I remember the first Bank of America bank statement I received where I was charged 4 overdraft fees even though I had the correct amount to cover the purchases in my checking account. (Turns out that I had made one Starbucks purchase that caused my account to be below $0, but that was only processed AFTER all the other purchases, ensuring that I’d get hit with all those fees simultaneously. Fabulous) That equates to $35 times 4 or $140 and considering that I was making less than $400 a week and living in New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world, that meant that I would have to either not eat that week or see if cereal could sustain me until I received my next paycheck.
So what did I do?
Well, I called Bank of America and spoke to a customer service representative who was probably one of the most unhelpful people ever. She was very rude and told me that there was nothing that she could do and that she could not reverse any of the fees even though I explained my dire situation. Needless to say, I never got ANY fees reversed and it still makes me cringe to this day when I think of all money wasted on stupid, random Bank of America fees. Well, not every single customer account representative is cold and heartless. Case in point: Jackie Ramos, a former Bank of America customer service representative, who uploaded a video of herself to youtube, explaining that because of her desire to help customers and not merely turn away their requests, she ended up getting fired.
Ramos worked at BOA from May 2009-November 2009, and was a top performer in her department for denying as many requests as she could. She was recently interviewed on “The Daily Show,” after her youtube video got a bunch of hits. Ramos had a few memorable quotes including,
“Customer assistance is a euphemism for the collections department.”
“There was something inherently evil about my job.”
“There was a saying in my department. You’re only as good as your last payment.”
“Senior citizens and college students were specifically targeted so BOA could continue to make money off of them.” (They should add recent college grads to this list)
“All the people I’ve had to deny programs to, they kept me up at night. All the people that I’ve pissed off with the $15 convenience fee, all the people who were dying, lost a child, lost a job and sat on the phone crying asking if we can just give them a little bit of help, they could make their ends meet. It kept me up at night….So I stopped denying people.”
Check out the video below:
Go Jackie for speaking out about this!
