will have) a 0.1% rate improvement is $100 a year. On a more realistic $20K account, it's $20 a year. How much of your time is that worth!
Things to look for:
a) Minimum balance to avoid fees. ( Everbank isn't that good here, needs maybe $5K to get free bill payment and ATM reimbursment)
b) Remote check deposit. Some way, usually Android/iPhone, to deposit checks. You don't want to have to mail them in. A popular choice, Ally, fails on this one.
c) Good ACH policies. Easy to transfer money in and out. Some banks have small limits that get in the way if you are trying to close the account
d) ATM reimbursement. Most of these banks don't have their own ATMs, so you will be using others. Most will reimburse some fees, some unlimited (except for abuse), some have a limit either on total monthly reimbursement or number of reimbursements. Some, like Cap One, reimburse the next day, others like Everbank, at the end of the month. Unless your balance is very low and you are using ATMs a lot, this difference isn't that critical
e) Rates, and stability. A lot of new banks come in with very attractive rates, get lots of rate chasers, and then drop very quickly. Really no way to avoid this, but some, like Everbank, say they will ensure they stay in the top 5%. (But if they don't, probably no recourse, so just words....)
Hope that helps.
but would contemplate switching to an IB if they had outstanding customer service.
I missed your critical statement! I don't think any of them that I know have outstanding customer service, I don't really look for that. I only need a) as few issues as possible, and b) prompt resolution of issues that do arise. Everything else should be zero touch, so service doesn't apply.
All of my three respond within a business day to any concerns. Mostly, first response solves the issue, sometimes it takes two. I wouldn't classify my interactions as outstanding, but certainly good enough.
I guess the question is what exactly are you looking for? If you are looking for detailed discussion of account options etc, probably not going to happen, you look at the website and send email if you have questions. That is the main advantage of a B&M bank. Much better rates and flexibility is the key feature of internet banks, which they can do by keeping costs down, i.e. not spending too much time answering questions and concerns!