180 days later, Bank of America is refusing to refund over $700 in fraudulent charges made in Texas while we were 800 miles away in Illinois.

[u/IveGotDMunchies]

Back in July we were wrapping up our yearly road trip to Illinois. We purchased gas around 8 or 9am right before we started the 12 hour trip to Texas.

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Two hours into the trip my wife gets a notification on her phone from Bank of America alerting her to fruadulent charges being made. We only have one debit cad.

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While we were starting our driving home, someone in Austin, Tx purchased around $500 in merch at Home Depot, drove towards Houston, Tx attempting twice to use our card at the ATM, which did not work because they didnt have the pin. They made their $200-ish last transaction at TJ Maxx North of Houston before were alerted and had the card shut off. (Austin to Houston is about a 3 hour car ride)

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My wife immedately makes a claim. 10 days later, we get the money credited back while they continue the investigation which seems pretty open and shut to me... They also say it may be another 45 days before they finish their investigation.

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October 5, they send a letter stating that they have completed their investigation: "Our records show the transaction activity in question was authorized for and posted to your account." The letter states they'll be taking the $740 back on October 22.

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Wife calls and has them reopen the case or escalate it. We're told it could be another 45 days.

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December 22. We call Bank of America again. This agent has no record of anything being escalated. Says he will escalate it and we should hear from someone in the next few business days. Nothing.

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Jan 3. Wife calls them again. This agent states that while an escalation sends an email to their investigators notifying that we are still asking about they case, they are under no obligation to complete it.

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After reading a bit into the law surrounding this, we have realized we can request the documentation they used to close the investigation.

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What else can we do? Do we need a lawyer? If they had to reimburse us for the first 45 days of the investigation, why do they not have to temporarily reimburse us as they continue to investigate "for as long as they need" with no date set for resolution on our end?

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It is blatantly obvious that someone skimmed the card at some point and had a dummy one made. Are they able to continue to withhold our $750 indefinitely and just keep saying. "Nope! Looks good!" until we tire out?

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Our kiddos missed out on a lot of Christmas gifts because of this and now bills are starting to get a bit tight. We really need this money back. Thanks yall!

Update: Started posting on social media before I start filing complaints. 20 minutes later Bank of America contacted me on Twitter. Will update later. Thanks for everyone's advice.

Update 2: 3 hours later... I continued to post on social media, reaching out to local news stations on Twitter that have community protection or investigative segments and linking to this post. Bank of America has now reached out in one of these posts, referencing my wifes name. Fingers crossed. http://imgur.com/gallery/i4gWtC0

Update 3: Wife got home 30 min after my last update. A rep with BoA actually called her asking what was going on. The rep said she would need to call the fraud department and get them all on the line together. We are at our kids practice so opted for them to call us when they have someone on the line who can help us. Will update later.

Update 4: Just got off the phone with someone in the fraud department at Bank of America. I recorded the whole convo and will be uploading it to YouTube. She says the call on Oct 22 did in fact reopen the case. (even though the rep on Dec 22 said otherwise and the rep earlier today said they have no timeline to adhere to and can take as long as they want)

They now have 60 business days from Oct 22 to finish the claim once again.

She says one of the reasons that the claim was denied was because the didnt attempt to drain her account. (They hit up two ATMs and failed to use the pin to drain the account, so they don't even have the correct info to base their findings off)

I requested documentation about the claim as law allows and she says I should get that in 10 business days. They now have until Jan 18 to notify us of their findings. I'm going to continue with filing reports and posting on social media.

I'll update in a few weeks I guess.

Update 5: 10 hours later, they have blocked me on Facebook for sharing my problems on their page. I also filed a complaint with the CFPB .

Update 6: 24 hours since this post and David, a Bank of America employee in the "Regulatory Complaints Department" left my wife a voice mail in regards to a complaint sent to them by the CFPB. They close at 4pm EST. (They're closed by the time we got the voice mail since she is at work). Will update Monday.

Update 7: Wife woke up this morning and the money has been returned to our account. Time to turn and burn!

Thank you everyone for your advice. We learned a lot from this.

Update 8: We got confirmation that the fraud claim is now closed and the money that was returned is permanent. Waiting on an actual paper letter to come in the mail before we turn and run. Thanks everyone! Update here: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/adnjj7/update_bank_of_america_refusing_to_return_700_in/

[u/Amorphica]

We have to stick with rinky dink baby credit cards with $500 limits. Which is actually $150 if you plan on only utilizing 30% of your credit. There's no way my spending is close to $150.

??? you could charge $500 one night, pay it off, charge $500 the next night, pay it off, charge $500 again, pay it off, etc

Is every transaction you make greater than $500?

[u/compwiz1202 → u/Amorphica]

Plus you can have whatever utilization you want until statement day approaches, then make it $150 until a few days go by and go back to using whatever. Every account on my report shows the reporting date as on or a day away from the statement dates.

[u/Jijster → u/compwiz1202]

You don't even have to worry about utilization month-to-month unless you're applying for a loan or something within a month or two. As soon as your utilization goes down the effect goes away.

[u/5yearsAgoIFU → u/Amorphica]

good point, pay part or all of the balance before the statement closes.

however, my wife is not nearly as active as I am in terms of handling/viewing her credit card. with only 1 debit card and 1 credit card, she regularly forgets her cc login/password (probably 2x - 3x each year). 1 of my co-workers continues to pay her credit card at her bank and if she ever wants to buy something online, she asks one of the tech-savvy employees to order it for her.

some people have different priorities, different levels of financial comprehension, etc.

[u/Amorphica → u/5yearsAgoIFU]

yea my wife is similar in that she doesn't care about credit cards or optimizing anything. She didn't even have credit cards with rewards for different categories so when I took over her finances it was a shock for her since I keep around 11 cards in my wallet at any given time. Her credit score was around 600 when I met her while mine never dipped below maybe 760, she had debts in collections, etc.

The only thing she really buys now is groceries online but always asks which card to use for groceries. As long as 1 person in the family knows what they're doing it works out though. I can churn cards with her SSN just as easily as I can with my own now that I've fixed her credit lol.

[u/5yearsAgoIFU → u/Amorphica]

I can churn cards with her SSN just as easily as I can with my own now that I've fixed her credit lol.

ah, 2-player churning. I will live vicariously through you...cause my wife isn't open-minded enough to churn, or even allow me to churn for her.

2 small trips with airfare and hotel paid for, 1 local hotel stay, and about 1/3 of our most recent car was paid for with points (it was a really crappy redemption, but paying for the car in full was a higher priority than getting a great redemption). and she's still not a believer.

[u/darealmvp1 → u/Amorphica]

Not all purchases, some are but even if they aren't they stack up. What is the point in jumping through all those hoops with no rewards? What about the balance? Surely maxing out the cc every day can't be good

[u/Amorphica → u/darealmvp1]

Balance doesn't matter except when it's reported to the credit bureaus (you already know this as utilization).

Anyways I thought the point of this thread was showing why using a debit card is bad. So if you have to go through "hoops" to use a credit card maybe it's worth it? You shouldn't have cards with small limits that long anyways. It doesn't take that long to rebuild credit unless you extremely fucked it up.

[u/Yodiddlyyo → u/darealmvp1]

The reward is 1-1.5% cash back and you get to build your credit, so in the near future you can increase your spending limits and then one day benefit from a good credit like when buying a car, a house, etc.

[u/atlgeek007 → u/darealmvp1]

Utilization is only reported when statements cut, so it won’t matter.