Stop montly withdrawal from my bank acc
Complaint
Mohammed Saad
Country: United States
I have received a monthly charge on my Bank of America account for $40 dated Feb09. I did receive a phone call claimed to be from Bank of America some time ago to try a certain insurance for a trial period. to be followed by more details.Nothing was received until I got a charge of $40 off my acc. I wrote to B of A who did not seem to know who the "merchant" was. I want to CANCELL this montly charge effective immediatly and the $40 charged to my acc reversed.
Thanks
Mohammed
Thanks
Mohammed
Comments
The fraudulent charges are small, the 60 day dispute period has often run, consumers don't know their dispute rights anyway so they may not even have sent anything in writing to invoke them, and the bank fraud department either is not looking after their customer interests, or is even assisting their marketing partner by just transferring their customers to the same sales call center that originated the fraud in the first place.
Asserting even an unsupported claim to "have a recording of your authorization" is enough to divert most customer disputes, with the rest limited to 2 months refund.
Fraud and Reg. E violations due to failure to disclose ALL terms, including failure to disclose how to cancel. Note that although the fines were in the millions, most of the money was already gone. It is unlikely that consumers will see more than a small fraction of their damages recovered.
Good example of what FTC considers violations of the FTC Act in connection with negative-option marketing.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/02/jab.shtm
"For Release: February 9, 2009
FTC Targets Weight-Loss Marketers’ Allegedly Bogus ‘Free’ Sample Offers
New FTC Staff Report Offers Guidance on Online ‘Negative Option’ Marketing
All of the defendants were charged with violations of the FTC Act:
Making false or unsubstantiated weight-loss and related claims;
Failing to disclose adequately that consumers who order a “free” sample are enrolled in a continuity program, that their accounts will be debited or charged to pay for the program, that they must cancel to avoid extra shipments and debits and charges, and how and when they must cancel to avoid the debits or charges; and
Debiting or charging accounts of consumers who cancelled or tried to cancel, or those who were not adequately informed of the negative option features or terms and conditions, and therefore did not provide express informed consent for the debits or charges.
The defendants also were charged with violating the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and Regulation E by debiting consumers’ accounts on a recurring basis without obtaining the required written authorization.
..."
FTC guidelines on negative option marketing:
"...The five principles address:
Disclosing material terms in an understandable manner, without making them unnecessarily long or inconsistent;
Making the disclosures clear and conspicuous by placing them where consumers are likely to look on Web pages, by labeling disclosures (and links to them) to indicate their importance and relevance, and by using easy-to-read fonts and colors;
Disclosing the offer’s material terms before the consumer incurs a financial obligation;
Obtaining consumers’ affirmative consent to the offer by, for example, having them click “I Agree” and without relying on pre-checked boxes; and
Not impeding the effective operation of promised cancellation procedures and honoring cancellation requests that comply with such procedures.
..."
Note that Smart Step is selling their "product" as a "free trial", cancellable with no charge within 30 days, hence it is "negative option marketing" covered by the FTC guidelines.
They are also failing to disclose ALL terms of the product before obtaining consumer authorization (not to mention falsifying authorizations with no contact at all), failing to disclose how to cancel, claiming they will only be sending information, not doing so, then falsely claiming the consumer authorized charges, impeding promised cancellation procedures (One consumer reported he spent 45 minutes on the phone refuting sales pitches to cancel a policy he never agreed to), etc.
http://www.my3cents.com/showReview.cgi?id=54431
http://www.my3cents.com/showReview.cgi?id=35196
http://www.my3cents.com/showReview.cgi?id=31702
"A person called from Bank of America to warn me of potentially suspicious activity on my account and asked if I wanted the report mailed to me.
I said, sure. She said she needed to verify my information and asked if she can start recording the conversation. I said, "can't I just pull my acct. up online?"
She didn't answer, but instead said again that she'd need to record the conversation. Was that okay?
I said okay. She read off my name and address and asked if that was correct. (Update: I didn't give any personal info to her). The next thing I know she's saying that they're going to start mailing this report out to me each month for a fee (I forget how much) and I will need to call and cancel it if after the first report I'm no longer interested.
Kind of surprised at this turn in the conversation from one moment me having suspicious activity on my credit card, to them now trying to send me unneeded reports for a fee I told her that I didn't want to be mailed anything.
She said okay and that was it.
I quickly pulled up my acct online to see that there was only my 1 purchase on my account and NOTHING SUSPICIOUS. "
"
http://www.my3cents.com/showReview.cgi?id=15733
Note in particular the requirement to disclose all terms of the offer BEFORE ANY part of the authorization for payment is recorded. This is consistent with generally accepted concepts of forming a contract.
Fraudulent scripts are often reported to first deceptively hype the product (with no recording), then lead into a recorded "authorization" with multiple acknowledgements by the consumer, adding critical terms of the offer toward or even after the last consumer acknowledgement. In some cases consumers have reported that they have realized at this point it was a scam, but the recording cuts off any objection to the added terms.
Prohibitions against these various fraudulent tactics will not prevent scammers from using them. The original pitch was deceptive, what do they care if the authorization is also deceptive, fabricated, or doctored. It exists for two purposes: to intimidate or confuse the consumer into going along with having his money taken; and to provide a "verifiable recorded authorization" to the bank should the consumer dispute the charges, as required for checkless or electronic debits. "Recorded" does NOT guarantee it isn't fabricated or doctored.
http://delcode.delaware.gov/title6/c025a/index.shtml
ABA has been trying to argue that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) preempts not only state laws on credit reporting, but also state laws on financial privacy.
http://epic.org/privacy/preemption/abavlockyer.html
"...
ABA v. Brown (formerly ABA v. Lockyer)
Latest News - June 9, 2009
Obama Administration Recommends that Supreme Court Preserve California Financial Privacy Law, Dismiss Bankers' Appeal
In a filing this week, the Department of Justice urged the nation's highest court to leave intact California's financial privacy law, saying the law does not impose hardships on banks. The California law provides strong financial privacy safeguards, including the right to curtail sale of personal information by financial firms to affiliated companies, and to bar the sale of data to non-affiliates unless consumers explicitly "opt-in." A consortium of financial services companies have challenged the law and, in December 2008, asked the Supreme Court to consider the case. The firms argued that the California statute conflicts with other federal rules. The Supreme Court requested the Administration's view on the case, and has often followed the Department's opinions. Earlier in the litigation, EPIC urged a federal appeals court to uphold the California privacy law. For more information, see EPIC's ABA v. Brown and Privacy and Preemption Watch pages. (Jun. 5, 2009)
..."
Note that NationsBank, mentioned below in connection with deceptive marketing of risky securities to elderly customers with maturing CDs, merged with Bank of America to become what is now called Bank of America.
Also note: "Capital One, Chase Manhattan, Citibank, First U.S.A., Fleet Mortgage, GE Capital, MBNA America, and U.S. Bancorp all have provided their customers' personal and confidential information to fraudulent telemarketers."
Some of the above have appeared in consumer reports of bank-related telemarketing fraud.
"...
EPIC's Interest
Preserving states' right to regulate is important for privacy protection. Most privacy protections come from state, not federal law. Throughout history, state and local governments have served an important role as real-world laboratories for innovative health and safety policy initiatives. States enjoy a unique local perspective that allows them to craft and test programs to protect consumers. State legislatures are also closer to the constituents they represent and the business communities they regulate. They are the first to see trends and problems, and are well-suited to address new challenges and opportunities that arise from evolving technologies and business practices. Thus, it is important that state lawmakers retain the ability to tailor consumer protections to the needs of regional economies and constituencies. For detailed policy arguments against preemption of privacy law, see EPIC's Privacy and Preemption Page.
Federal privacy law is weak and allows prodigious information sharing. Federal law now allows a broad spectrum of financial institutions to affiliate and operate under a single corporate umbrella - a financial holding company. These diverse institutions engage in a wide range of activities and compile a vast amount of information about their customers. Each time a customer interacts with a single financial institution, a digital record of that interaction may be created and shared by that company's corporate affiliates. The shared data may include financial, medical and other sensitive information. For example, the types of personal information that may be shared include all information on applications to obtain financial services (including credit card or loan applications), bank and credit card numbers and account histories, and the fact that an individual is or was a customer.
Some financial holding companies have thousands of affiliates, making it exceedingly difficult for consumers to understand how personal information provided to a single entity will be employed for secondary purposes across the entity's affiliate structure. CitiGroup, Inc., for example, has over 2700 corporate affiliates. Similarly, Bank of America has almost 1500. Given the vast number of corporate affiliates, individuals have limited insight into how, and for what purposes, their personal information is used by companies with whom they have no contact or business relationship. Furthermore, when information is misused by one of the thousands of an institution's affiliates and marketing partners, individuals are often unable to identify the offender due to the lack of visibility into affiliate sharing policies.
Significant privacy risks are created each time an individual's personal information is shared with an affiliate. It is possible that a single entity collecting personal data may have a relatively secure technology platform to protect against computer hackers and other types of security breaches. Upon investigation, a consumer may feel comfortable providing such an entity with sensitive information in exchange for the customer service benefit it produces. However, it is a practical certainty that at least one of the potentially thousands of companies with whom the collecting entity may share personal information will not employ equivalent security standards. Variations in technology, personnel, and resources dictate that the protection of sensitive consumer information is inconsistent across affiliates. Absent SB 1's "opt out" provision, consumers in California are stripped of all control over the dissemination of their personal information once it is obtained by a financial institution.
Information sharing can lead to fraud. Major financial institutions have used their aggregate customer lists to target consumers for fraudulent telemarketing schemes. Capital One, Chase Manhattan, Citibank, First U.S.A., Fleet Mortgage, GE Capital, MBNA America, and U.S. Bancorp all have provided their customers' personal and confidential information to fraudulent telemarketers.
In these cases, financial institutions provided telemarketers with the names, telephone numbers and other information about their customers. They also gave them the ability to charge customers' accounts without having to ask consumers to provide an account number. This practice, called preacquired account telemarketing, has subjected thousands of individuals to unauthorized charges for products and services they never wanted or ordered. In one case, during a thirteen-month period a national bank processed 95,573 cancellations of membership clubs and other products that were billed by preacquired account telemarketers without customers' authorization.
Even non-customers can be defrauded by information sharing. In some cases, the sharing of financial information has allowed businesses to defraud non-customers as well. This can occur where a bank sells personal information to another business. Charter Pacific Bank sold its database containing 3.6 million valid credit card account numbers to a convicted felon who then fraudulently billed the accounts for access to Internet pornography sites that victims had never visited. In fact, approximately 45% of the victims did not even own a computer. Charter Pacific did not develop the database from its own customers' information. Instead, it compiled the information from credit card holders who had purchased goods and services from merchants that had accounts at Charter Pacific. The information included the date of sale, account number, and dollar amount of every credit card transaction processed by the bank's merchant customers. The unrestricted sharing of this information resulted in over $44 million of unauthorized charges.
Affiliate sharing can expose the elderly and other at-risk consumers to increased likelihood of fraud. For example, NationsBank shared with its affiliated securities company data on bank customers with low-risk, maturing federally insured CDs. The affiliate, NationsSecurity, then aggressively marketed high-risk investments to these conservative investors, misleading many customers to believe that the investments were as safe and reliable as federally insured CDs. Many customers, including retired elderly, lost significant portions of their life savings. After an investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission found that the companies intentionally blurred the distinction between the bank and the brokerage, and between the insured CDs and riskier investment products. Affiliate sharing of customers' information made this possible. NationsBank provided the investment representatives with maturing CD customer lists, as well as customers' financial statements and account balances. As a result, when these investment representatives called NationsBanks' customers and indicated that they were with the "investment division" of the bank, many customers reasonably believed that they were bank employees, not brokers. NationsBank is not the only bank to have engaged in such a practice. First Union settled a private lawsuit alleging a similar scheme.
Identity theft is fueled by insiders--financial services company employees--with access to your personal information. The unrestricted sharing of consumers' information also facilitates criminal activity, such as theft of financial identity. Identity theft is one of the nation's fastest growing white-collar crimes. Many of these identity theft cases are "insider jobs," committed by employees who obtain access and misuse individuals' personal information stored in their employers' databanks. A soon-to-be-published survey by researchers at Michigan State University found that up to 70% of identity theft cases involve an insider with access to personal information.
..."
http://www.restitutionpayment.com/
Telemarketers involved in the Wachovia-connected telemarketing fraud case.
http://www.restitutionpayment.com/PDFs/ListofTelemarketers.pdf
Attempt to unilaterally sign up and charge customer, with no customer-supplied identification information. Indicates weak protection of Chase customers from internal fraud, attempting to create a "negative option" agreement, with possibly undisclosed recording.
http://consumerist.com/5008001/chase-telemark ... h-vague-threats
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/461/RipOff0461607.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/325/RipOff0325535.htm
Note how a Chase employee claims it may have been authorized by depositing a check, while another consumer alleges that Chase claimed in her case it was authorized via a recorded telemarketing call, which they refused to produce. That says they are soliciting via both mechanisms, and in particular that they are using phone recording as authorization, a mechanism known to be fabricated by telemarketers engaging in fraud.
More details from the consumer who claims they got all their money back. They filed complaints through FRB who and OCC.
For Chase to return over 5 years of payments, approximately $5600 at $132 per month, would imply that Chase is aware that their telemarketers (whether they are employees or third party) have been engaging in telemarketing fraud. It may also imply that there was a settlement with Chase in regard to telemarketing fraud at some time in the past requiring restitution.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/443/RipOff0443310.htm
"...
Supreme Court Maintains California Financial Privacy Law : Today the Supreme Court denied review of the California law that provides customers with privacy safeguards for financial data. The law limits the sale of personal information by financial firms to affiliates, and imposes opt-in requirements. The Ninth Circuit upheld substantial portions of the California Financial Information Privacy Act. EPIC filed a brief in that case favoring the law. Financial firms argued that the California statute conflicts with other federal rules. The Justice Department recommended that the Supreme Court leave the state statute in place. See EPIC ABA v. Brown and EPIC Privacy and Preemption Watch. (Jun. 29, 2009) ..."
Earlier report of Chase cleaning up its Indian call center operation was from 2006.
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/045/RipOff0045738.htm
"You are absolutely right this charge was put on your account without your authorization, and If you requested to hear a recording you would, but it will not be what you agreed to at all. You were called from a call centre in India, they will call to confirm you address...which Chase should have you get all your bills don't you?
Alternatively, they will call to offer you the plan free for 30 days, but you will be charged for the plan as soon as you hang up. Then it is up to you to check your statement and call and cancel...
...
After you see this free plan charged to your credit card, you will have to call another call center in Canada or Oklohoma or Florida...but
the Canadians will not tell you they are not in the US they will stay they are just north of US it's funny ask them what city and watch them stammer and stutter on the phone they don't have a clue it is all so scripted they have to stay all of that crap, or else they get fired.
This person always a very friendly Canadian.....why do you think Chase hired Assurant for this, we Americans would not be so friendley but they will tell you what a great plan this is and how you got it free, and suggest you use the benefits...and good luck with that, you will not be able to use these benefits without a ton of paperwork and phone calls, and that is only if you are approved. The bottom line check ALL your credit card bills for any charges, you did not authorize no matter how small it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.
And word to the wise IF you get ANGRY and threaten lawyers or the Attorney General you will get all your money back.....well up to 3 months anyway....so don't put up with it demand all your money back.........and use the word lawyers and Attorney General, or even your congress........that will get you some action.
I could go on and on, with the Payment Protector Plan but the only thing it protects is Chase this is the biggest rip off I have ever seen .....how do you think they remain to be one of the biggest banks in the United States.
This is a big rip off it is credit card insurance, and just this side of being legal. I worked there took an average of 60 to 80 calls a day 90% of those calls told me that they did not authorize this.....now are they all wrong?. NO Chase has enrolled them without their authorizaton. SO no you are not wrong you were enrolled without your authorization it is a big ripoff."
"...
One of the key motivations for ACH, according to Heuer, is to avoid rejecting deception out of hand, because the situation looks straightforward. Heuer observed that good deception looks real. "Rejecting a plausible but unproven hypothesis too early tends to bias the subsequent analysis, because one does not then look for the evidence that might support it. The possibility of deception should not be rejected until it is disproved or, at least, until a systematic search for evidence has been made and none has been found."
..."
Similar complaints exist with regard to Bank of America Insurance Services, which is reported to use several telemarketers in Do Not Call complaints.
Use of separate telemarketing companies appears to result in increased levels of telemarketing fraud for two reasons:
1) As a separate company, their incentives are highly focused solely on making the "sale" without regard to maintaining other business relationships with the consumer
2) As a separate company which is NOT a bank, their control systems may be lax or non-existent, despite likely requirements in contracts with the bank. Although in theory they may be subject to audit by the bank, that is NOT the same as a bank being subject to audit by its regulators.
This falls under the section "Honoring your preferences", I guess just for laughs...
If everyone stops using BoA because of practices like this, the government will just give them free money to keep them afloat until they can get back on their feet... *OUR* money... either way we're getting [***].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act
You can opt-out by phone, by mail, and in many cases, including BofA, on-line. You can opt-out of information sharing for marketing purposes with either affiliates (with common ownership to the bank), or with third party marketers (separate companies) that they may be selling customer information to. If you do it on-line, you can print out the opt-out page as proof of your request and when it was made.
You generally can't opt-out of sharing with parts of the company or other companies as required for services directly related to your account. For example, if you direct them to wire money to some other company, they could provide whatever of your information is required to that company to do that. They can also report to the credit reporting agencies, as long as they comply with FCRA.
Opting-out should block sale of your information to be used for telemarketing purposes. It might not stop telemarketing directly by BofA itself, but it might stop it by BofA affiliates, such as BofA Insurance Services.
You can block telemarketing by companies you have existing relationships with by requesting, in accordance with the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and TCPA.
Using GLB to block information sharing would be a prudent preventive measure aimed at preventing this sort of telemarketing fraud. If a bank were to fail to honor your Privacy opt-out request, you would file a complaint with OCC, at www.occ.gov
https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-866-879-0179/4
"aaron - 7 Jul 2009
I got a hold of someone at the company and they said they talked to me three months ago. Only thing is the number they gave doesn't belong to me, but someone else with the same last name. They are sending 'proof of enrollment' in the next 7 to 10 business days. Although it will be someone elses voice on the recording. I went through the claims department at BofA and will have to fill out several forms. This caused several fee's as the account that was signed up is never used and had a low balance.
Caller ID: n/a
Caller: n/a"
"No way to cancel" until THEY call YOU? Evading consumer's attempt to cancel an unauthorized account, while deceptively claiming to be "Bank of America".
"Mitch - 11 Jul 2009
Called my work wanting to send me information on $20/month insurance, said they were from BofA... and gave me a customer service phone number. I came here to check it out, lo and behold, a scam... and I called their number, they answered "Bank of America", said they couldn't cancel my account (I have an account?!) and that there was no number that I could call to cancel. Told me I have to wait for them to call *me* in order to cancel... I called BofA and put a block on my account... now I have a checking account but I can't write checks or use a check card or atms... I'm switching banks first thing on pay day"