The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

In Bank of America, we trust

In September, Bank of America announced a plan to levy a $5 fee on customers who used their debit cards for purchases. Customers who only used their debit cards for withdrawing money from ATMs were left unaffected, but it still caused an intense backlash that made the bank give up its plans in October. It showed that customers still can effectively voice their opinions and cause change, but it also brought up the issue of whether Bank of America should have tried to levy this fee in the first place.

The answer to that is no, for a variety of reasons.

The bank made a horrendous business decision when it bought Countrywide Financial in 2007. Initially, Countrywide gave the bank a boost of $447 million, according to Bloomberg in 2007. But recently, details about Countrywide’s illegal business practices have come to light.

According to Business Insider, Countrywide’s CEO Angelo Mozilo was charged with fraud because his company underwrote loans that were so horrendous, they helped create the choking economic climate that the country is still in.

Bank of America then tried to rectify the situation, but instead, only made it worse. According to the Nevada State Attorney General, as reported by The New York Times, Catherine Cortez Masto, Bank of America raised interest rates on Nevada borrowers after the bank had promised to lower them. Furthermore, the bank violated the settlement by not giving loan modifications to homeowners who qualified for them, then foreclosed on those same homeowners even as modification requests were pending.

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According to The New York Times, Nevada citizens received loans from Countrywide, and sent in complaints to Masto’s office. She found that Bank of America “materially and almost immediately violated” the terms. Bank of America did even more than that, according to the Nevada complaint, Employees lied to customers about modification requests, giving customers false reasons as to why the requests were denied.

So much lying and deceiving, and Bank of America still wants its customers to cough up more money.

Now that Bank of America owns Countrywide, B of A has to take care of the issue at hand. It made settlements with states, including Nevada, according to the New York Times. The online newspaper, The Blaze, said the Countrywide purchase cost $30 billion after “legal fees and writedown’s” and now they’re trying to recover those losses by underhanded means. It’s a good thing that this idea never made it into practice, but it’s obvious that the bank will try other things to squeeze money out of its customers who need to become acutely aware of their bank’s motives and potential offenses.

Just because this problem seems over with for now does not mean that customers should forget about Bank of America’s wrongdoings and underhanded business practices.

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