Customers grouse about losing their homes and $8 service charges. They have bones to pick about late fees, mortgage terms, rude customer service representatives, lower credit-card limits and higher interest rates.

Wrote one bank customer venting about credit card terms: "How can these corporate thugs (just out of the clear blue sky) decide to triple my rate for no reason other than greed?"

Shaky investments and rising defaults have been beaten up national banks this year. Now consumers' official grumblings against them are also on the rise.

Complaints filed with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks, rose 40 percent in the first half of the year compared with the same period a year ago. Complaints against Charlotte-based Wachovia, the Triangle's largest bank by deposits, more than doubled. Charlotte-based Bank of America fared better, with complaints rising 7 percent.

Still, Bank of America accounted for a sizable portion -- 22 percent -- of all bank complaints filed with the currency office in the first half of the year. Consumers filed 4,191 complaints against Bank of America, the country's largest consumer bank. They filed 1,214 complaints against Wachovia, or about 6 percent of all complaints.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and other federal regulators use consumer complaints to troubleshoot problems in the banking industry. Lately, the agencies have been under pressure to provide more services to consumers. Last summer the office launched a Web site, www.helpwithmybank.gov, that helps people file complaints.

Last year, the comptroller's office helped return $8.8 million in fees and other charges to customers of national banks.

A bill that's pending in Congress would streamline the griping process by creating a single toll-free phone number to accept complaints meant for any of the banking regulators -- federal or state. The Financial Consumer Hotline Act, which passed the House and is in committee in the Senate, would save consumers the hassle of figuring out which regulator to take their burdens to.

Complaints filed with the comptroller's office are public record, though information that identifies the consumer is not. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, The Charlotte Observer got a sampling of complaints filed in the first quarter against Charlotte's two banking giants.

Consumers are hopping mad

In a complaint filed in March, a North Carolina man trying to pay down his mortgage more quickly said that Wachovia wouldn't let him change his payments to twice monthly. "I work two jobs so that I can faithfully pay off this loan and one day own this house, and I resent emphatically their position," he wrote.

Another consumer, in a complaint filed in January, was upset that Bank of America didn't flag a purchase that exceeded the credit card's limit, then raised the card's interest rate to 32 percent as a penalty.

"When I called to complain and ask them why they didn't deny the charge when we hit the limit, they said they do it as a courtesy," the customer wrote. "Boy, that is great."

Bank of America is the country's largest credit-card issuer. In the first quarter, about 42 percent of the complaints against it involved credit cards, and another 34 percent involved checking accounts. Credit-card customers groused about their minimum monthly payments being raised, their credit lines being lower, and the bank tucking the changes into the fine print.

"Of course the 'Change in Terms' was snuck in with the usual bill statement gibberish; and of course was not read by myself as I am not an attorney or financial specialist," wrote one unsatisfied customer.

Next page >

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.