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How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

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101–110 of 261 posts

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#101

If everyone on this thread tweeted his story, he'll get his money back. In the age of social media, the only effective tool we have against corporations is public shaming.

For something like this, I've no reason to believe small claims court isn't also an effective tool.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#102
post #57

This entire fiasco could have been avoided if people were identified correctly. Here's another recent article where simply using "firstname lastname DOB" as a primary key resulted in a collision: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-the...

This is horrific, but what a fascinating story and outcome. Thanks for sharing

Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14022588

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#103
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely correct. This is pocket lint to Bank of America. The big banks operate at an absolutely mammoth scale; BoA has 208k employees. More consequential mistakes than this happen by the thousands every day. There is, quite literally, a budget for it. It is an unfortunate reality for the US that you have to present as a savvy professional, but as soon as BoA is institutionally aware that there is a savvy professio…

Unfortunately, I think it would have required a second visit. Until he had confirmation that the court order was for the wrong person; everyone, including the branch manager would have fallen back on "It was a court order. We didn't have a choice." Armed with the knowledge that it was a court order for a different person with a similar name but different SSN, a stern conversation with the local manager would have pro…

It could be solved in the first visit, since it's not generally sufficient to say "we had some court order" but they'd have to show a copy of that particular court order to him - assuming that it included the wrong SSN, they could have resolved that it's for the wrong person right then and there without contacting the sherif office.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you know a little bit about legal procedure dealing with something like this shouldn't be too hard. Well, responses on here vary from "sue the bank, it's their fault," to "contact/sue the LASD, it's their fault" to "contact the plaintiff's lawyers, they'll fix it" to "contact the defendant's lawyers, they'll pay for it or else." So clearly, this is likely to cost more than a couple afternoons. One day, a sheriff…

Absolutely. And he's lucky it was just $4k. What of it was $100k and included money you needed to live and pay the mortgage with? This type of negligence by the bank is downright scary .

[deleted]

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#106

Hm ... the bank acted clearly careless, but I am surprised that there is so little blame on the court/sherrif, as they messed up in the first place and then in the end to not really be willing to undo their misstake.

Do we really know it was the court/sheriff who messed up in the first place? Maybe the actual defendant also had a BofA account, and the mixup was entirely by BofA. (Maybe not - I just don't see a means we have to distinguish, from afar).

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you know a little bit about legal procedure dealing with something like this shouldn't be too hard. Well, responses on here vary from "sue the bank, it's their fault," to "contact/sue the LASD, it's their fault" to "contact the plaintiff's lawyers, they'll fix it" to "contact the defendant's lawyers, they'll pay for it or else." So clearly, this is likely to cost more than a couple afternoons. One day, a sheriff…

Absolutely. And he's lucky it was just $4k. What of it was $100k and included money you needed to live and pay the mortgage with? This type of negligence by the bank is downright scary .

It's not clear to me that it's the bank's fault. The court must've done some kind of discovery to send the bank a garnish order. So was the bank lazy and just took money from a similar named account without checking the details? Or did the court identify the wrong defendant and issue a garnish order for the wrong person?

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#108
post #46

I don't understand why he's taking this on himself to be honest. If I was incorrectly named in some sort of lawsuit, my first reaction would be to call my lawyer. Who knows if there's also an incorrect arrest warrant out for example?

Most people don't have lawyers to call. The last 1/3 of his story was about him calling lawyers trying to find one who would talk to him.

If someone told me to call my lawyer I wouldn't know what to do. I don't have a lawyer. I don't know people who "have lawyers" or can recommend one. I met a lawyer once, I think, when I bought my previous house. I'd probably search online for "Lawyers in San Francisco" and pick one at random.

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would say "we had no choice, it was a court order. The sheriff's department is responsible for the mistake."

In theory: the blog's author would counter argue that BoA didn't perform due diligence in checking that the order mentioned the correct person, and even then, they didn't send the notification on time. The court rules against BoA, and it's up to their lawyers to recoup the money. In practice: BoA pays straight out of their pocket, sends those $3.4K to losses, and shuts this down before the media finds out. And based…

> shuts this down before the media finds out. And based on the speed of votes this article is getting, they will find out.

And then what? People are going to just now start hating Bank Of America? I've got some news for you...

Re: How Bank of America Gave Away My Money

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All TARP funds were paid back with interest. From a revenue standpoint, the government should bail out banks more often.

what?

TARP made money for the US government. They lent banks money at interest, and were paid back. If the government were a private entity that would be recorded as "profit".

If you want more government revenue, you should be pushing for more frequent bank bailouts.

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