Bank of America Rant

We had a Bank of America account when we were first married and used it for maybe a couple months before opening a USAA account.  I left .04 cents in the account and left it "open" just as an incidental (since USAA doesn't have physical banks and Kyle was still receiving paper pay-checks on Nantucket).  I hadn't logged into the account in so long my login had since expired and I no longer had a card with them. 

I tried to close the account about a year ago and was told (after being on hold for about 45 minutes by someone not American) I would have to physically go to the bank to do so and the closest one was about 45 minutes away.  It didn't seem worth it to me since the .04 cents was just sitting there safe and secure, I left it alone.

I got something in the mail today that my account was overdrawn, due to Bank of America's fees, they charged me a 'maintenance fee' which over-drafted the account, then went on to hit me with a fee for being over-drafted, this went on for three months until their mail finally caught up with me in Jacksonville (because remember, I can't log into my account so I couldn't change my address - which probably hadn't been updated since Nantucket but the USPS change of address system did their job well!).

At first the operator made it sound like this was irresponsible and my fault for letting the account get this way, because I should be logging in at least monthly to make sure my account was in good standing.  I explained to her that she could look at the last time the account was used, and that I no longer had access to login or else I would have, and that the only reason the account is over-drawn is because of their fees... my .04 cents was doing fine for the last 3 years. 

She said she had to pull some strings because they don't typically refund fees "that far back" but once I explained to her that we are military and move and it took the mail awhile to catch up with us, I think she felt bad.  She refunded the fees, and closed the account.  Bank of America will be sending me a check for .04cents... I think we will go out to dinner to celebrate!