I went online to bankofamerica.com tonight to make an electronic payment to my Dividend Miles Visa card. During the sign-in process there was a screen that announced the "New and improved" online banking system, etc etc. When I tried to make a payment the way I've always done it, I found that the biggest "improvement" is that they try hard to imply that you can't pay online from your own bank. One the account summary page, the "Pay This Card" link returns an error saying that you need a Bank of America checking or money manager account to use that function.

I spent a couple of minutes on the phone, during which I learned that there's a $5 charge to pay the bill via phone (? ?) and an even higer (though undisclosed) charge to speak to a CSR to pay the bill via phone. And again I was reminded that I could pay the bill for free online.

Being just about fed up at this point, my next decision was to send a nasty email to BofA Customer "service" to the effect that if they insist on handling more paper from me, so be it. I clicked on the "Customer Service" link, and on that page is a link with the titled "Pay from another financial institution". From there it's the same sequence of payment screens that I used to see from the account summary page.

So in the end, it's still possible to pay your DM Visa bill online, but you have to go through a more complicated sequence to accomplish it.

I was concerned that some folks may log on a day or two before the due date and think they had been had...

PS: As before, the last statement balance isn't transferred to a default selection on the payment screen. The choices are (a) today's balance, (b) the minimum payment amount, or (c) some other amount that you enter. One would think that would go under the category of "enhanced website" but I guess that's not what they had in mind...

[fixed typos (as usual)]


[This message has been edited by pdhenry (edited 09-03-2003).]