One Day, We'll Eat Your Bank

A Rant

When my husband and I began our years of living in sin, we opened accounts at Maryland National Bank, a friendly and competent bank with convenient branches just about everywhere you turned. We started with some individual savings accounts and a joint checking. We were mostly happy with the service at the three branches we frequented.

Then, a boom in banking happened, and Maryland National was bought—or eaten, I should say—by Nation’s “One Day We’ll Be Your Bank” Bank. They were, indeed, but to our chagrin. By then, we had more accounts—some IRAs, a business checking, a joint savings. We complained a lot, threatened to clear our accounts and take them elsewhere (Signet and Provident being ugly possibilities). And then Nation’s Bank became Bank of America.

Recently, in order to pay off four high-interest credit cards, we applied for a Home Equity Line of Credit. It—in the hands of Bank of America—has ruined my life.

It begins with Manju, somewhere in headquarters. She tells us our loan is approved, gives me the interest rates, the payoff information, and all other relevant and pertinent information. She then asks how much I owe to whom. I tell her I can’t give her exact amounts at the moment because I’ve just paid my bills and haven’t gotten the new ones yet. It’s OK; she just needs ballpark figures. She asks when I will go to sign the papers, and I tell her I don’t know—definitely not until Friday, but possibly the following Friday. It’s OK, she says. I have something like thirty days before the loan will be rescinded.

When we get to the bank that Friday, all the paperwork is dated for the previous Monday, the day Manju called, which means our three-day right of cancellation has already passed. The bank manager, Susan, tells us the loan will likely have to be resettled because we are signing the papers with the correct date, as is required by law, a date several days beyond that preprinted on the settlement papers. She can’t let us change and initial the typed date. I'm obviously naive because I think this is the worst of the trouble I will have with Bank America.

We sign direct deposit and a host of other forms, including four pieces of paper with credit card companies’ names, some misspelled, with various even-dollar amounts owed—the same amounts I had merely estimated with Manju on Monday. The papers say that Bank of America will be paying off the credit cards as a condition of the loan. Manju left out that part. Had she told me, I’d have called the credit card companies to get exact payoff amounts.

We are told we’ll be sent a debit card and some checks to pay our bills. (We are still waiting, more than a month later, for those.) We are sent on our merry way.

I phone my pal, Manju, the following day to make sure the bank doesn’t pay those erroneous amounts to misspelled companies, but she is on vacation. I speak to someone else who is somewhat nonplussed (“it’s a condition of the loan?”) and give her the exact payoff amounts.

Within a week, the bills are all paid, and I begin to cancel the credit cards. Within another week, I receive mail from my Bank of America Visa, informing me that Bank America’s check to them has bounced—returned, they say, for “Refer to Maker.” No one can tell me what this means.

I spend the next hour(s) dialing and redialing, punching 1, saying associate, saying Home Equity Line of Credit, and getting associates who don’t listen to a single, crystal clear word I say, which is this: As a condition of my Home Equity Line of Credit, Bank of America did not give me any money and instead paid my four credit card bills for me. One of the checks, to Bank America Visa, was returned for “Refer to Maker.” I need to find out why and where the money is.

“Maybe you didn’t wait until the money was in your account.” The money was never in my account! It was a condition of the loan that the bank pay the bills! (Did I just say that?) “Wait,” they say; “We’ll transfer you to credit card services.” No! I don’t want credit card services! I need to find out where that $3,000 is!

One time, I am on the phone with a woman for nearly 20 minutes. She keeps asking me strange questions like, “How many accounts do you have? Can you name some of them?” I finally say to her, “Are you still trying to confirm that I’m me?” It’s for my own protection, ma’am. “If I weren’t me, would I give a fuck that you lost my $3,000????????” Oh, the computers are slow. It’s for my protection. And all that there.

I explain this six times, with the conversation going the same way each time—the line of credit associate doesn’t see a returned check, the credit card company associate can’t tell me why it was rejected, the next line of credit associate tells me I didn’t wait for the money before I paid the bill, ad infinitum. This phone call ends with someone from credit cards and someone from home equity agreeing to “research” it for me. She says I can call back in a few days.

This is when my top blows. Gritting my teeth to keep from screaming but still screaming, I tell the two women, whose heads I would like to bang together like a giant wrestler could do, that they had better take care of this together, that I don’t want to ever call them back, that I want this resolved NOW.

A week later, I get a note from the bank saying they are researching it. I also get a note from home equity saying that I have three new days to cancel, seeing as I didn’t have the paperwork with the proper date on it.

I go to the branch, where the manager, Susan, is supposed to be, but she is out on a family emergency. I talk to lovely Maureen, who has a direct line to someone important. Maureen asks where the $3,000 check is. It’s not at credit cards, where it was supposed to be, and it’s not in my account. She doesn’t know. It doesn’t show up as returned by Visa, and it doesn’t show up in my accounts—any of them. She’ll e-mail her boss and get back to Maureen. Whenever.

I am now paying interest on disappeared money. In addition, I’m paying .5% more than I’m supposed to be paying, as a Premier customer (this is how they treat Premier customers, folks) and as an automatic draft payer.

Maureen won’t be in Thursday or Friday, so I’ll have to deal with someone else, to whom she has now explained the case. Then, just for fun, she calls someone else at Bank America, someone at the number I have to call. She has to dial the same wrong numbers and get the same wrong people that I get—because, get this: Bank America thinks its customers are more important than its employees, so if you go there to get help from a real, live person, you will not only get slower-than-usual help, but you will get to see the bank representative yelling at the idiot associate on the phone, who keeps saying, “Maybe she paid before the money was in her account!” and “I’ll transfer you to credit cards.”

If there is good news here somewhere, I haven’t found it. Instead, in today’s mail is a note from my Bank America Visa stating that my account is in arrears and is being forwarded to a collection agency.

I’m still paying .5% more interest than I’m supposed to be, and I’m paying it on $3,000 that I never got the benefit of using, money that has disappeared in to some Bank of America sink hole.

And a recorded Bank America message comes to my home every day asking me to pay my bill. Perhaps if not for the things above, these calls would not be harassing. But considering that Visa has this under investigation, someone should have flagged my account.

I’m no expert in the law, but I have a few hundred episodes of People’s Court under my belt. My husband wants to sue the bank for our time. But we can’t; in contract cases, you’re only entitled to be made whole. You can’t recoup missed time from work or aggravation, much as Judge Marilyn Millian would think you deserve it. (My husband doesn’t think People’s Court is real law, but we all know better. Besides, one of my former students works for the clerk’s office in one county courthouse, and she says someone from the show is there every so often, rummaging through some interesting civil cases.)

If you have any suggestions, I will take them. Right now, I’m thinking that my story may save someone else from this hassle. And maybe the bad publicity will cause the bank to right my wrong, return to me a month’s worth of interest on $3,000, reduce my interest rate to the proper amount, write letters to the three major credit reporting companies saying they’ve done me wrong, and, damn it, give me a new set of cookware for my troubles.

UPDATE

It gets worse. Today, I spoke with not one but three different people after Bank of America called me by automaton to say that I have a balance due on my credit card bill. Even with the case file numbers and the people's names, I was transferred two different times. I hung up.

Today, I spent three hours composing a four-page letter. I looked up the names and addresses of several CEOs and CFOs and Human Relations managers and printed out thirteen envelopes—including one each to my attorney and my accountant.

In the letter, I ask for several things, including back interest, a refund on the interest from the lost money, a cancellation of my credit cards, and a written apology from the bank acknowledging, without the use of passive verbs, Bank of America’s mistake and the hassles it has caused me. I told them I wanted them to write to all the major credit reporting firms to explain the situation.

I also asked for a set of pots and pans and a refund on printing ink and postage.

Frankly, I doubt I will get anything.