Is Bank of America worth it in Cohoes? (rewards program) My take

By Pablo Diaz · I left BoA after years as a customer. Read the full story →

NY BoA customers reaching out share a narrow set of complaints — fees, password resets, rewards that don't credit, customer-service handoffs. This page covers each from my own customer experience.

What I observed (rewards program)

This is the section that moved my BoA experience from frustration to genuinely suspicious. In my experience, rewards I expected did not credit to my account. I set up auto-redeem AND manually requested redemptions on multiple occasions. Neither path produced a deposit I could see. I contacted support, followed every step, and from my perspective, nothing reached my account.

My full account — written exactly as I would describe it to a friend — is at /my-banking-story.

What the public record shows

• CFPB 2023 enforcement order — $250M total — junk fees, withheld credit-card rewards, fake accounts.
• CFPB 2022 enforcement — $225M — botched unemployment-benefits handling.
• CFPB 2014 — $727M in relief — deceptive credit-card add-on practices.
• DOJ RMBS settlement (2014) — $16.65 billion — at the time the largest civil settlement with a single entity in U.S. history.
• CFPB Consumer Complaint Database — Bank of America — public, searchable, tens of thousands of complaints.
• BBB profile — Bank of America — public ratings + customer reviews.

If your experience has been similar in Cohoes

1. File a CFPB complaint. consumerfinance.gov/complaint — free, public, and tends to get a response on the record.
2. File a parallel state complaint. NY Department of Financial Services (DFS) — file a consumer complaint — state regulators carry weight in their own jurisdictions.
3. File a BBB complaint. BBB Bank of America profile.
4. Compare alternatives side-by-side. Cohoes business banking ranking on Noizz → Mercury, RHO, Novo, Relay, Bluevine, Brex, Found compared on real public pricing.
5. Open a new account before closing the old one. 60–90-day buffer.
6. Migrate inflows first, outflows second.

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• BoA customer experience in Watervliet, NY
• BoA customer experience in New York City, NY
• Consumer-banking rights in Cohoes →
• BoA vs Mercury in Cohoes (Noizz) →
• BoA vs RHO in Cohoes (Noizz) →