Bank of America sucks!!!

[YarisSedan]

So today i went to check my balance online to find out they are now charging me a 8.95 monthly fee to maintain my checking account. Unless i have direct deposit. Which my company dosnt offer. I do keep a substantial amount of money in there. And when i opened the account they told me there were no fees if i have money transfer to my savings monthly. Until now. They just hiked up all thier fees and changed around everything.

Anyone else having recent issues with bank of america?

What are some other good banks out there. I keep seeing these commertials for chase. I am thinking of going in tomorrow and pulling out all my money and closing my accounts and bringing my business elsewhere.

[Shroomster]

two words:

Credit Union look one up near you

[yaris-me]

Originally Posted by Shroomster

two words:

Credit Union look one up near you

Good advice, but that's seven words.

[frownonfun]

i think all banks suck personally. to be honest i'd love to just keep all my money under a mattress but it's pretty hard to do anything without a bank account these days.

right now i have wells fargo.

i had a credit union at one time (Navy Federal Credit Union) and don't recall having problems with them but i was young and stupid then so i probably wouldn't have even known that i was being screwed.

[advocate]

Originally Posted by Shroomster

two words:

Credit Union look one up near you

Shroomster has it right Jason. BOA is the reason we're in a financial crisis right now. My entire family are members of Technology Credit Union. They have a good amount of local branches and have always done right by me.

www.techcu.com gogo

[tomato]

Bank of America treated me like shit years ago when I didn't have much money, so I quickly understood they weren't interested in small accounts like mine, so I closed my account and never set foot there again. I know it's silly but what can I say. It's hard for a customer to return to a place where they treated you like shit. Your whole body fights you, lol!

I went over to the other one, with the coach and the horses ;) they're probably just as bad but I haven't had any problems and nobody's ever laughed at me, not even when all I had to put in my savings account was $20 now and then, and my checking account was ahem.. pretty modest.

Not a fan of CityCorp either.

I really liked Washington Mutual, they were prety cool, a lot of free services. Now they're Chase, which is fine I guess.

As long as they don't skip town with my money, I'm cool.

You know, I think all these big banks are pretty much the same. Whatever you do, just make sure you see the FDIC sticker out there on the door. before you deposit anything

[silver_echo]

agreed with credit unions, i switched from BOA to a local credit union and never looked back

[kimona]

B of A: Worst bank I have ever used in any country!!!

[JumpmanYaris]

1)Credit Union
2)US Bank
3)Chase

Personally I bank with number 1 and 2 never had problems but I heard many good things from Chase as well

[Shroomster]

bah.....haha....3:10 in the A.M. don't look for me to impress

[yaris-me]

Originally Posted by Shroomster

bah.....haha....3:10 in the A.M. don't look for me to impress

JK. Seriously, Credit Unions are safer. In general, they are too small to get involved with Credit Default Swaps and other derivatives. The danger is that they are tied in with large banks because of the checking accounts and rely on them as a clearing house. That means that some of their money is tied in with them. The good news is that they are directly involved with their loans so there shouldn't have much mortgage defaults.

[Phaeton]

Credit Union is the way to go, and your not sending your money out of your community.

[YarisSedan]

Yeah i like the idea of credit union. I have an account already with a local one that i had refinance my car loan. I might see what they have to offer then for safe storage of my money.

The only downside its not like theres ATMs for them all over the place like with bank of america.

[tomato]

Originally Posted by YarisSedan

.

The only downside its not like theres ATMs for them all over the place like with bank of america.

that's why I stayed with WF. ATM *everywhere*

[frownonfun]

Originally Posted by tomato

that's why I stayed with WF. ATM *everywhere*

same here. still think they are crooked bastards though.

[BailOut]

BofA has had problems for quite while now. When my wife and I first met over 10 years ago her account was with BofA. Her debit card number was her login to their online banking system (!) and her pin code was the password (!!!). I griped to them about this early on and was rebuffed.

Fast forward to 2000. She was still a Windows user at the time and there were no less than 4 cookie exploits for Internet Explorer. I again warned BofA about it and they basically told me that I didn't know what I was talking about. Within weeks many mainstream websites that served off of the Windows platform has been compromised and were combing visitor's cookies when they used IE.

Sure as hell, 3 weeks later a charge showed up in our account for a losing $1,000 bet at an online sports book. I checked out the sports book's site and they didn't even require an expiration date, name or anything else for a transaction... just a credit card number.

BofA took 3 weeks to give us our money back, and when they mentioned they would issue my wife a new card we said, "Don't bother." and merged our accounts into Wells Fargo.

In 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008 we read of BofA being grilled, both publically and by Congressional committees, for mischievous practices such as always putting a hold on checks (even interbank transfers), processing debits before deposits (in order to make the account bounce), stacking the highest debits first (in order to make more transactions bounce, thereby generating more penalty income for them), etc.

Now in 2009 we read of their CEO resigning after a surreptitious and bungled merger with Merryl Lynch at the peak of the recession and while they were receiving taxpayer-funded bailout money.

Why anyone maintains an account with them is beyond me. We've not missed them once since we left them.

Originally Posted by tomato

that's why I stayed with WF. ATM *everywhere*

That's true, but only as long as you don't go east beyond Texas. Wells simply does not exist in the east.

Let me provide you with some warnings concerning Wells:

- Any transaction that favors the bank will take place either immediately or overnight; any transaction that favors you will take 2-5 business days.

- Each Wells branch has a Banker. The Banker is responsible for running the branch, has the final say on loans, etc. They are intended to be the lifeblood of the branch. However, our local branch turns over Bankers faster than Taco Bell does drive through workers. Our next-to-latest one outright lied to me in telling me that our checking account type would now bear interest, and said such interest was a higher rate than even their best accounts provide. He also told me that we would have to pay some fees for their best account which I soon learned was inaccurate as we have our home mortgage through them, which automatically qualifies us for the better account. If you can't even trust your local Banker...

- Our last home insurance carrier made a mistake and double billed our Wells Home Mortgage escrow account for our annual premium. Wells paid it without checking, and the insurance carrier refunded the extra cash to me instead of placing it back into escrow (I'd rather not even do it through escrow but since it's a VA loan it is mandated). This should have been an easy thing to correct but it took no less than 6 phone calls, 3 emails, 2 snail mails, 2 visits to a local branch, 3 escrow analyses and 11 business days to correct.

For these reasons I am almost through migrating us to a new bank.

Originally Posted by EleKid

I gotta change my bank now.
Citi is doing this thing where you get 100 cash and 100 gift card if you deposit 1000 in a new acct or 50 cash if you deposit 500.
I'm not sure if you have to get it done by someone you know though. My friend said he has to be the one to do it but he could be just saying that to get commission.

Aside from how slimy the setup with your friend sounds allow me to provide you with an outright warning against Citibank. For 2.5 years we had a Shell Mastercard via Citibank that gave us cash rebates for anything we spent on it. We used it in the most responsible way possible, meaning we used it in place of a debit card but paid it off every single month. Of course, the credit card industry refers to people like us as "deadbeats" because they don't make any extra money off of us (they still make per-transaction fees at the merchant level, and money still changes hands between Shell and Citi for handling the account, etc.).

Without any warning they shut off our card last Tuesday. It wasn't just us... thousands of Shell/Citi customers had their accounts closed. We were all given some bullshit excuse that it was "something on your Experian credit report... a change in your FICO score". What made no sense from the start was that I'd just pulled our credit reports not 10 days earlier (a semi-annual event) and not only was nothing negative shown, but our FICO scores had gone up by roughly 30 points due to refinancing our home and some other dealings. Your FICO score is also not a static measurement, but a constantly evolving number. I mentioned all of this to the Citi CSR and he made it clear that it only said "something" on my Experian report, not necessarily something negative.

The accounts were closed, conveniently, on the 13th, because the billing cycle ends on the 14th and that's when they would normally disburse everyone's rebates. The fine print in the contract lets them keep the rebates if they close the account for any reason.

So, aside from the hassle of losing our primary credit card, we also lost over $50 in rebates that were due to us.

While the closure of our account was just a nuisance imagine if it had happened on someone's way home from out of town, or trying to catch a flight or buy a bus ticket, etc., and having it be their only source of funding at that time. After all, it's the sole card I used to carry.

This is not my first dealing with Citi, but it is indeed my last.

----------

I have migrated our savings to ING Direct and am almost done migrating our checking, primary credit card, home insurance, auto insurance and flood insurance to USAA, which is where I should have been all along. No company is perfect but their motto is "People before profits", they are not publically traded (so there are no shareholders to pressure stupid decisions or to force a short term view), they took no bailout money, they have no branches but let us deposit checks from our mobile phones and home computer scanner, they let us perform 10 ATM transactions per month on anyone's ATM at no charge, and they refund us up to $15 each month of whatever fees the ATM owners charge.

Sadly, USAA is not open to everyone. It is only available to active duty military personnel, veterans, and their descendants.

I also just signed up for an American Express Blue Cash card because I don't want to get stuck having our only credit card ripped out from underneath us like Citi just did. I will be adding a 3rd card, likely from a local credit union, in order to add some extra credit security and to help out our FICO scores by keeping less than 30% of our total available consumer credit used at any moment.

[Shroomster]

Originally Posted by BailOut

I also just signed up for an American Express Blue Cash card because I don't want to get stuck having our only credit card ripped out from underneath us like Citi just did. I will be adding a 3rd card, likely from a local credit union, in order to add some extra credit security and to help out our FICO scores by keeping less than 30% of our total available consumer credit used at any moment.

Good choice on the Blue cash card. I've had them for I think 4 or 5 years, and not once have they ever done me wrong (yet). I've had several transactions fall through and they've found on my side (because I had documented evidence)
all the times and never questioned me about it. plus the cash back is nice after 6k in spending you receive 5% back on most everything (sans wal-mart and the like)

I've always been under the guise of I don't care what the apr is unless I can't afford it.

[silver_echo]

Originally Posted by YarisSedan

Yeah i like the idea of credit union. I have an account already with a local one that i had refinance my car loan. I might see what they have to offer then for safe storage of my money.

The only downside its not like theres ATMs for them all over the place like with bank of america.

well make sure that the CU you join is part of this network...

http://www.cuswirl.com/

then you have atm's pretty much across the country where you can go for no fee