Wall Street JournalBofA to Cut From Elite RanksWall Street JournalBy DAN FITZPATRICK And DANA CIMILLUCA Amid the banking industry's relentless belt-tightening, even Bank of America Corp.'s moneymakers aren't safe. The Charlotte, NC, company…
If you have a mortgage with Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and want to refinance, don’t bother.
You are not worth the bank’s time. Or at least I wasn’t.
That’s what I learned first-hand last week when I called Bank of America to refinance a home mortgage I’ve had with them for years.
My jaw practically hit the floor when Alejandro from BofA’s mortgage department told me this over the phone.
“Because of excessively high demand,” Alejandro said, “we can’t accept your refinancing application. But we can take a reservation and have an agent call you in 90 to 120 days.”
Huh?…You can’t be serious.
I really have to wait three or four months to even apply for a lower interest rate when I’ve been an existing customer for years?
Yeah, I bet, I thought to myself…
They’ll call me when interest rates are much higher or when BofA works its way through its part of the $25 billion robo-signing settlement reached over its abuses in the foreclosure process.
Of course, all of this is after BofA received $45 billion in taxpayer bailout funding.
And after they reportedly shifted the risks associated with $75 trillion in derivatives from its investment banking and trading units to BofA’s depository arm, a unit flush with FDIC-insured deposits.
But that is another story for another day.
How Bank of America Treats its Customers
Suspecting something wasn’t quite right, I made a second call to BofA to inquire about a new loan.
Not ten minutes later I was put through immediately to an underwriter who was all too happy to help a new, unknown prospect – a.k.a. me – take on more debt. Imagine that.
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