P O V - Point Of View 

The story you are about to hear is true. The names have NOT been changed….

In April of 2004, my husband’s daughter sent us information on a great travel deal she’d just bought. We looked into it, did our research, and determined that yes, it was a good deal and that yes, the company was “up front” and reputable. We paid for two round trip plane fares (using our Bank of America Visa Card) usable anywhere in the world, with a “use window” of two years from date of purchase - meaning that the “use window” ended in April of 2006; and since we had planned at that time to spend some time in Europe with another daughter and her family during 2005, it was an ideal situation, or so it seemed. The only requirement for use was a two-month “pre-notify” to the company in order to acquire the reservations, and a three-night hotel stay, neither of which were problematic.

Due to various situational and family difficulties, the planned trip to Europe in 2005 got “replanned” during March of 2005 into early 2006; this still was not a problem, since the vouchers were good through April of 2006; we decided to order reservations in December 2005 in order to obtain the best flights using the travel company reservation system.

However, in April of 2005 we were notified by the travel company that they could not honor the commitment they had made regarding the voucher plan we had paid for using our Bank of America Visa card. They were apologetic, but firm about the fact that they could not support the committed vouchers already issued. As recourse, they offered only an authorization form signed by them (the original merchant), for our charge card issuer (Bank of America) to charge back to them (the MERCHANT with whom we negotiated the original purchase) the original amount of the payment for the now worthless vouchers.

With the signed authorization from the merchant for the charge-back, we contacted Bank of America, faxed the authorization and a letter explaining the situation as instructed by the person to whom we spoke, followed up with the same in hard copy, and went on about our business, confidently expecting the refund to appear within a few weeks.

As you may assume from the title…. our confidence was totally misplaced. Instead of simply charging the merchant back for the amount of the now dishonored voucher purchase as per their in-hand form countersigned by said merchant, Bank of America instead spent two months attempting to contact a now defunct merchant, then since they were unable to effect that contact and IN SPITE OF having a merchant-signed authorization to charge the amount of the purchase back TO THE MERCHANT, they insisted that WE WERE STILL LIABLE FOR THE CHARGE - regardless that they had authorization signed by the merchant to refund us the amount of the original charge.

In June, after having spoken to TWENTY DIFFERENT PEOPLE at Bank of America yet receiving no actual assistance nor any admission that they had simply blown the whole thing from the beginning, we drove 180 miles round trip to the nearest Bank of America branch, explained the whole situation to the branch manager, and gave her copies of everything we had pertaining to the situation; she assured us she would dig into the whole thing and get some resolution for us, saying over and over that it was obvious that things had not been handled properly from the beginning.

In August, after a dozen phone calls to the “local” branch manager to whom we had spoken in June, she finally stated she was “closing the file” as there was nothing “more” she could do for us. In that two months, we had spoken to perhaps another twenty Bank of America “customer service representatives”, in the Claims, Collections, Credit Reporting, and Customer Relations Departments, NOT ONE OF WHOM ever did anything but say that there was nothing they could do, we owed the money. At this point, August 19, 2005, we wrote a formal letter disputing the charge, laying out the situation in detail from the beginning. A formal dispute of course, by federal AND state law, means that the credit grantor cannot, for the period of the dispute and until a resolution is arrived at, add late fees, interest, or other charges such as overlimit fees, to the amount under dispute.

So here’s what Bank of America has done since August 19: added late fees every month; added interest at nearly 30% every month; added overlimit fees every month (because this is technically a “closed account” - this account was involved in a potential phishing scam, was closed and rolled into a new account; but Bank of America REOPENED this closed and possibly-involved-in-phishing account in order to charge this amount BACK TO US), reported all of this (except the fact that ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS CHARGE THE MERCHANT BACK FOR THE PURCHASE AND CREDIT US) to the credit reporting agencies, refused to discuss with us the fact that they simply DID NOT DO CORRECTLY WHAT THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE IN THE VERY BEGINNING.

Resolution? Well, we are sending them the amount of the original re-billed charge to us. There is no way they will talk to us about “fixing” this. We are being called twice or three times a day by their collectors. We are paying it in order to be left alone.

BUT. We will be filing complaints with the regulators with oversight for Bank of America. The thing they seem not to ever have understood? My husband is a retired financial institutions regulator; he knows people in the industry still, he knows the laws. He knows to whom this sort of thing needs to be sent, and he knows the form in which to present this complaint. There are perhaps eight to ten agencies, both federal and state, which will be receiving detailed précis of this whole situation. Bank of America will discover that not every “little dog” will roll over and play dead.

We are 1000% right, and Bank of America is 1000% wrong. This is nothing more than a case of a HUGE conglomerated megacorp which cannot admit that it blew a simple thing. How sad, and how silly. Because now they’re going to have to discuss this with some fairly high-powered regulatory agencies - instead of which, all they ever had to do was charge $320 back to Mystical Vacations as per a written authorization.

[Addendum: husband’s daughter and five of her collegues at Utah Valley Medical Center had NO TROUBLE AT ALL getting refunds from their several credit card companies WITH THE EXACT SAME MERCHANT-SIGNED AUTHORIZATION FOR CHARGE-BACK. Amazing….]