Bank of the West Complaint

Bank of the West Credit card department,

We obtained a MasterCard ( MC ) charge card upon establishment of a checking account with Bank of the West ( BOW ) on - - -. Its expiration date was - - - - ). On - - -, I attempted to buy something with this card and was told the account had been closed. I had received no warning of, and there was no reason to expect, early closure. Full balance due payments were made monthly, with the last payment sent only a few days earlier. No new cards with a new expy date had been received by us as yet. On - - -, I contacted the BOW customer service number for its MC credit card problems and inquired about this, and was told that my new cards had only been mailed on - - - and I should allow - days for delivery before BOW would do anything else. No explanation for the unwarranted premature closing was given. After - days, and receiving yet no new cards, I recontacted the same BOW office, and was then told I needed to wait a full - * business* days ; and no other action would be taken. Allowing

I attempted to charge - different items with this supposedly re-opened account 's cards, and the charges were still not accepted. I therefore determined to not play further games with BOW-MC, and let the closed account remain closed even if new cards should arrive later. They never did. On - - - I received a bill on this account for payment of the final, - - charges. This was paid in full on - - -. Suspecting therecould be future problems because of the obvious slipshoddery already in evidence in their handling this matter, I noted on the check front that this was the final payment and on the back of the check that their endorsement '' constituted acknowledgment of the account being closed by the actions of the bank and credit card company, and of their liability for any further charges to the account past - - - ( in case the never-arriving new cards had been dis-placed to others and used to reopen the account as an act of identity theft ). They accepted this payment on these terms. Nonetheless, I was billed by BOW-MC in late -, - for a charge made earlier that month to that account by -. My wife had purchased some merchandise from them from time to time in the past, but closed her account with them -/-/-. This was, therefore, a spurious charge to this closed charge account, which BOW-MC allowed. I contacted customer service once again, giving all the above information, and an investigation '' was launched by them, and on - -, I received a letter acknowledging settlement of [ the ] case '' in my favor, signed by a - -. Then on or before - -, a series of after-hours robo-calls from BOW were received on my answering machine, to call them regarding a personal banking issue ''. At first I assumed they were selling something, so ignored these. But they became nightly - harassing - so I called and was told that not only did they still have the charge on the closed account, but that they considered it still open and were seeking penalties for non-payment and the matter was now with their collections department! On - - I called - - and demanded action. The calls stopped, but then on - - - I received a letter from - -, that BOW was continuing to investigate '' this matter and full of dire warnings to me, as if I were responsible for their mess. And today, - -, I received a form letter back-dated - - demanding immediate payment and threatening my credit rating ''!! BOW-MC is either awash in incompetence, or fraud.