Another Consumer “Success Story” Against Bank of America

October 7th, 2009 admin

Are consumers just on a lucky roll against the big banks, or are more Americans simply fed-up with the outrageous fees and charges and just finding more unique and brazen ways to show that they aren’t going to take it anymore?

Kristy posted a blog last Friday which showed a video documenting one consumer’s successful fight against the usurious fees charged by the banks for overdrafts, specifically targeting Wells Fargo Bank. While surfing the net for interesting, educational or unique credit news over the weekend, we stumbled upon another consumer’s story, that of a California woman named Ann Minch. Now Ann’s story (and youTube video) isn’t as polished and well organized as the gentleman at the center of Kristy’s post, but her rebellious ways to get what she wanted also seemed to work with everyone’s favorite banking institution, Bank of America.

Ann’s story in a nutshell sounds alot like what many of us are facing with our credit card accounts — that is, changes to our interest rate or credit limit being implemented with little or no reason (that we can figure). According to Minch, she has made all the (minimum) payments on her credit card in a timely manner for a number of years,  never exceeded her credit limit or violated any of the card issuer’s rules. Despite this, her interest rate out of the blue suddenly more than doubled (from 12.99% to 30%) on her close to $6000 debt — and this, to put it mildly, upset her tremendously.

So after unsuccessfully attempting to negotiate with Bank of America representatives to return her interest rate to its previous level, she turned to social media to vent her frustration to the world, hopeful to garner some undesirable attention to the situation and perhaps “embarrass” the financial institution into submission. The odd thing is, it seems to have worked. If you view her initial youTube video lambasting the credit card issuer, you’ll hear her claim the credit card companies are “evil, thieving bastards” and further adding that they have “reaped ungodly profits in your behemoth casino scams, then lost — only to turn around and usurp the wealth of this great nation by the outright rape and pilage of middle-class Americans whose sweat and toil built it. Every last one of you should be rotting in prison!”

Her plight has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people on youTube, she calls her rant “Debtors Revolt Begins Now” and encourages everyone to join in on her bandwagon.  Apparently, the commotion must have sparked some sort of catalyst for Bank of America to contact her and attempt to “re-negotiate” her rate, which came to fruition after her video circulated around the internet for awhile. According to Minch, a BofA executive contacted her and requested some information about her personal financial situation (unemployed and looking, no assets) and then proceeded to offer a 16.99% rate as a settlement. Her response? “No, I believe because you guys are getting your money from the Fed at zero percent interest, that 12.99 percent is a more than generous profit margin for you guys”. And apparently, the executive eventually agreed to the original rate and to provide this in writing — Minch posted a second video explaining how the agreement came to pass, which you can see here.  

What does this all mean? Should we all have a temper tantrum and document our protests over social media such as youTube? It used to be you contacted your local television station with your story of being wronged and usually the target business would break down and satisfy the customer’s complaints, but times are changing. 

What do you think readers – should she get a “you go girl”, or are her problems simply her own fault? What do you think of this method to draw attention to her plight? We are interesting in hearing your opinion with a comment!

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Posted in Financial Reviews Tags: America
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