I'm getting absolutely no help from the banking institution that I thought I could trust and I feel as though I'm running out of options so I'm here, hoping I can get some guidance from someone.
What happened?
2 transfers totaling a little over $2000 was transferred from savings account through the Zelle transfer service, something I've never used or heard of, to 2 email accounts with names attached to each one. Likely fake names but still, there were names. I caught it while it was still processing but it didn't matter, the bank couldn't cancel or stop them. So I file a claim through Bank Of America thinking everything was going to be okay. I'm protected, so it'll be okay. Wrong. It's been about 3 weeks and this entire process has been nothing short of a nightmare all because of BOA. 11 days after filing my claim, BOA denied my claim saying that the login into my account before the money transferred was consistent with other logins. They were basically saying I did it. After getting royally irate on the phone with them, I tell them that I'm going to get my money back and they need to tell me what to do to make this happen. They tell me to go and get my phone scanned for viruses by my cell phone carrier. So I have to somehow prove that someone stole my money. Not once did they mention a police report so i asked if it would help. They said that it would. No idea why they wouldn't mention this first before this useless phone scan. So I filed a police report with my local police and requested the case be investigated. Finally someone actually helping me. After a few days I finally got ATT to scan my phone but the device they use can't print or email so I can't fax anything to BOA. I was able to take pictures of the different screens showing the results hoping this would be sufficient. I call BOA and after being transferred several times I finally get someone to tell me other options because ATT can't give me anything written or digitally showing the results. They tell me to go to a third party store that works on and fixes cell phones. After calling 10 different places in my area, I found 1 that said they could scan the phone and hand write the details on their company letterhead with their info. BOA said that would suffice. I mean what else am I supposed to do? I asked why I couldn't use one of the trust third party apps, download the report and send that in. That would give them everything they needed to know.
So I've jumped through their hoops, recorded all my phone calls once I noticed they were playing games with me, filed a police report and gathered all the info I could from Google showing that I didn't access the BOA app on my phone the days the money was transferred and I've faxed this info over to them to try and get the claim looked at again. I'm not hopeful. I've filed a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after it was suggested in a few forums online and I'm in the process of filing a complaint with helpmybank.gov. I'm pretty sure that my email account was hacked and my banking info was then gathered through it somehow because there was a label created in my email to read and delete all Bank Of America emails thus the reason I never caught this when it was happening. So now I've been racking my brain trying to secure anything I have that has a password to ensure this doesn't happen again because they bank isn't protecting me. I'm fairly computer savvy so I keep my home PC virus free and I never open shady emails. But I guess when you have companies being breached and tens of millions of people's info is now out there, it makes it a little harder to protect yourself.
If they deny my claim again, what can I do? I didn't do this. My money was stolen from me yet the bank is treating me like I did it and they haven't helped me one bit. Calling them is a nightmare. I asked about a specific part of their privacy policy the other day and I was transferred 5 times over an hour and a half and STILL couldn't get it explained. I've never used the Zelle service and I've never transferred large amounts like this yet the bank didn't catch it. It blows my mind and I thought I was protected. My mind has been so scattered since this happened that it's hard to focus on my day to day life because I'm constantly thinking about this and other fraud incidents potentially happening. What can I do? I need help. Can I take this small claims court? Should I hire a lawyer?
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Submitted September 30, 2018 at 11:12AM by OmegaAether https://ift.tt/2DFbJ40
