Beware the Almost Closed Bank Account!
Hot on the heels of my warning about closed credit cards comes my own personal experience with a phantom savings account with Bank of America.
Yesterday, I opened a letter from Bank of America that turned out to be a bank statement for the savings account I closed 2 months ago. This savings account was only earning about 0.2% interest and I had to keep a $300 minimum balance to avoid a “monthly maintenance fee“. I decided that $300 dollars was worth more in my ING Direct Orange Savings account (get $25 referral here) so I closed the account.
When I closed the account, it was halfway through the month, so I was worried about how the would apply the interest earned during the first 2 weeks. They said they would just turn off “Keep the Change” and send me a check for the final amount (which I received).
Unfortunately for me, the final interest payment kept the account open without me knowing. Additionally, since the account was below the limit, they charged me a $3.00 monthly maintenance fee. Therefore, I was in the red $2.99 (after the $.01 interest earned) and I wouldn’t have known unless I looked at the statement. See, since I closed the account, it was removed from my online banking dashboard so I couldn’t check on its status.
Resolution
So I called up Bank of America’s customer service line, waited about 15 minutes and finally got through to a customer rep. The girl was very nice and quickly resolved the problem. She refunded the $3.00 charge and offered to send the $.01 check to me. I declined since I didn’t want to 1) waste my time and money driving to the bank to deposit a penny and 2) didn’t want to waste the paper to get it. See, I’m environmentally conscious!
So once the $3.00 gets returned to the account, it will be officially closed…or will it? I might just call back next month to make sure.
Try one of these related posts too!:
- Beware of Hidden “Bonus Gifts”
- Closing some bank accounts
- Closing more bank accounts
- Beware of the Closed Credit Card Account!
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I would call and make sure. When I closed the bank account I had in college, THEY made an error that resulted in my account being five cents overdrawn. But they wouldn’t fix it. And they wouldn’t close the account until they got “their” nickel. I was already back home, three hours away, so I had to send a friend to the bank with five cents. It was so ridiculous!
My account is still open. I have to go down to a branch and close it.
This happened to me with a checking account! I closed it, was told by the neighborhood uber-friendly teller girl (very small town) that it was set, and I packed up and moved out of state. Turns out I had a refund coming into the account of about twenty dollars. It sat there without my knowledge for the three months it took for the checking account to go from free to a $500 minimum account due to inactivity! After that, they started charging a maintenance fee AND an overdraft fee. By the time my mail caught up with me (from NY to CO), it was overdrawn by $400+! It took five phone calls and HOURS of hold music to fix the bloody thing! Always, always check your accounts for at least a few months after they close. I will never be spanked like that again!
Ouch, Morgaine. That’s pretty awful.
I had this EXACT same problem with Bank of America. I had an open account I didn’t even know about!
It was, but it got fixed. I was even pleasant to the poor guys on the bank help lines. It was certainly a rather shocking lesson!
have them send you a letter of account closure. I always request this.
Well, for those who are wondering if they have money floating around somewhere, most state Treasury Departments have an unclaimed property program/database that you can search by name. I found I had over $300 due to me from what must have been an over 20 year old account. It was a very easy process to claim, then receive the “windfall”. Doubt there’s an equivalent program for money you might owe (except of course your credit report),