Sachin's Space

My life: London, LA, Stanford, Phi Psi, Apple, New York City, Posterous, San Francisco, Kate, Twitter.

Bank of America Visa has no fee and good customer service that is based in the US. This is the card to get.

While I use my American Express card for 99% of my purchases (you simply can't beat the protection or benefits you get with Amex), I still need a Visa card for the merchants who don't take American Express.

Last month I had a horrible experience with my Virgin America Visa Signature card when I had to dispute a fraudulent charge. They made me jump through hoops. All the customer service was outsourced and I had a really hard time communicating with them.

So I cancelled the Virgin card and got a Bank of America card. Even though I rant about Bank of America all the time, I chose this card because it's one of only a few Visa Signature cards that has no annual fee. That program gives you extra perks. They also offer a Stanford Alumni version so it has a nice Stanford print on it :).

I just had a minor card issue and called the customer service line. I got a super friendly woman based on Georgia who took care of my issue within a couple minutes.

I'm a fan.

Bank of America stole money from Posterous, but I got it back from them

My whole life I've been the type of person who who keeps receipts and balances my checkbook to the penny. I verify all credit card statements and bank statements, and examine all bills. No one slips anything by me.

A few days ago I was balancing the Posterous checking account and noticed there was some money missing. There were a few extra charges on the statement that I didn't have record of. They were fairly vague, to the point where I wasn't even sure if they were debits by Bank of America or by a third party.

I called Bank of America, and first of all had to deal with being passed around a few times. In particular, they have this issue where accounts created in California accounts are separate from others. They have never been able to combine these systems.

Long story short, the person I ultimately spoke to tried to make up many excuses as to why I had been charged these fees (something about a flag being removed from my account) and then proceeded to *sell* me on these additional services that I was billed for.

I was irate. DO NOT TRY TO SELL ME ON ANYTHING. Just refund the money you STOLE from me, and let me get back to running a company.

The worst part about this situation, and I've blogged about this before, is the fact that most people probably don't check their statements (it's a pain in the ass) and therefore unknowingly pay these fees.

I don't know if other bank are any better wrt hidden fees, but if there is a better way to go, I'm ready to switch. Banks like BofA don't deserve my money.