October 5, 2003
FleetBoston Financial Corporation sucks.
Sorry, you have no context for that statement. Allow me to bring you back a few months to when I had a relatively significant balance on my Fleet Credit Card. I'd been using Fleet's online payment system without issue since I received the card. Starting in late May, however, disaster struck. I'd made a payment on May 27th for $242.57, and a payment on June 10th for $167.82. In what can only be explained as an electronic fit, Fleet's system decided to debit my checking account twice for the first payment, and three times for the second. Now while $410.39 for both intended payments wasn't going to kill my checking account, they debited a total of $988.60 - more than twice the total of my intended payments. This, of course, shoved my checking account into the negative and amassed $177.00 in bank overdraft charges. Not good.
First thing I did was call my bank. I tried explaining that the overdrafts were not my fault, because the credit card company's computer system got a little greedy and decided to take out a lot more than I'd have liked. The bank pretty much stated "Well it's not OUR fault either. You still owe us the money. We suggest you call the card company and have THEM reimburse you." So I did. They credited the extra payments back to my checking account, but they didn't pay me for the overdraft charges caused by their hiccup. So I called them back. They told me for me to get credit for the charges, I'd have to send them a fax detailing the transactions from the checking account which caused the charges, as well as the charges themselves. PLUS I had to provide them with contact information for my bank.
So essentially, all the work is offloaded onto me for Fleet's screw-up. Thanks a lot.
Anyway, I managed to get the $177 back from Fleet for the overdraft charges, and I promptly transferred my remaining balance to another card with plans to never use the Fleet card ever again.
But the story isn't over. Now comes the theft.
When I paid the Fleet card off with the balance transfer, I used an even amount on the transfer and ended up with a $.66 credit on the Fleet card. So I'd been carrying a sixty-six cent credit on the Fleet card for a month or two, until this morning when I decided to log into the system to see the account.
Current balance: $0.00
I'm on the phone in a flash. Sure, it's just $0.66, but it was mine just the same. As I waited for a representative to answer the line, I perused previous statements and noticed a "debit/adjustment" for $0.66 on the August statement putting my balance back to zero. Now I know I didn't do any balance transfer for $0.66, nor did I make any purcahse on that card totalling sixty-six cents. So where did it go?
According to the phone rep that eventually picked up, it was simply "absorbed." That was the word she used. Fleet's logic is that, since it's too small an amount to send out a check ("it has to be a dollar amount"), it was simply pulled into the system and out of my account.
Bullshit. I now intend to cancel this card and force them to send me a check for the money they stole from me.
You have to wonder how much money they make from yanking $0.66 from an account here, $0.74 from an account there, etc. It's theft, plain and simple.
(10:22)
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