BANK OF AMERICA SUCKS

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

A few years ago I made the dire mistake of borrowing $600.00 to Chris and Jamie for a damage deposit on a rental house. Not haveing $600.00 in cash, I wrote a check against my BOA credit card.

I soon learned the difference between 'purchase' and 'cash advance' charges. They were charging me over 23% on the cash advance! Totally my fault for not reading the small print. When I make my payments, I always send at least $200.00 over the minimum amount. I noticed that they were only applying about $2.00 a month towards the cash advance, so the balance was growing faster than the rabbits in my backyard reproduced!

I called customer service and asked them how to get rid of that cash advance charge. I was told the only way to do it was to pay off the whole bill. When my disability was approved and I got a big check for back payments, that is exactly what I did; or so I thought. I paid off the entire balance, logged on to BOA's web site and saw that I had a balance of $0.00. Great! The very next day they changed my balance to $63.00 (the finance charge for that month). I immediately made an on-line payment of $75.00, which then gave me a credit of $12.00.

I thought I was safe and my husband and I trotted off to Home Depot to buy the new kitchen cabinets for our remodeling project. The next bill I got just about floored me. There, under 'cash advance' was a balance of $1.23. WTF? I spent days emailing BOA back and forth about this charge. They told me that I should of left the account alone for one full billing period before charging again. They never did give me a valid reason why my account went would have a cash advance balance after a had a credit of -$12.00. If I'm going to get screwed, I'd at least like it to feel good.