Tech

Why Bank of America users woke up to negative balances in their accounts

Users took to Twitter to voice their frustrations over money vanishing from their accounts.

Photo of Jacob Seitz

Jacob Seitz

Bank of America on phone in front of Bank of America logo on white background

Bank of America users took to social media on Wednesday to complain about money disappearing from their accounts.

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Bank of America said the issue was with Zelle, a popular payment platform where users can send and receive money.

“Zelle transactions made between January 13 and January 17 may be delayed in occurring and posting to accounts as requested,” a statement on Bank of America’s app said after the company was bombarded with complaints online. “Transfers will be completed and will appear in your account activity and balances as soon as possible.”

But that didn’t satisfy users who turned their frustration on the bank.

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One user tweeted that he had a negative account balance of $-2,060.44.

https://twitter.com/JaimeSeija/status/1615707602968784898

“WHAT THE HECK?” the user, Jeepeto Caurentón, said. “I want my money back ASAP! I don’t have money for gas! Stuck at home. Your customer service phone doesn’t work! WHAT’S WRONG?”

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Another user, Ashley Monique, said she was missing $1,400 from her account.

https://twitter.com/FollowMyFace_/status/1615802613718564864?s=20&t=kzF5kf5Y4pAatIMFuzl6RQ

“Bank of America did me dirty !!!! I’m missing 1400 out my shit,” she said.

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Other users tried to make light of the situation by posting memes about Bank of America and what their customer service likely looked like.

https://twitter.com/RandomMfFendi/status/1615739025775628289?s=20&t=kzF5kf5Y4pAatIMFuzl6RQ

In a Substack post, a former Bank of America employee speculated that the screw-up might have been the result of Zelle not properly designating this Monday, MLK Day, as a banking holiday, resulting in the errors.

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“I think digitally, the federal holiday was not acknowledged, and Zelle’s system within BofA was like, ‘Where the fuck is the data?’ and basically reversed everything as a result of a glitch/human error where MLK day was not acknowledged as a federal,” James “Notorious Banker” Baca wrote. “It seems like something like that would be automatic, but considering my BofA computer was still running Windows XP in 2017, nothing surprises me.”

But some users simply wanted to share their stories of why they left Bank of America in the first place.

“I was with Bank of America yrs ago and left bc they usta hold my paychecks and push through store transactions and then charge me $100’s in overdraft fees,” one user wrote. “A couple times they charged me an overdraft fee on the overdrafts They made. All banks are gross but they are disgusting.”

Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.

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