A Brief Review of My Experience with Bank of America

For the past few months, I have been looking to relocate my bank account and settled with Bank of America last June. I was pretty happy with their system; it only took a short 30 minutes to setup my brand new checking and savings account. I was setup with online banking and everything which was simply great considering my old bank didn't have it. I was able to view all my transactions and even handle my bill payments with no problems at all, and herein my saga starts.

As a happy account holder with Bank of America, I have noticed a few interesting features that makes Bank of America really unique and stand out amongst other banks. Besides the prompt online services, one of their main account options known as "Keep the Change" basically takes the remaining change from any transaction and transfers it to your savings account. An example of this is, "You go out and purchase a bottle of Pepsi for $1.88" This "Keep the Change" feature will automatically take the remaining 12 cents and transfer it to your savings account. This certainly can add up over time and proves beneficial in the long run. It's an interesting advantage to using Bank of America and it keeps people happy to see some money slowly building up in their savings account.

Unlike a lot of other banks, Bank of America has their own ATM machines spread out all over the United States. Now this isn't a gigantic benefit to most people since you are able to withdraw your cash from any ATM but for those interested in saving the few dollars that foreign ATM machines charge than Bank of America is for you. All withdrawals from Bank of America ATM machines are free of charge and with the huge abundance of Bank of America specific ATM machines around the country, you will surely find yourself saving a few bucks.

Unfortunately I have had one bad experience with Bank of America where they had charged me for an overdraft transfer fee. Basically, if you overdraft from your checking account then Bank of America will automatically draw funds from your savings account to make up for the negative balance. This is a pretty good feature because it avoids the giant fees from an overdraft, but it does have its downside. There is an automatic $10 fee for this automated transfer and luckily, as I had opened a student checking/savings account, I was given a onetime "get out of jail free" card which basically gave me the ability to turn the card in to any teller and receive the money back. I attempted to turn this card in at my local Bank of America building and the teller immediately rebutted my request with some obscure statement about "Keep the Change". I insisted that this was not the case but with less power on my side, I had to walk away in defeat. The ignorance of the teller quietly gnawed away at me as I built up more and more anger towards this experience. Maybe I am overreacting but it's human nature to be upset when you know you are right. Especially when I had the bank statement stating it was an "Overdraft Transfer Fee" and my onetime card clearly depicted that it covered "Overdraft Transfer Fees". Hopefully the card will come in handy at a later date.

In conclusion, Bank of America is a good and very established bank. Their online banking system is very efficient and even though some tellers lack company education, their offline banking is quite impressive too. If you are looking to locate to a new bank, then Bank of America is definitely a choice.