Unearned Loyalty: A Bank of America Ballad

Bank of America was fined $250m for 'junk fees.' Maybe it's time to drop them.

Licensed via Adobe Stock Photo

I have a confession to make: I stayed with Bank of America even after they stole $1,000 from me. I wrote a post about how predatory and deliberately obscure their overdraft policy was, but I stayed with them. After I published that post, my wife asked-slash-pointed out, “Aren’t you still with Bank of America?” Yes, yes, I am. But maybe it’s time to move on now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has ordered BoA to pay CFPB $150 million in penalties and $100 million to consumers over “junk fees.” 

I’ve rationalized staying with Bank of America in a few different ways. At first, I told myself, “Well, they reimbursed some of the overdraft fees.” Borderline Stockholm Syndrome. More recently, I rationalized sticking with them because they were making overtures: They lowered, then eliminated, the $35 overdraft fees that had single-handedly evacuated my checking account 15 years ago. Next, they developed a zero-down mortgage program for first-time buyers in underserved communities. I was skeptical, but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. With recent transgressions, however, it’s hard to keep rationalizing. 

OK, I buried the lede. What did they actually do? According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a consumer watchdog that bullied BoA and other banks into overhauling their overdraft policies, Bank of America was guilty of the following:

“...systematically double-dipping on fees imposed on customers with insufficient funds in their account, withholding reward bonuses explicitly promised to credit card customers, and misappropriating sensitive personal information to open accounts without customer knowledge or authorization.”

Why have I stayed with them? Is it loyalty? Familiarity? Ignorance? Laziness? Fear of change? A stew of all those ingredients whose exact ratio I’ll never know? I’m not sure, but the tendency to stick is familiar to me.

my mom’s accident

Twenty years ago, a 20-year-old woman in an SUV clipped my mother while she was crossing the street. The young woman had sped up to make a left turn at a changing light, flinging my mom through the air. My mom bumped her head on the asphalt and lost consciousness. She sustained a head wound, but worse than that, she wrecked her back, which would require surgery and physical therapy. She took painkillers. She walked with a cane for a year. She could never get comfortable, which discouraged her from participating in family activities that would demand long stretches of standing or sitting. She did eventually get better, but even today she deals with residual effects of that accident. 

The young woman was indisputably in the wrong. There were at least a dozen witnesses. The silver lining would be that my mom would (hopefully) be compensated for the injury inflicted on her. My mother put her longtime lawyer on the case. Off they went.

After a while, my sister and I asked our mom about the case’s progress. She was evasive, never really giving us a straight answer. It started to become clear that my mom didn’t really know what was going on. My sister and I grew leery of her lawyer.

My sister did some digging and eventually found out that her lawyer almost had the case thrown out. Twice. We were apoplectic. We demanded she drop this incompetent fool and engage a real lawyer. My sister, who once worked at a law office, knew what to look for in a lawyer, and found a good replacement. My mother didn’t want to leave her lawyer, even after that.

She confronted him – well, “confront” is a strong word for mom. She asked him why the case had almost been thrown out. He said he filed for extensions, but his motions crossed wires with the court’s communications. Excuses. It was enough to placate my mom, but far from enough to placate my sister and me.

Why did she want to stay with him? It’s hard to know exactly, but I’d wager it was a combination of loyalty, familiarity and fear of change. She’d known her lawyer for many years at that point. They had developed a rapport. She might even call it a friendship. I’ve met him before. He seemed nice enough. I don’t think he was scamming my mom. I just think he’s a one-man band who isn’t particularly organized and doesn’t have a specialty. He just takes whatever cases fall on his lap.

This lawyer serves an immigrant community. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would callously take advantage of immigrants, but it does mean that he could get away with having a lower standard without being called out on it. Immigrants, especially undocumented ones, don’t typically want to rock the boat, and are usually less familiar with American laws.

I think my mom was worried that a new lawyer would be a slick big shot who would condescend to her, something her current lawyer wouldn’t do. Sure, maybe he was slow and maybe some things fell through the cracks, but he was a nice man who treated her well. 

Eventually, my sister and I bullied my mom into switching to the lawyer my sister had found. The new lawyer made progress right away. We got updates, dates, and, eventually, a result. My mom had her medical bills paid, of course, and she got a sum of money. No amount would be enough to make up for what my mom went through, but it was a decent chunk of change — money that she needed, money that she almost missed out on because of her loyalty to a lawyer who hadn’t earned it.

loyalty vs. self-care

In many Latin American countries, loyalty is an ideal. Loyalty to family, friends, a neighborhood, a community, friends of family, family doctors, family lawyers, etc. I suspect this tendency is magnified in immigrants, who cling to familiarity in an unfamiliar place. Loyalty is a good thing, but if not tempered with a discriminating appraisal, it can be detrimental to your well-being and your wealth. Unqualified loyalty is an absence of self-respect.

By sticking with BoA without questioning or comparing, I’ve done a disservice to myself. Bank of America isn’t the only bank to screw customers over, but it’s the only bank that’s burned me more than once. At least my mom’s lawyer served her coffee. What has Bank of America ever done to regain my loyalty? As they say, when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Well, Bank of America, it might’ve taken me a while, but I believe you.

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