Bank of America crams fake insurance charges on customers

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RIP-OFF ALERT: Bank of America has pushed through bogus charges for insurance products being “sold” to their customers by third-party marketing companies, according to The Los Angeles Times.

First off, Bank of America is a disgrace that only exists because of massive taxpayer bailouts. Now comes word of this penny ante clowning around with people’s wallets that disgusts me.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the third party marketer was supposedly getting people’s permission in phone authorizations to sell them various insurance services. The typical charge was $20/month on people’s billing statement.

You may have heard me talk about this kind of sneaking billing known as “cramming” on phone bills. As so often happens, people don’t look at their bills and these statements go undetected. The FCC recently reported that 19 of 20 people who have phony charges on their phone bill don’t notice the charges.

Then there was also an incident a few years ago where a bank sold the credit card numbers of a few million people to a criminal ring, no questions asked. The criminal ring started putting phony charges on accounts and, if my memory serves, only 7% of customers noticed the bogus charges.

In the case of Bank of America, one person profiled didn’t discover the charges for two years. Bank of America says because they have a marketing relationship with this company that payment can be automatically withdrawn without you providing an account number. Bank of America provides the number on your behalf!

The worst part is that Bank of America never sends you anything. You never sign anything. There’s just supposed a phone call of your acknowledgment, of which there’s no proof anyway.

This is yet another example of what a sleazy enterprise Bank of America is. If you choose to do business with them, they will burn you. Maybe not today, but eventually you will get burned.

Second, regardless of who you bank with, the burden is on you to go through your billing statements month by month. As a general rule, if there are phony charges on your bill, you must notice within 60 days or your forfeit that money.

This is an opportunity for anybody to swipe dough from you because we don’t go through our statements with our busy lives.

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Banks do it with their “marketing partners” because they get a big cut of the action. At the very least, Bank of America should cough up all the money they pocketed from taking advantage allegedly of their customers.

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