BoA loan? This happen to anyone else?

[GoldieSaysMeep]

This is strange…

I’ve mentioned a few times my outrage that my Bank of America Gold Option Loan will be going from a fixed rate to a variable rate based off the US prime rate.

Yesterday I got a letter from them stating that they changed their mind and “after careful consideration” will not be doing this.

Now I went so far as to speak with a VP of customer relations there and even she told me no way, there was nothing they could do. They were doing this across the board due to the “current economic climate”.

Aggravated, I made a large payment and cut the loan balance in half and have been upping my ebay selling to get it paid off and out of my life so I never have to deal with the swine at BoA ever again. Now, less than a month later, they “changed their mind” and will keep it at the same fixed rate? What?

Did anyone else get this from BoA?

 

[ilovediznee]

We got the same letter - actually both my DH and I have separate loans. I got letter 1 saying it would go up and letter 2 yesterday. Unfortunately we are not able to make a large payment to bring it down so I know that must be frustrating, BUT given the fact that all my other credit cards had to be closed because of the totally outrageous increases - 5% to 24%, I consider it a blessing.

This is what I would do. Call them and ask that given what they first sent, then you made the payment, what can they do for you? My understanding is that because this change is not occurring, that your payment will stay the same. Ask them if your payment could be reduced.

Good luck and I will subscribe to this thread to see what others have done.

Diane

 

[GoldieSaysMeep]

They sent the letters to you 2 days apart? Wow…Way to go, BoA!

Monday – your rate’s going up…
Tuesday – no it isn’t!

What will Wednesday bring??

I am definately going to ask them to reduce my rate, but really, as long as it doesn’t go up, I’m good.

Though, I am a little aggravated because I would have liked to have saved some of that cash that I put on the big payment just to have *more cash* around, but I still have an emergency fund and savings. Granted, I have less cash but also less debt and an interest rate that (for today at least lol) is not going up.

I was just curious as to why the sudden change. They announced the rate change to me via letter at the end of the summer stating it would begin in December.

I wonder if it’s because of a class action suit? A LOT of people were furious over this because they took a fixed rate and changed it to a variable and I don’t even know if that is legal.

I hear you about the other cards. My 2 other cards both had rate increases and went up by 6 and 4 percentage points. One I paid off (was a store card with a very small balance) and the other I’m making triple the minimum now instead of double like I used to do. I just want RID OF CREDIT CARDS!

My fiance has one cc (Chase, I think) and they raised his rate by 10 points. So he applied for a balance transfer through Discover, and got approved. He’s keeping the old card open for age but not using it. So basically, Chase lost money there.

It almost seems like the banks are punishing the people with good credit, who pay their full balance (or at least their mins) every month, on time for the actions of the people who don’t pay their bills.

People are getting fed up and ditching these banks that are doing this. I think these banks are going to lose a lot of business and credit unions or banks that are savvy enough to offer low interest cards/transfers to people with good credit are going to be the ones who come out of this mess ahead.

It will be interesting to see in 10-15 years which banks are doing well. My guess is BoA, Chase and the others who are rate jacking and slashing limits will not be ahead.

 

[mrsmom]

Yep,I got the letter yesterday .

 

[simba20]

Never liked BoA.

A number of years ago, my husband and I had a credit card with them (well it was the husband's card) that had some of our debt from our last years of college and first year or so of marraige....basically just us trying to get by while I was finishing my degree and looking for jobs. I had changed majors, and you only get financial aid for so long........

Anyway, hubster had a good job. I had a job, however because of our debt we were paycheck to paycheck. We weren't living out of our means, but this debt was all consuming.

So we called BoA to try and get the interest rate lowered. Now I will admit, that some payments had been late, and due to this they closed the account so we couldn't use it. In fact we had not used the account for a good 2-3 years, we were just making payments to pay it off. So we called BoA, explained our situation and tried to get the rate lowered or put on some kind of "help" program to lower our payments so we could try to get ahead.

But they wouldn;t do it. Basically they told us they would not help us, unless the card was over the limit and we had missed payments. So we asked the lady ont he phone, "So you're telling us to charge more on the card, overextend our credit, and not be able to pay at all, and THEN, ONLY THEN will you help us?" Yes, was the reply.

Then we got stupid a few years later, when my husband was extended an offer for a consolidation line of credit to merge all of his CCs (three total) into consolidation. Yes, it was from BoA. We asked countless question and were assured that by paying x amount for 4 years our consolidation would then be paid off. So we took it. I mean we were already paying $700/month just in CCs alone and paying $400 for this low interest consolidation would help us put some money aside of by continuing to pay $700 we'd really get that consolidation paid down........

Needless to say, after 4 years we had barely made a dent in the consolidation line of credit. One day we happened to catch our interest rate (after a few years) and it was not what we were told it would be. We called to get the rate lowered and were given the same speil as with our credit card.

THANKFULLY I receieved a great inheritance from my grandfather when he passed away last year. Because we want to buy a house SOMEDAY, I immediately paid off all of our CC debt. That consolidation loan was the first choice. Now we have no CC debt, with the exception of an AMEX card that we put just a little on each month and have to pay off. Our only debt now are cars and student loans.

We did go out this summer looking at mortgage information and were approached by a rep from BoA about a mortgage program they have for teachers (hubster is a teacher), but with our experience we politely declined taking the info.

 

[ilovediznee]

Letter #1 came in September/Oct saying it was going up. Letter #2 came yesterday. What really irks me too is that I received a letter in between these two letters saying that I should call them to review my loan and discuss what options "may help" me like a lower rate or changing my due date. Let's see, how much did that cost them? Very, very strange!

I agree that most banks are tanking right now and I hope some of them actually close.

Diane

 

[taximomfor4]

I got the same letter yesterday (ours is a credit card account, though, not a loan).

I am SO GRATEFUL!

 

[mamalle]

received the letter back in October and now this letter today. who knows..

 

[GoldieSaysMeep]

It is so weird.

I mean I guess it's good but it's also alarming when a bank suddenly "changes its mind" about something...

 

[wdwfan16]

What is a gold option loan?

 

[GoldieSaysMeep]

What is a gold option loan?

It was consolidation line of credit offerened by MBNA just prior to BoA purchasing them. Also, it is your worst nightmare.

I was lured with the promise of a low interest rate. At the time I'd just had several thousand dollars worth of car repair and paid close to 10K trying to save my 6 month old puppy through two surgeries. I took the car repair and vet bills and rolled them into this loan because they were on higher interest cards. Worked great for a few months and then the rate went up. But stayed stable fixed rate for 2 years. So you knew what you were getting.

They were just about to raise it again but to a variable rate based on the US prime rate. Apparently, they changed their mind.

 

[bumbershoot]

They were just about to raise it again but to a variable rate based on the US prime rate. Apparently, they changed their mind.

Maybe too many people (I doubt it would be a majority, but some) did what you did, wanting to destroy the loan much much faster than they would have done. Maybe they realized they'd be losing too much?

Maybe.


I know that Chase sure is trying to delay our payback of our car loan, now that we've put over 4K in principal towards it since August. We were going to speed up the payback anyway, then they declined a refi even though we're in better standing than we were when we got the loan with huge interest (I'd call it close to usury it's so high). That made us MAD.

I've now paid the January payment as of early Dec...when I made the Dec payment in November, it said (I'm adding some words, LOL) "oh no wait, you're going too fast stop it, we expected TONS of interest from you...here, your next payment isn't due until February, aren't we nice? have a nice xmas with two car payments' worth of money, just ignore all the interest that will be accruing". And then when I ignored it and paid in December, it said "no!!!!!! stop it! Here, you don't have to pay until APRIL now!"

Which seems to me about the same thing as the "nevermind" BOA has now done to you guys.

(I crack myself up putting words into computers' mouths...except they have no mouths...)

Anyway, I'm glad you're that much further ahead, and if you keep on throwing everything you can at it, instead of just paying what you were paying before, you'll have the loan smashed to pieces in no time!

 

[BurnsideMommy]

BofA is horrible. Even more so now that they bought Countrywide.

We got an offer on our old house in September - early. Our mortgage for that house is through BofA (well it was Countrywide but now BofA). We were supposed to close Oct 30. Well a few days before that they said they needed a few more days. We agreed to let the buyer move in on the Oct 30 closing date and pay us 'rent' until it closed. We were supposed to close Nov 3. So we didn't pay the Nov mortgage since they calculated stuff at the title company to do that. Well Nov 3 came and went - then they didn't even give us a new closing date. Buyer keeps calling underwriting daily trying to get documents to close. Well BofA mortgage calls us and asks why we hadn't paid. DH tells them - we were told NOT to cause you were supposed to produce closing documents!! Asshats. We ended up paying the Nov mortgage ayways. Well 3 times since then we've got the 'closing date', and again come and gone with nothing. It's Dec 7 now and we still have not closed. They told us 'by the end of the week'. We're not holding our breath. We need this house to close by the end of Dec but at this point we're trying to convince the buyer to use the local credit union cause they have been excellent with our new house loan and will close in 2 weeks.

So ya, nothing BofA does anymore suprises me. It's all horrible.