Mark Hurst tells a powerful story of anti-consumer experience on his Good Experience blog.
Matthew Shinnick sold a pair a mountain bikes on Craigslist, but the check he received in the mail looked a bit suspicious. He mentioned this to the teller at San Francisco branch Bank of America. Moments later he was dragged from the bank in handcuffs and spent the next 12 hours in jail. The charges were dropped but Shinnick ended up spending over $14,000 in legal fees.
Bank of America’s response? We’re sorry this happened, and we understand your anger, but we don’t really have any liability. Wow! Now that is some customer service: we don’t owe you anything! Sounds like they’re really setting some “higher standards”–for customers that is! Consumer Advocate Clark Howard mentioned Matthew’s plight on his show and ended up starting a “BOA Meter” tracking how much money customers had removed from Bank of America by closing their accounts in response to the Shinnick crisis. It looks like it has topped over $50 million thus far.
December 17, 2006 at 1:43 pm
My name is Myra Turner, I live in Tacoma, Wa. I placed an ad on Jazzy 1170 powerchair website to sell my mother’s wheelchair. I was contacted by email and we corresponded that way. I was selling a $7000 power chair for $3500. I work part time as I am a student and needed to money to continue my education. I do internship for a funeral home, which I don’t get paid for it. When I received the money orders in the mail. I took them to the bank. They were USPS money orders. I ask Bank of America if they placed holds on the money because of large amount and they told me no. I had not heard anything about fraudlent money orders and scam behind them, I don’t watch TV. I go to work and then I do my internship after. No time for TV. I was requested by the sender to wire money to another country, at that time, a gentleman behind told to verify it. I went back to the bank to tell them what I had heard wondered if they could then verify the money orders. They told me that took the money orders as good and we will have to wait for the answer. Now, I took copies of the money orders and call the postal service. I found out that they were fraudlent. I turned in a police report and turned it over to the Postal service. I went back to the bank to see if they could help me. I can’t afford to pay it all back, nor can I afford for them to take the money from my acct. Now, they want me to pay all of it in 90 days or face charges. My concern is that they didn’t do anything to help me. They are the people we go to validate whether an item is good or not. I wrote a letter to the Bank of America explaining that I had approached them 2 times for help, what I had to do to prove that the money orders were no good and they didn’t say or do anything. I not saying I didn’t put the money in my acct, but I didn’t know anything about scams. What are they there for? If I don’t know anything about money orders scams, shouldn’t they know something about it. I am their customer, shouldn’t they be informative about problems like that? They didn’t do anything to help their customer at all. I received a call from the fraud dept saying that I put the money in my acct and they are not responible, but I am because I put the money in my acct. Now, why do we take our money to them? They slowly nickel and dime you but when you need help, they just smile and take your money. I think they should be more responible for their customers. They were negilence to me as a customer. I don’t want guarishment to my paycheck, as I can barely make it on what I make. They don’t seem to care. My credit will be affected. Someone should know about this. I am so upset about this whole thing. I was wondering if there was someone I could take to. I would love to take to court. To prove negilence if at all possible… Please contact me via email.