The $145 Pint of Ice Cream ...or How Bank of America Stole All of My Money
It started on a Friday. Actually, technically, it started on a Monday, when I made a charge through SOE for something in Everquest 2. On Friday, however, is when several new debits were made that caused everything to go hell.
On this Friday, Raseny had taken the day off of work, and we decided to go get donuts. Voodoo donuts only accepts cash, so I used their ATM to get money. The cash machine charges $2.50 for the "convenience" of using it, and then Bank of America charges $2 more for using someone else's ATM. These charges matter, so write them all down. There will be a quiz later.
Donuts, I decided, are no good without coffee, so we went to Stumptown next. There I picked up some beans to take home, and a mocha to enjoy with my donuts. That was about $19 with tip. From there we headed home, with a stop at the grocery store for food. That was about $31. Finally we hit the Baskin Robbins for a pint of chocolate chip ice cream. This pint of ice cream was $5 at the Baskin Robbins, but as it turns out it was worth much, much more.
We got home sometime around 8pmish. I went into my Bank of America online account and saw that the pending transactions for the day left me -$3.81. I have another BoA account, and I moved $20 from one to the other. As well as my pending transactions, there were two pending transactions from SOE. One for my monthly EQ2 bill, and another for something I used my debit card to buy on Monday. Since I saw that I was out of money early, I contacted Ellen who agreed to transfer $60 more to my account that evening to help with food for the next week. That transaction was made around 9pm PST.
PST is also important to note. All will be explained shortly, and believe me everything I have mentioned above this is important. Follow along carefully, because the world of banking fees is awesomely complicated.
Skip ahead to Tuesday evening. Over the weekend and holiday Monday I have been watching my account like a hawk, and everything looks great. I have a positive balance, and the world is a happy and magical place. Now it's after dialysis, and I've woken up from my post dialysis nap. I go to check my bank account and see -$41. There is an email from BoA telling me I'm getting hit with 2 charges for insufficient funds for both the SOE debits.
It took me a while to figure out that could have possibly happened, but I think I get it now. Try and follow this if you can: Since by the end of the business day on Friday there were pending charges that showed my account balance to appear negative, and because no new transactions could be calculated until business resumed on Tuesday, when the SOE charges were credited the account was considered overdrawn. So overdraft fees were attached to those two charges at $35 each.
Now, once the money that I transferred to that account was added in (after the SOE charges bounced - of course) my balance was positive again... until those $70 fees were added, and then there is a negative balance - and 4 pending transactions left.
So why was the money I moved from one of my accounts not figured in until Tuesday, as well as the money Ellen deposited in my account (both transactions done on Friday)? Well it's a funny thing about Bank of America - there are different rules depending on what state you have your account in. Accounts in California have until 10:45 PST to have money moved from one BoA account to another credited the same day. Deposits after that time aren't credited until the next business day (that's an important word). Unfortunately if you live in Oregon you only have until 10:45 EST (or 7:45 PST) to do the exact same thing. Move your money after that time and you have to wait until the next business day. So when there's a holiday, you have to wait until Tuesday. And apparently you have to wait until after they calculate pending debits before they calculate your pending deposits.
So, where there should have been money, there are now only fees. And more fees to come. Irate and barely rational I called BoA customer service.
Pro-tip: Here is how you get through to a real person. When the voice starts talking, just start mashing buttons. Hit buttons, then stop, then hit them again, then stop, and eventually the computer will give up trying to make any sense of what you're doing and send you to an operator. This is much easier than trying to navigate their voice options which are designed to keep you from ever reaching a real person. It even directed to me to numbers that are no longer in service, and hung up on me when I tried to work with their system.
Here began the long argument. I'm not going to go into all of what happened next. I got a real operator, and it was clear his purpose was to not give me my money back. I tried being rational, and I explained the math very carefully to him. He tried being rational, and explaining the math to me. Then I started to lose my temper. He told me I spent more than I had. I said, sort of, but not really, since the money was transferred, and that there was really only 1 charge that was made with less money than was in the account -
The Ice Cream.
He wouldn't get passed the ice cream, I wouldn't give up the idea that one pending overdraft doesn't equal two overdraft charges. I explained the transferring of money, and he explained the wonderful difference between Oregon and California BoA banking. However, he did concede shortly, and agreed to reverse the two overdraft fees. Victory? Not quite.
Since those two fees were already credited, and the money already gone, the account had a negative balance. Although they were crediting back $70, it would not be there in time to put the balance positive again. Those 4 other pending debits were switching to credited, and I got another email from BoA saying I was about to get hit with overdraft charges on all of them. I called back customer service to try and get that taken care of, and was told that there was nothing they could do until they charges were credited to the account. Call back tomorrow.
That was yesterday. After coming home from dialysis I fought the urge to pass out (like I usually do), and psyched myself up for Round 2. I shouldn't have bothered. I had to start all over again, with a brand new representative, who was even more stubborn and unreasonable than the first person. My argument was simple, the fees you charged me caused more fees. Since they were determined unreasonable, the further fees caused by these unreasonable fees should be reversed as well.
Short version, because just typing this out is making my brain all hurty and sad, she wouldn't budge. Not her problem, and she wasn't going to reverse any more charges. Have a nice day. How else can Bank of America help you today?
I told her Bank of America could go fuck itself, and I'm closing my accounts.
And that is how a pint of ice cream almost cost me $215, but only ended up costing me $145
It started on a Friday. Actually, technically, it started on a Monday, when I made a charge through SOE for something in Everquest 2. On Friday, however, is when several new debits were made that caused everything to go hell.
On this Friday, Raseny had taken the day off of work, and we decided to go get donuts. Voodoo donuts only accepts cash, so I used their ATM to get money. The cash machine charges $2.50 for the "convenience" of using it, and then Bank of America charges $2 more for using someone else's ATM. These charges matter, so write them all down. There will be a quiz later.
Donuts, I decided, are no good without coffee, so we went to Stumptown next. There I picked up some beans to take home, and a mocha to enjoy with my donuts. That was about $19 with tip. From there we headed home, with a stop at the grocery store for food. That was about $31. Finally we hit the Baskin Robbins for a pint of chocolate chip ice cream. This pint of ice cream was $5 at the Baskin Robbins, but as it turns out it was worth much, much more.
We got home sometime around 8pmish. I went into my Bank of America online account and saw that the pending transactions for the day left me -$3.81. I have another BoA account, and I moved $20 from one to the other. As well as my pending transactions, there were two pending transactions from SOE. One for my monthly EQ2 bill, and another for something I used my debit card to buy on Monday. Since I saw that I was out of money early, I contacted Ellen who agreed to transfer $60 more to my account that evening to help with food for the next week. That transaction was made around 9pm PST.
PST is also important to note. All will be explained shortly, and believe me everything I have mentioned above this is important. Follow along carefully, because the world of banking fees is awesomely complicated.
Skip ahead to Tuesday evening. Over the weekend and holiday Monday I have been watching my account like a hawk, and everything looks great. I have a positive balance, and the world is a happy and magical place. Now it's after dialysis, and I've woken up from my post dialysis nap. I go to check my bank account and see -$41. There is an email from BoA telling me I'm getting hit with 2 charges for insufficient funds for both the SOE debits.
It took me a while to figure out that could have possibly happened, but I think I get it now. Try and follow this if you can: Since by the end of the business day on Friday there were pending charges that showed my account balance to appear negative, and because no new transactions could be calculated until business resumed on Tuesday, when the SOE charges were credited the account was considered overdrawn. So overdraft fees were attached to those two charges at $35 each.
Now, once the money that I transferred to that account was added in (after the SOE charges bounced - of course) my balance was positive again... until those $70 fees were added, and then there is a negative balance - and 4 pending transactions left.
So why was the money I moved from one of my accounts not figured in until Tuesday, as well as the money Ellen deposited in my account (both transactions done on Friday)? Well it's a funny thing about Bank of America - there are different rules depending on what state you have your account in. Accounts in California have until 10:45 PST to have money moved from one BoA account to another credited the same day. Deposits after that time aren't credited until the next business day (that's an important word). Unfortunately if you live in Oregon you only have until 10:45 EST (or 7:45 PST) to do the exact same thing. Move your money after that time and you have to wait until the next business day. So when there's a holiday, you have to wait until Tuesday. And apparently you have to wait until after they calculate pending debits before they calculate your pending deposits.
So, where there should have been money, there are now only fees. And more fees to come. Irate and barely rational I called BoA customer service.
Pro-tip: Here is how you get through to a real person. When the voice starts talking, just start mashing buttons. Hit buttons, then stop, then hit them again, then stop, and eventually the computer will give up trying to make any sense of what you're doing and send you to an operator. This is much easier than trying to navigate their voice options which are designed to keep you from ever reaching a real person. It even directed to me to numbers that are no longer in service, and hung up on me when I tried to work with their system.
Here began the long argument. I'm not going to go into all of what happened next. I got a real operator, and it was clear his purpose was to not give me my money back. I tried being rational, and I explained the math very carefully to him. He tried being rational, and explaining the math to me. Then I started to lose my temper. He told me I spent more than I had. I said, sort of, but not really, since the money was transferred, and that there was really only 1 charge that was made with less money than was in the account -
The Ice Cream.
He wouldn't get passed the ice cream, I wouldn't give up the idea that one pending overdraft doesn't equal two overdraft charges. I explained the transferring of money, and he explained the wonderful difference between Oregon and California BoA banking. However, he did concede shortly, and agreed to reverse the two overdraft fees. Victory? Not quite.
Since those two fees were already credited, and the money already gone, the account had a negative balance. Although they were crediting back $70, it would not be there in time to put the balance positive again. Those 4 other pending debits were switching to credited, and I got another email from BoA saying I was about to get hit with overdraft charges on all of them. I called back customer service to try and get that taken care of, and was told that there was nothing they could do until they charges were credited to the account. Call back tomorrow.
That was yesterday. After coming home from dialysis I fought the urge to pass out (like I usually do), and psyched myself up for Round 2. I shouldn't have bothered. I had to start all over again, with a brand new representative, who was even more stubborn and unreasonable than the first person. My argument was simple, the fees you charged me caused more fees. Since they were determined unreasonable, the further fees caused by these unreasonable fees should be reversed as well.
Short version, because just typing this out is making my brain all hurty and sad, she wouldn't budge. Not her problem, and she wasn't going to reverse any more charges. Have a nice day. How else can Bank of America help you today?
I told her Bank of America could go fuck itself, and I'm closing my accounts.
And that is how a pint of ice cream almost cost me $215, but only ended up costing me $145
On a personal note, I will never do anything that causes BofA to gain money. I had an account with them almost 15 years. I ended up closing it one day, primarily because I was tired of their poor customer service. 3 days after I closed the account and zeroed the balance, BofA approved an automatic deduction, that I had forgotten to stop, on the closed account. So, the bank paid someone 20 some odd dollars, and then tacked on an NSF fee. All this after the account was closed. Naturally, I refused to pay. Naturally, they gave the debt to a collection agency, and also reported me to ChexSystems. The collection agency will not get a dime. Having a record with ChexSystems means I can't open any new checking accounts with other banks for five years. Since I had already opened an account prior to closing the first, that's not going to matter. BofA will never get a dime from me, and that's the way I like it.