Banking with Bank of America in Rochester, NY — fees experience

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

Rochester BoA customers reach out to me regularly with the same shape of complaint: rewards that don’t credit, fees that keep showing up, password resets that come back too often. This page covers what I documented as a BoA customer myself, the public regulator record, and the practical next steps if you want to do something about it from Rochester.

What I observed (fees experience)

In my experience, the fees were relentless. From my perspective, the bank found every possible excuse to chip away at the balance. Maintenance fees waived only on conditions I had to actively manage. Wire fees on the higher end of the market. ATM-network fees in places where the partner network had thinned. Customer service offered, in my view, zero structural solutions.

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 Rochester

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. Rochester 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.

Other NY cities reviewing Bank of America

• BoA customer experience in New York City, NY
• BoA customer experience in Brooklyn, NY
• BoA customer experience in Queens, NY
• BoA customer experience in Bronx, NY
• BoA customer experience in Staten Island, NY
• BoA customer experience in Buffalo, NY
• Consumer-banking rights in Rochester →
• BoA vs Mercury in Rochester (Noizz) →
• BoA vs RHO in Rochester (Noizz) →