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A couple months ago I applied for the Alaska Business Visa card issued by Bank of America, along with a couple other cards (SEE: May 2017 credit card signup results). Overall, the results weren’t too hot. It ultimately took a 15 minute grilling by a BofA phone rep, but I was eventually approved for the Alaska Business Visa card.

Trouble in the first payment cycle

Once I received the card, I was able to hit the $1,000 minimum spend pretty quickly. My charges totaled $1,230 and change. When my first payment cycle ended and I got my statement, I quickly scheduled two payments. Done and done. Now I could just sit back and wait for the 30,000 bonus miles to post.

I was therefore quite puzzled (and aggravated) when I logged into the Bank of America website a few days after my payment due date to find that my payments NOT posted to the card. This also meant I was hit with both a late fee and interest. What the heck happened?!

It took me a minute to realize that I somehow had a -$1,230 balance on my *personal* Alaska card. Turns out that I had somehow paid that card instead. Could I have unintentionally scheduled the payments for the wrong card? Was I really that much of a doofus?

BofA, please fix your website

After poking around for a few minutes, I decided to try to schedule another payment to rectify the situation. I clicked the “Make Payment” button from the account summary of my Alaska Business Visa. This time I noticed that when I was taken to the payment screen, the last 4 digits displayed were for my *personal* Alaska card!

I had not noticed this previously, but this must have been EXACTLY what happened before to cause me to pay the wrong card. I’d think this sort of bug would be high on Bank of America’s list to fix. At least I know it was because of a crappy website and not me. Dan has had issues with Bank of America’s website previously as well (SEE: How opening a new BoA checking account TOTALLY screwed me!).

After even taking a screen video showing exactly where the error was (in case I needed proof for BofA), it was time for a phone call.

Hang on, we’ll “fix” this

The Bank of America phone representative was super understanding when I explained the situation to her. She said she could adjust the payments and backdate them, and that the interest and late fees would be removed. All in all, it was maybe a 10-minute phone call. I hung up thinking everything was A-OK.

To my surprise (again), the issue wasn’t fixed. Logging in a few days later, instead of finding both accounts zeroed out, I found even more issues.

First, the interest and late fee charges were still applied. But these were now the only charges on the account. Partial fix here, but it still needs to be fully rectified.

Secondly (and this was weird), instead of having a zero balance on my personal card, I now have a negative $2,465 balance on my personal Alaska Visa!! The rep had essentially applied a credit in the amount of my charges to *both* my personal and business accounts. Which totally doesn’t make sense.

Free money?

Essentially, I am now about $1,230 ahead (given the $2,450+ negative balance when I made only half of that in charges). Sure, I could probably walk away with the money, and Bank of America would probably never catch it. But that’s not the right thing to do. I really don’t want to make another phone call to them, as I generally hate calling the bank, but it looks like I’ll have to do so. The last time I had this much trouble with a bank, I ended up calling in the CFPB (SEE: Pulling Out The Big Guns: How I Had To Call In The CFPB On Discover). This situation doesn’t warrant that, though.

All in all, this has been super frustrating. Bank of America compounded their initial website error with a botched account adjustment. Hopefully the third time is the charm and I’ll have everything back to zero in a few days.

What about you? Have you ever had account issues this frustrating?

Featured image courtesy of Mike Mozart under CC 2.0 license


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