• Bank of America Mortgage Software Intentionally Flawed?

    Bank of America

    It's a sad day when you realize that you can't trust an institution like Bank of America to deal fairly. You would expect a Fortune 500 company like Bank of America to ensure that their software was functional and capable of serving the needs of their customers. Not so.

    Recent experience has taught me that this banking and lending giant "can't" find the time or money to fix an error in their software that would make the lending customer service experience as smooth and functional as it should be. 

    Warning: If you have a home loan with Bank of America, they have orchestrated their software to be "flawed" so that any payment towards principle only will be mishandled and at least partially applied towards your regular monthly payment and interest.  

    That's right. Although there is an option to pay towards principle only, you the customer have to call the customer service department and explain to someone (who has apparently never experienced this issue before) that they have misapplied your payment and you have to make sure they reappropriate the payment towards principle only. 

    IF YOU DO NOT HOLD THEIR HANDS, BANK OF AMERICA WILL MISAPPLY YOUR PAYMENT AND YOU WILL UNWITTINGLY PAY FOR MORE INTEREST THAN IS NECESSARY. 

    This is beyond sad and pathetic. This is borderline criminal. If 10,000 borrowers made one extra house payment per year towards principle and didn't realize how BofA was "unintentionally" misapplying their payments, Bank of America profits an extra million dollars per year. That might sound like nothing to one of the nation's largest financial institutions, but that's an extremely costly error for a company with the billions to correct such an issue.

    There is no excuse for this error. I wish I could tell you that they will fix this issue quickly. However, Bank of America has been misapplying extra payments for years. There's no telling how many people have lost equity in their homes due to blind trust in a company that says you can easily make a payment towards the principle of your home.

    Someone will inevitably accuse me of being incapable of properly making or specifying that each payment was strictly intended for principle. Had several Bank of America representatives not admitted to the flaw in their software, I would consider the possibility that this issue is due to incompetence on my part. Unfortunately, the burden of responsibility does not fall on my shoulders, but rather the corporation.

    I apparently never received the memo that informed us all that companies no longer have to provide honest and accurate service in order to prosper. My bad.