Bank of America enrolls you in "Credit Protection Plus" without your permission
Brian says:
I called Bank of America to request a credit line increase. They asked me to enroll in the Credit Protection Plus program and I declined. But today they sent me this letter congratulating me on enrolling and explaining the program fees.Bank of America: enrolls you in "Credit Protection Plus" without your permission (dustball@Mindsay)A few bloggers (myself included) are quite unhappy with Bank of America. What happens is this:
1. We call their 800 number for a routine transaction
2. They offer us enrollment in one of those shady "credit protection plus" programs
3. *we decline*
4. Two weeks later, we get a letter thanking us for enrolling, and telling us what the charges are
I've also setup a Credit Protection Plus Fraud PBwiki to help organize ourselves in the fight against them. Please add your story if you've been victimized by Bank of America.
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Bank of America loses $50 million from customers upset by false arrest
the latest
latest episodes
Forbes June 30/08
"Worse off than Fuld is Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ), who is foolishly planning to acquire Countrywide Financial (nyse: CFC - news - people ) on Monday, June 30, for $4 billion. It will cost Lewis perhaps half of the bank's $110 (remaining) market value if he goes through with this deal, according to one of Croesus' most valued informants during the subprime debacle. Bank of America is selling at half the price it was one year ago."
yep
I recently got my daughter a credit card for a Chase Visa account. On Saturday, she received an envelope congratulating her on purchasing a credit protection plan. Evidently when she activated her card, they signed her up for this. She told me that she declined buying the plan but somehow she got enrolled anyway. I imagine they did one of those sneaky things where they said you don't have to pay now and you can review the information once it arrives, either tricking her into agreeing to the program without her full consent or signing her up anyway. I like the card because of its reward points, but I am really angry that they would take advantage of a card holder like that. So be careful with Chase.
A very similar thing happened to be with my Citi credit card, which took me 5 phone calls to stop the enrollment in the protection plan. (and they would not refund me)
credit unions are less scammy.
Its the same thing over at Wells Fargo. I went in to close one of my accounts about a year ago and they kept pushing this "Free Credit Checker" program that I could sign up for. I declined.
"But its free. Don't you want to know your credit score?"
"No." I just knew that it was one of those sneaky *first check is free* then we charge you up the ass and don't tell you about it.
They kept insisting until finally I just got up and walked out of there.
Two months later I look at my statement to see that I have been charge 33 dollars for that "free credit checker." Unbelievable. I eventually got them to remove the fees, but that just insane.
I had a problem with that very same thing. In fact what happened was that the charges for the service (which I to, did not know I was enrolled in and was signed up for 'automatically') ended up putting me over my credit limit and it took quite a long on time on the phone not only to deal with that situation, but also canceling the service was also incredibly difficult. Sneaky fckrs.
if you keep your cellphone number for good calls, and only give your land-line number to banks etc., they can't slam you so easily. Let them talk to an answering machine. Though these days fewer and fewer have land-lines it seems.
This is just the 21st century version of slamming (i.e. do you want to change your long distance provider?). These guys are on commission for every person they sign up, so even if you don't sign up, they falsify it for the commission. They know that most people will complain, but even if 20% don't notice, they get their commission.
I have a BoA credit card and every once in a while they call me about this protection program they have. The first one really scared me, because the way they phrase the call at first it sounds like someone has stolen your card and wrecking your credit.
I was already planning to leave BoA (they just acquired my bank and already I'm have serious problems with basic functions like deposits at ATMs - and their customer service is a huge mess).
Trying to complain about the problem was a farce - in the end I finally got a reply. It was instructions on how to close my (high balance) account. Soon as I finish shopping around I'll be switching. I need a larger bank since I travel a lot - any suggestions?
Never had problems with WaMu. A big bank to consider. They did get themselves too far into the subprime market, unfortunately, and they try real hard to be trendy at their branches, but I've never had anything like the credit protection slam happen. Their online banking also works well.
BOA is the worst bank I unfortunately do business with, I HATE HATE HATE them. Always getting calls from them for some crap or another. I never got called by Wells Fargo, my main bank, until I got a call this month. Hopefully that isn't the start of a new trend.
Why not try a credit union - I've banked exclusively at credit unions for years now - and a few years ago the restrictions on joining credit unions were loosened so almost everyone can qualify.
Anyone who lives or works in LA can join Wescom, for example. They usually have better loan rates and the profits are put back into the credit union to help its members.
The best way to treat those huge greedy banks is to take your money elsewhere.
When my wife and I evacuated Hurricane Katrina we set up in another city for a few months before we were able to return home. Our home bank had no branches in the area, so we opened a temporary account with Bank of America so that we could deposit paychecks, etc while we were out of town.
We made plain exactly what we wanted: a simple checking account for local use that would not be our primary account. The bank representative (in person) kept trying to offer us a credit card, a safety deposit box, and various other services that were obviously of no use to us.
Fortunately she did eventually take no for an answer and did not illegally sign us up for stuff that we didn't want. Still, it was such a miserable experience at such a bad time in our lives - we closed the account when we moved back home, and I would never do business with BoA again.
It's obvious that this isn't just a few 'bad apples;' it is the policy of Bank of America (and, presumably, most major credit card companies) that their employees must waste your time offering you all kinds of services, even when you have explicitly said that you don't want them.
anyone leaving BOA: do not close your account! Leave the absolute minimum balance to keep the account open. They hate that more than closed accounts. Saddle them with millions of accounts with ten bucks that earn them nothing and require them to do the maximum maintenance.
Wells Fargo has been good to me for 10+ years. I was the victim of credit fraud years ago and Wells Fargo has been good about occasionally calling me to confirm "suspicious" charges (e.g. buying multiple tanks of gas, spending >$1000 at Amazon.com).
Always watch your statements closely, regardless of who the card is through. I had a card with Citibank that I'd been running a zero balance on and one day a charge for close to $800 showed up without my authorization. I immediately called their fraud hotline and they said "We'll transfer you right away" and then transfered me internally to the people who had slammed me! It was some health plan that was, like this credit protection, a nebulous service that would never be of any value. They said it was a renewal of a service I had previously enrolled in which was patently false. Then they argued with me for 45 minutes, trying to sell me the service they had just slammed me for. I had to threaten to report them to the attorney general before they agreed to reverse the charges. When my next statement came in, they had only credited a portion of what they had charged me and they had assessed a late fee. I called the fraud hotline again, refused to be transfered and threaten to report them to various regulatory agencies if all charges and late fees were not immediately reversed.
This kind of thing often happens because the person on the phone gets a commission for each new account they sign up. You say, "No", they sign you up anyway, they get the commission, you cancel the program, but they keep the commission.
I worked for a company once where the sales slugs would poach customers who were using a different product from the same company. Commissions were awarded even though no new sales were made.
that's why you can't talk to them at all.
Buy.com tried something similar to that on me last time I bought something from them. 30 days after the transaction, a $30 charge for some "shoppers advantage" crap appeared on my Capital One statement. I called the 800 number on my statement and got a live CSR who could have been a robot because she was reading nearly everything off a script. "Everything about the program is clearly explained to buy.com customers," she would repeat every time I insisted that I never signed up for this crap, I never intended to sign up for this crap, and I actively avoid signing up for this crap. I eventually got the $30 credited to my card without too much trouble; apparently, they count on people not checking their credit card statements that closely, and they'll let anyone who complains off the hook because they don't want people calling the cops on them.
Um, why in this story...
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/15/bank-of-america-lose.html
...does Mark Frauenfelder say "I almost wish I had an account with BofA so I could close it in protest, but I closed my account with them long ago because their service sucks."
...and yet here he says, " I called Bank of America to request a credit line increase."
Why is he doing business with a company that he tried to put out of business just 2 years ago for screwing with another customer/victim?
You might also like to know that when you write a check, B of A charges $5 to cash it, which is a breech of contract. You probably never heard of it because it does not apply when the check is deposited in another bank. I don't know about other states, but in Arizona that is a violation of state banking laws. The law spells out the requirements to cash a check, and payment of a fee is not one of them.
I won't accept a check drawn on B of A, or any bank that charges to cash one.
Two words:
CREDIT UNION
Ditch the blood-sucking corporate banks and their weasel words, relentless sales drones and piss-poor customer service. Do your business with a credit union. If you are eligible for membership in a CU, you'd be a fool to not take advantage.
At my CU: Free checking. No ATM fees. Competitive interest rates on credit cards, loans and savings accounts. Excellent customer service. As long as I behave myself, I always have immediate access to funds after I deposit a check, no "waiting for it to clear". My money is kept locally and I always have access to it.
The one time I accidentally overdrew my checking account, they rolled the overdraft amount over to my credit card as a cash advance. No outrageous overdraft fees, no threatening letters, black marks on my credit history or claims on my first-born. I paid a few cents worth of interest for the cash advance and I was done.
For all of this, all I have to do is keep $5 in a savings account... everything else is free of charge. No hidden fees, no extra service charges, no bullshit. In 16 years, I've never shelled out a dime more for service except for a box of checks every now and then.
What's not to like?
>>21
The story was quoted wrong. It's not Mark who was requesting a credit increase, it's the blogger who wrote the entry.
Local banks are smelling blood. I bank with Old Second (Western suburbs of Chicago) and love them. For the same reason I prefer a local restaurant over Applebees, I prefer to bank where people know me and treat me like a customer - not an inconvenience.
My mom was just telling me about Citizens Bank doing this to her too. It took her multiple phone calls, but eventually she got them to reverse the charges. Such a scam - i hate banks...credit union seems like a much better option.
@21: I forgot to include the part that makes it clear that a BB reader named Brian wrote this, not me. He's the one with the BofA account. I don't have a BofA account. Thanks for pointing it out, Secret Life of Plants. I'm sorry for the confusion and I amended the post.
@27: Wow, getting a personal message (well, to my pseudonymous self) from Mark Frauenfelder was like the adult version of that time that my crayon drawing of ducks was shown on Romper Room! Thanks!
Bank of America has excellent service if one has over around $300,000 in assets with their various subsidiaries; otherwise, their service is abysmal. Whereas higher customers have special numbers to call for customer service, which connect them to specific people, normal customers have only the normal customer service phone number, where it isn't even clear how to speak to a human at all.
We have all the benefits that St. Vincent mentions: free checking accounts (and checks), no ATM fees, decent interest rates, excellent customer service (they will come to our house if we need to meet with them), and representatives who are quite willing to continually ignore the bank's usual policies on things like fees and overdrafts. We also trust that when we tell people at BoA to do things, they will do them reliably: we have an account at another bank where they somehow "had no record" of a stop payment for a relatively large check we had written, and because of that we've had all sorts of problems dealing with the company that now has that money. We've never had such a thing happen with BoA.
credit union(s) is where I'm at
Hey, how about a thread of reader's brushes with fame via kid's art that made the big time?
I have had bad experiences with Bank of America too. So as not to bore you with the details I will tell you how I solved it. I changed banks! Its really not that hard to do.
The only problem with changing banks is that your old bank might buy your new bank a week later. When my mother died, her bank was bought twice between her death and settling her estate a couple of months later. These days, you just might find your bank boarded up and no forwarding address.
re: WA
None of this is directed toward you (you're just stating the facts)... but it made me pretty cranky to read your response.
Do the bozos at BofA think that people don't have long memories? That their customers who may not have a lot of assets at the moment might have some (or a lot) in the future?
I'm doing reasonably well these days, but it definitely wasn't always that way. You can bet your sweet bippy I remember the businesses that treated me with respect back in the day and those who didn't. Those in the latter category don't have my business anymore.
Sigh... maybe this is just a sign of widening class stratification... hey, you're either born with assets or you aren't, right? I mean, it's not like anyone will get ahead with simplistic prole concepts like thrift, hard work or ethical behavior. The blessed ones, enter the special gold door to your right. The unwashed, queue up and shut up.
Okay, so that last paragraph was over the top... what can I say, reading BS like WA describes leaves me feeling that way.
I've moved a couple times in the past few years, and every time I call Citi to update the address on my credit card, I have to go through the rigamarole of declining their stupid credit protection schemes. It takes at least three firm statements of "No, thank you" to get them to drop it, with the last question invariably being "we'll just send you the information anyway, it's free," with the hope of getting that one "okay" to start the charging.
Well, I'll just be the one to say that I haven't yet had any frustrations with BoA... Although I don't have a CC with them, just banking accounts. But I don't receive boatloads of phone calls (actually, I don't think I've ever received any) and I haven't been fraudulently signed up for anything (well, not to my knowledge, at least).
We recently found out that my grandmother (90-some years old) has been getting charged for a protection plan on a credit card that she had -never- used in her life, for the past 15 years or so. Do not remember who the CC company was. That's a bum deal though, taking advantage of old ladies.
I was with BOA for years - I was initially very happy with them, but deteriorating service & increasing fees lead me to close my account about 7 years ago. The final straw was when my 'free' checking account starting costing me $3.00 every time I wanted to talk to a teller!
"anyone leaving BOA: do not close your account! Leave the absolute minimum balance to keep the account open."
Takuan, BOA starts fining me if I drop below a certain amount. So that wouldn't work. If anything, they'd send bills for their fines.
BOA has always taken over the banks I've been part of, so at this point I've given up switching to banks that I hear don't have penalties for everything besides breathing. But they are, imo, a horrible bank.
Citibank Visa Credit Card did the same exact thing to me on a card I only used for emergencies, then never sent me a bill. So I kept getting charged for months for their "ID Theft Protection Plan" which added up to a couple hundred dollars for the service plus late fees. When I finally figured it out and got it resloved, my credit rating was shot thanks to their mistake. 5 years later I'm still trying to get my credit rating back to normal without any help from their customer service folks.
Makes me wonder who exactly will protect us from our own credit card companies and banks' special services that we never asked for...
I wish I had a BofA account just so I could close it.
BofA sucks.
My wife got a call (from BofA) that there was fraudulent use of her credit card, and had to go through a big exercise to get it resolved.
I had a BofA credit card, on a totally separate and unrelated account that I had taken straight from the envelope, activated, and put in a safety deposit box for emergency use only. Two days after my wife's call, I got the same thing.
They tried to say it was online fraud. I pointed out that the card was a virgin. Then they conceded it may have been compromised via a "trusted 3rd party." What they never admitted is that the problem was *internal*.
We hates them, we does.
no help for it then; we'll have to burn the lot. Everyone meet me tomorrow with pitch forks and torches.
I have had so many problems with Bank of America. Every single month of 2008, they find a new way to screw up. I'm disgusted with their customer service, as well. They've never done a good job fixing the problems, all of which were their own doing, natch.
I've transferred my entire balance away from them, but I'm keeping the card. Why? My good history with them contributes to my >750 credit score. F*** 'em. They can serve me better without making interest off me.
@ takuan:
Don't do that! I tried to close my BoA account (because I hate hate hate them so much) and the teller told my everything was closed, and shredded my card.
Months later I get a statement saying my balance is -$4.99. I called them up and apparently I "earned" $0.01 of interest two weeks after I closed my account, so it was reopened without my knowlege and then they began charging me fees.
I had them for years, (originally had Fleet, before BoA bought them out) but only because only their ATMs were on campus. They were always completely awful, it seemed like I was on the phone with them every other month trying to correct something on my statement.
alas, it seems that like poison, the only defense is not to ingest it at all
Aww, now I want to give SLoP a hug.
A month ago I asked Wells Fargo to convert my checking account over to a no-fee one... the guy behind the desk was friendly and everything, but I remember him asking questions about my current job, telling me I qualified for a new credit card, asked if I wanted credit protection. I asked him why he was asking all this, and he turned the screen partly to me and said "I'm just reading out what I'm told to, it asks questions and won't go on until you give some kind of answer." I didn't get upset over it, and he apparently didn't enroll me in anything extra.
Policy gets set somewhere, and drones carry it out. Some of them will lie, probably most do the right thing.
When I activated my Chase credit card a few years ago the woman on the line (speaking in a very hard to understand accent) kept insisting that I enroll, or at least let them enroll me for free and I could cancel after my free month if I didn't want it. After firmly, but nicely, insisting that I did not want it at least ten times during the flow of conversation, I started simply reciting "I do not want it; you do not have my permission" over and over and over while she continued to try to convince me. After seriously a couple minutes of this, she got my attention (sir! sir! sir!) and said "I understand you do not wish to enroll; have a nice day". It was terrible. I knew that if I simply hung up I'd be getting a bill for it the next cycle.
Perhaps folks should start bringing their own consent form to the bank (which, unfortunately would only work in person), and refuse to leave until it had been signed stating that the customer has declined any additional credit checker/protection programs and will not be responsible for any fees mistakenly charged.
I can't count the amount of times I've been guaranteed in person that a service was free, only to later find masses of bills and deaf ears.
BOA must be sucking for cash. My due date is the 5th. Been the 5th, is the 5th. Last month, for no apparent reason, it's the 2nd. Silly me, it's just a little mistake. Oh no - late charge that didn't bump the interest. I've already looked at closing that card, but the others want a 3% fee now. WHAT? Going to go check them all for Credit Protection now...
Start recording all of your bank customer services balls. I've discovered that in some states, you're allowed to do that.
When I called to activate my credit card with Capital One (i've not lived in the States long, so normal banks don't trust me) the woman in their call centre said something like "We've got this great credit protection plan for only $5/month. I'm just adding that for you now [tap tap tap on the keyboard]." "NO NO NO! I don't want that".
Repeat about 3 times for different products with additional charges, all said very quickly in the hope I wouldn't catch what she was doing, and my silence was an implicit agreement or something.
I signed up for the World Points credit card with Bank of America, and during the activation process, they asked me if I wanted to sign up for the Credit Protection Plus. I declined it, and they signed me up anyways! I found that out when I got charged an extra 1% on my credit card statement. I called their hotline several times and Bank of America kept transferring me to the Credit Protection Plus group (which is apparently not part of BofA, they told me). That number has really bad opening hours, and I got dropped several times. I spoke to 2 people who said that the Credit Protection plan would be off my next credit card bill and I would get refunded. That was NOT true. I then spoke to the manager of the Credit Protection group and he told me the same thing. After 3 months of being charged, the 1% fee NEVER got cancelled on my statement nor did I get refunded.
I went to my Bank of America local branch, and spoke to the manager there. She made a couple of calls for me and took care of everything. I finally got the refund back and they signed me off the protection plan.
I'm willing to stay with BofA because the people at the branch take good care of you when you go there personally. I just hate speaking to people on these hotlines as they have no idea what they are doing.