a research fee? Have you looked into credit unions?
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This story is incomplete. A bank can refuse to open an account for you, but they cannot keep your deposit if they do so. Generally, a research fee means that you asked them for back records, or asked for their help in balancing an account. What are the missing pieces of this story?
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Actually regarding that last comment. You are wrong. I recently tried to open a account online and was told the exact same thing. They basically told me that I might not get back my deposit because of research fees. Now I have worked for a bank for 10 years so I know this is fraud. I started researching this matter yesterday and this is happening over and over again. A matter of fact one comment left by someone on anoter site was "what if bank of america did this to 1000 people only how much would they make". Please feel free to comment to this. I would love to hear what people have to say. And, by the way no I did not ask them to research an... more >>
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I've never heard of anything like this. Sounds like another way for banks to dip their oily fingers into people's wallets, and in this case, they're not even customers!
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Research fees? What kind of research are they doing? I'd report this to the media. I would say go to the government, but we all know they don't care.
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This complaint deserves deeper exploration. Some years back, mortgage outfits were charging $350-500 (non-refundable) application fees. Not wrong of itself. But, they were promoting loans to people who were obviously not credit-worthy during the initial credit screening. These mortgage outfits were making nice income off of denied applicants. This sounds very similar. Susu85 nailed this.
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I've never heard of anyone being turned down for an account, period. I didn't even know it happened. I guess I figured if you have proper ID and the initial deposit, the bank was happy.
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Boki -- People get turned down for checking accounts all the time. I'm not sure what the criteria is or what rating system they use but I've heard of people getting denied and not just checking accounts but for savings accounts as well.
Ken, can you explain what criteria/rating system banks use to evaluate applications for checking/savings accounts? thanks.
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Kenpopcorn asked "What are the missing pieces of this story?"
In my (and many others) opinion:
One missing piece is that BOA is a greedy company only out to make more money versus provide customers with banking services...
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Boki/Crab: there's a banking equivalent to the credit score system (I forget the name). If you've ever closed an account with a negative balance, your name goes on the blackball list for 5 years. I thought banks accessed electronically in real time, so I'm not sure why there would be any research involved.
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Thanks for the info, goduke, that's interesting. And the $50 bucks is probably just because..they can. :)
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The system is called eFunds. When a bank opens an account, they do an inquiry with them and eFunds will tell them if another bank has taken a loss. Additionally, they log the new account, and if a later report comes in of a loss, they will inform the new bank that another bank reported a loss, and usually the new bank will close the account. Going back to my 2008 comment, there is more to this story, like maybe the bank was recovering a previous loss from this person.
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Also good info, Ken. Sounds like that's just what this bank was doing.
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