Is threatening to close the account a good way to negotiate with the bank?
If this matters to you a lot, I agree you should leave. My primary bank account raised chequing account and transaction fees. I left. When I was closing my account the teller asked for the reason (they needed to fill out a form) and I explained it was the monthly fees. Eventually, if a bank gets enough of these, they will change. I want to get back those features for the same price it cost when I opened it They are in their rights to cancel features or raise prices. Just as you are in your rights to withdraw if they don't give you a deal. The reason why I mention this is that this approach is comical in some instances. A grocery store may raise the price of carrots. Typically you either deal with it or change stores. Prices rise occasionally. thus they will lose a lot of money from my savings From my understanding, a bank makes a large chunk of their money from fees. Very little is from the floating kitty they can have because of your savings. If you have an investment account with your bank (not recommended) or your mortgage, that would matter more. I've had friends who have left banks (and moved their mortgages) because of the bank not giving them a better rate. Does the manager have any pressure into keeping the account to the point of giving away free products to keep the costumer or they don't really care? Depends. I've probably say no. One data point is an anecdote; it is expected in a client base of thousands that a few will leave for seemingly random reasons. Only if mass amounts of clients leave or complain will the manager or company care. A note: some banks waive monthly account or service fees if you keep a minimal account balance. I have one friend who keeps X thousand in his bank account to save the account fee; he budgets a month ahead of time and savings account rates are 0% so this costs him nothing. Take your business elsewhere, where the products and services are priced at a level you agree to pay.  This does two things.  First, you end a bad business relationship.  Why bad?  Because you're not happy with the deal.  Second, it sends an unambiguous signal to the losing bank that you were unhappy with their service.  If they offer an exit survey, complete it, and be sure to tell them what made you unhappy with their service. In a free market economy, if consumers all take their business where the terms are favorable, supply and demand would force the banks to compete for consumers' business. "To avoid going on and on in the comments I'm going to add this point that seems to be missing from the other answers. ""Banks often offer me deals while negotiating to open an account (since they are under high pressure to open an account)""   Would these happen to be the regionally advertised account opening deals like a $200 new checking account bonus if you deposit at least $x and leave it for at least 90 days?  This kind of deal is not unique to you.  This is not offered to you because of your unique negotiating ability. You need to understand the authority of the person you're dealing with.  Products are designed in the corporate arm of the bank.  Once a product is ready, it's rolled out to branches to be sold; sometimes with some fancy sign-up bonus.  A checking account is a product, just like an iPhone.  Apple took the headphone jack out of the iPhone 7, no amount of negotiating with the Genius at the Apple store will put it back for you. Vote with your wallet, show the bank you're unhappy by leaving." "I would hold off on making that threat (closing your account). First, because as others have said, it's not likely to help. And second, assuming you're willing to make good on that threat, you should only play that card as a final absolute last resort, because if it fails, and you close your account, there is little to nothing else you can try to get what you want. First, talk one-on-one with a personal banker at your local BA branch. You might be surprised at how helpful they can be. Next, try talking to customer service on the phone. After that, you might try sending a letter to corporate HQ. A lot depends on the particular ""feature"" you are talking about and why they removed it. It could be that 1) the bank finds the feature is just too costly provide for free, 2) there may be a technical reason why they can no longer provide it, 3) it could be as simple as that few to none of their customers (excluding you) are actually using the feature, or 4) it could be that due to changing regulation, or market forces, no bank is offering that feature anymore. Also, while they may not care specifically about your business, the local branch has an incentive to not drive customers away if it can be reasonably avoided." "From the bank's perspective, they are offering a service and within their rights to charge appropriately for that service. Depending on the size of their operation, they may have considerable overhead costs that they need to recoup one way or another to continue operating (profitably, they hope). Traditionally, banks would encourage you to save with them by offering interest growth on your deposits. Meanwhile they would invest your (and all of their customer's) funds in securities or loans to other patrons that they anticipate will generate income for them at a faster rate than the interest they pay back to you. These days however, this overly simplified model is relatively insignificant in consumer banking. Instead, they've found they can make a lot more profit by simply charging fees for the handling of your funds, and when they want to loan money to consumers they just borrow from a central bank. What this means is that the size of your balance (unless abnormally huge) is of little interest to a branch manager - it doesn't generate revenue for them much faster than a tiny balance with the same number of transactions would. To put it simply, they can live without you, and your threatening to leave, even if you follow through, is barely going to do anything to their bottom line. They will let you. If you DO have an abnormally huge balance, and it's all in a simple checking or savings account, then it might make them pause for thought. But if that's true then frankly you're doing banking wrong and should move those funds somewhere where they can work harder for you in terms of growth. They might even suggest so themselves and direct you to one of their own ""personal wealth managers""."
Your credit score is definitely affected by the age of your credit accounts, so if you frequently close one card and open another new one, you're adversely affecting the overall average age of accounts.  This is something to consider and whether it is worth what you're trying to achieve. Sometimes, if you're a good customer and are insistent enough, you can simply call your credit card company and use the threat of closing your account in favor of another card that offers something attractive to get your current bank to sweeten its incentives to keep your business.  I know many people who've done this with real success, and they spare themselves the hassle of obtaining a new card and suffering the short term consequences on their credit report.  This might be an avenue worth trying before you just close the account and move on. I hope this helps. Good luck! "As far as the banker himself goes, it's a customer service issue.  WF is not going to tell you about their internal discipline (or oughtn't, anyway), other than potentially to confirm that the banker does or does not still work there; that's the closest they should get to telling you about it.  I'm a (very) former retail manager, and that's absolutely the most I'd ever do in a case like this; and trust me, even with good customer service reps, you get requests to fire someone a lot, sometimes valid, sometimes not. You did the correct thing from your end: you brought the issue to their attention.  Despite the quota, it's (hopefully) not permitted to sign people up without their permission (since that's illegal!), and I can say that in my retail experience, with these promotions with great incentive to cheat in this manner, one of the main things our loss prevention department did was to monitor data to see if people were illicitly signing people up for cards or otherwise cheating the system.  That could be a very bad thing from a customer service point of view and from a legal point of view. What you should have done (or possibly did, but it's not clear in your post) is, after you reported the issue, asked for a re-contact on a particular date in the future - not ""after you've looked into it"", but ""Next friday I would like to get a call from you to discuss the resolution.""  Again, they're not going to tell you the discipline, but they should tell you at least that they've investigated it and will make sure it doesn't happen again, or similar.  It's possible they will want more information from you at this point, and this is a useful way to make sure that request doesn't fall off of their plate.  They should be able to, at least, tell you if there was a perceived issue on their end - it might be something meaningless to you, like ""He thought you said to sign up"", or something more descriptive, like ""He pushed the button to send you a notice, but our computer system screwed that up and made it an application"".  You never know these days how easy it is to screw these things up. Now, they certainly should have fixed the issues on your end.  Hopefully they did whatever you needed them to do banking-wise, or else you withdrew your money and went somewhere else.  If not, follow up with that supervisor's supervisor, or go up a level or two to a regional director or equivalent.  They may not be able to cancel the card for you, but the other banking-related things they certainly should fix.  The card you probably just have to cancel and be done with. As far as the misuse of personal information, one thing I'd consider doing is placing a freeze on your credit report.  Then this could never have happened - you would have to lift it to have your report pulled to be given the card.  This is not free, though, so consider this before doing this." JohnFx is right: banks hate visits and attention from the regulator (both positive and negative). I would not threaten to file, just file away and let them get in contact with you. The local branch is stalling you. Do not play their game. Since you already went through the first level of support (local branch, phone support), get the bank ombudsman contact and file a complain. It is a major bank, most of the time getting a high level complain will be routed from the upside down through their structure, and hit them. Remember I said they are stalling you? Probably something went wrong, and they are buying time to try and fix it. Also it is worth noting that the ombudsman is usually a line of support above the phone customer support. If going through the ombudsman does not work and/or if you are not willing to wait anymore, file a complain with the government central bank, or similiar institution (trying to be broad here, even if you tagged USA - JohnFx has the link in his answer for the USA's regulator). You can even file a small claims lawsuit, though I do not know the cost of doing it in the USA (in my country small claims court is free for private citizens). Do not report your money as stolen; banks are bureaucratic institutions by nature, and they can silver tongue out of this claim. I am not a lawyer, but the big thing to consider would be how you would split the money should either of you decide you want to close the account (or, at least her/his portion of the account).  I suspect you'd also need to determine how to split the capital gains/losses for tax purposes.  I can't really see any benefit to a joint account, unless you needed her money to qualify for some of the lower cost funds, and even then the difference in cost would be fairly low, much lower than the cost of having to potentially hire a lawyer to sort out all the questions. "Bank of America has been selling off their local branches to smaller banks in recent years.  Here are a few news stories related to this: Along with the branch buildings, the local customers' savings and checking accounts are sold to the new bank.  It is interesting that you were told that your savings account is being sold, but that your checking account will remain with BofA.  I guess it depends on the terms of the particular sale. Here are your options, as I see it: Let the savings account move to the new bank, and see what the new terms are like.  You might actually like the new bank.  If you don't, you can shop around and close your account at the new bank after it has been created. Close your account now, before the move.  If you have a different bank you'd like to move to, there is no need to wait. Since your checking account is apparently staying with BofA, you could move all your money from your savings account to your checking account, closing your savings account.  Then after ""mid August"" when the local branch switches to the new bank and everyone else's savings account has moved, you can call up BofA and tell them you want to move some of the money from your checking account into a new savings account. If you really have your heart set on staying with BofA, option 3 looks like a good, easy choice. To address your other concerns: Bank of America is a big credit card company, so I doubt that your credit card is being sold off.  Your credit card account should stay as-is.  Even if your savings account and checking account are at a different bank, there is no need to switch credit cards. Your savings and checking accounts have nothing to do with your credit report or score, so there is no concern there.  If you end up wanting to switch to a new credit card with a different bank, there are minor hits to your credit score involved with applying for a new card and closing your current card, but if I were you I would not worry about your credit score in this.  Switch credit cards if you want a change, and keep your credit card if you don't." "They close accounts to render them inoperative.  They never delete accounts because they want to retain the data to inform any future decision to give you credit.     Also, 99% of the time, if a customer demands their account be deleted, it's because of adverse credit marks and the angry customer wants this accurate information to stop burning their credit report. The answer in this case absolutely must be ""heck, no!""  That pretty much precludes any valid reason to delete an account.  As such, their business systems are not built in a way to make account deletion really possible. Even if you got a job with the company's data-processing department and had direct query/write accesses to the databases, you would find it technically inachievable to surgically remove the specific data (without risking serious damage to the entire DB).  And it would still be in transaction logs, so not gone forever.   Another reason to keep your account alive is to give you online access to statements.  After all, the IRS can audit you 5 years after the fact, so it's real nice to be able to go back that far.  Most places the statue of limitations is 6-7 years, so again, defending yourself in a lawsuit, here's raw data from an independent third party that you couldn't have faked.  Strictly from a customer service POV, that means you can self-serve on requests like that, instead of having to involve expensive staff time.     I totally get the annoyance of having yet another login/password you don't want to have flapping out there in the breeze potentially exposed to a cracker... but given that the account is closed, it's probably not going to cause you much trouble.  If anything, change the password to one outside your normal choices, perhaps even one you don't know (retain). As long as you retain the email you have tied to the account, you can always reset the password on the off chance you ever need to get back in.   Speaking of that, don't rely on your ISP's (me@rr.net or me@att.net or me@xfinity.com), get a Gmail account. I have a dedicated gmail account just for stuff like that." You should ask a customer service rep how much you'll net if you close the account. There will probably be a hefty surrender fee. What you get back shouldn't be taxable as its a return of your own money, not a gain. Close your card, now. Let your credit card provider / bank know about the situation. Never, ever ever, give out your password. Not to a friend, not to your bank and not even to your cat. Banks make money by charging fees on products and charging interest on loans. If you keep close to a $0 average balance in your account, and they aren't charging you any fees, then yes, your account is not profitable for them. That's ok. It's not costing them much to keep you as a customer, and some day you may start keeping a balance with them or apply for a loan. The bank is taking a chance that you will continue to be a loyal customer and will one day become profitable for them. Just be on the lookout for a change in their fee structure. Sometimes banks drop customers or start charging fees in cases like yours. "This is unfortunately the truth, and I spend a lot of time with my clients trying to help them through this process.  One of the key metrics that banks judge themselves on is ""products per household.""  The more things you have attached to them, the less likely you are to leave, and they deliberately tie you in with more and more services, e.g. direct deposit, billpay, debit cards, credit cards, etc.  If you want to switch but are held back by the daunting task of all the stuff you need to do, it's easier than most people think, and bankers at those smaller banks who are getting your accounts should be more than happy to do about 80% of the work for you.  *The other 20% can only be done by you personally due to privacy laws, but your banker can guide you through that too.  A prime example:  A customer of mine wanted to switch, but he didn't want to go to the old bank to actually wait in line and go through with the nonsense of actually closing the account. I see that anxiety over confrontation a lot, by the way.  So I have saved on my desktop a form letter is a simple request by the customer to close their account at 2B2F bank.  They sign it, I notarize it, and send it off to the branch.  The branch of receipt has to close the account per the request.  Before we send that letter, we get everything set up with the new bank, draw the old one down to $10 or so, and give instructions to the old bank to remit a check payable to the customer and mail it to me.  Then the old account is closed, and I just deposit that nominal amount into the customer's account.  The customer literally never has to set foot in the old bank again.   The unfortunate thing is that not everyone knows that these kinds of things are even possible: that your banker should help you with this stuff, or that you can do pretty much everything remotely.  Plus, if you look at the smaller banks and CUs these days, they have eliminated the need or ubiquity (i.e. ""but their ATMs are everywhere!"") because a good bank or CU will never allow you to get charged to get your money, they will give you the direct line and email address of your branch manager, and a lot of places have mobile apps that allow you to deposit checks remotely." Disclaimer: I am not a banker nor a lawyer. I am unaware of the exact term in English, there is a process where you can ask for a reversal of a payment if it was made in error and your former employer should have made use of this. After a month though, I'm fairly sure the period of eligibility for this reversal has passed.  As far as I am aware there is no point in time where it becomes ok for you to take this money. If you wish to close the account I would advise contacting the company and obtaining their payment details so you can transfer them the money and subsequently close the account. If you are the main account holder I would try contacting your bank directly, some of them have very accommodating services for this kind of thing. You might even consider going in person if you have a local branch, this might just make communicating easier. They will probably go over your recent transactions with you to identify the fraudulent ones. You might do this first by yourself if you have an online account. Once you identify the fraudulent purchases they will probably take a week or two to investigate/process and reimburse you. But do NOT just close the account and forget about it- first off closing an account that is close to $2,000 in debt probably isn't even possible. Second, if you forgot about it for a long time and just let you credit take a hit you could end up really paying for it(in the form of higher interest payments) later in life when you try to get anything financed like car or house or even student loans for college. And make no mistake that can amount to *maaany* thousands of dollars more than you would otherwise pay over the course of a loan. So don't damage your credit if you can avoid it. Long story short, banks have special departments to handle this kind of thing, so work with your bank. See how that goes, if you run into hangups you may need to bring your parents into the loop. Good luck! I had a similar situation a while ago, and here's what I learned: What are our options here to ensure that this company can't retry to take our money again via ACH? Close existing account and create a new one that has different account number? Yes. As a temporary solution keep ~$0 balance in the account so that their request for $840 can't be fulfilled? However, would our bank incur any fees because of insufficient funds each time the other company tries to charge us again? Bad idea. You may incur penalties for returned payment, or the bank may honor the payment and charge you overdraft fees. Provide to our bank the service termination notice that proves that we   are not in business with the other company anymore and effectively   block them. However, termination notice has only our signature Bank doesn't care. ACH withdrawal is akin to a check. The assumption is that the other side has entitlement. You can put stop payment once its processed and try to reverse it claiming fraud, but the end result will be #1: you'll end up getting a new account set up, while they try to recover the money. This is one of the reasons I'm reluctant allowing standing ACH authorizations any more. Generally, the American banking system is very much geared against the consumers, and in many ways is very retarded. In a more advanced countries (which is almost any other country than the US), the standing withdrawal authorization goes through your bank and can be revoked. No Drawbacks. One day, the bank might decide to kick you out. Typically, they send you a letter and warn that they will close it if it stays unused, and then you have to decide if you move some money into it or have it cancelled. I'd suggest you contact the Office of the Controller of Currency, who regulates BOA and file a complaint. This whole deal seems shady.  According to the OCC FAQ, the fact that they closed the account is in their prerogative. However, I would think they are obligated to quickly return your funds, but can't find anything specific to that. The banks are very sensitive to having complaints filed against them, so if nothing else this may encourage them to be more helpful, even if your complaint isn't actionable. OCC Complaint Process. This topic on how long a bank can hold a large deposit before making funds available may also be helpful.