Bank of America’s “Bill Pay” Was a Bait-and-Switch That Destroyed a Man’s Credit

EvilCorporations.com • Swift v. Bank of America, N.A. — Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny County, PA • 13 min read

The Non-Financial Ledger: What a Number on a Credit Report Actually Costs

Patrick Swift did everything right. He got a car loan. He went to the bank’s website. He set up autopay. He authorized a direct debit from his external Fidelity account. Every month, he saw statements confirming a debit had gone through. Every month, the statement told him he was enrolled in recurring payment. Every month, the number next to “past due” read $0.00.

He trusted the bank. That’s the part that stings most: he trusted the system the bank built and sold him on, and the system was lying to him for almost two years. From August 2022 through March 2024, Bank of America sent Swift statements that showed payments being made. Those payments were not being made. The autopay had been cancelled. The bank knew. The statements kept lying.

He found out on October 3, 2024, through a third-party credit app on his phone. His credit score had dropped nearly 100 points overnight. His car loan had been charged off. He had no warning, no letter, no phone call in advance. The first contact from Bank of America was a vague voicemail the day before; no explanation of what was coming.

What followed is the kind of bureaucratic hell that is designed, whether intentionally or not, to exhaust people until they give up. Debt collectors started calling. A bank he had no dispute with closed his credit card because his credit profile had collapsed. Bank of America cut his credit limit from $20,000 to $1,500. He cannot transfer the title on his own vehicle because Bank of America holds it as a lienholder on a loan they charged off. He cannot refinance his home. He spent hours filing complaints with credit bureaus and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Then Bank of America told him a story about Fidelity Investments reversing 12 payments. His Fidelity records say that never happened. Then their attorneys told a different story: Fidelity reversed 15 payments. His Fidelity records say that never happened either. The payments were never made in the first place. Bank of America never collected them. There was nothing to reverse.

Swift suffered “considerable stress and emotional turmoil,” according to the complaint filed on his behalf. That phrase is legal language doing heavy lifting over something much more personal: a person who did nothing wrong, who followed every step, who checked his statements faithfully, whose credit history and financial future were dismantled by a bank that hid the rules, sent false statements, then offered two fabricated explanations when caught.

Legal Receipts: The Specific Lies, in Their Own Words

The complaint filed March 5, 2025 by East End Trial Group LLC in Pittsburgh contains direct quotes and documented facts from Bank of America’s own communications. Every quote below comes verbatim from that filing.

“Defendant fails to disclose that after agreeing to automatically debit consumers’ financial accounts to satisfy their recurring loan repayment obligations, Defendant will cancel consumers’ enrollment in Bill Pay unless they open and maintain active Bank of America credit card, checking, or savings accounts that generate additional fees for Defendant.”

“Defendant emailed Plaintiff on June 9, 2022 and June 11, 2022, both times after 10:00 PM, notifying Plaintiff that Defendant had cancelled Plaintiff’s enrollment in Bill Pay because of ‘changes in the status of [Plaintiff’s] account.'”

“Defendant concealed Plaintiff’s cancellation by providing Plaintiff with monthly statements which misrepresented that Defendant debited $646.64 from Plaintiff’s Fidelity account, that Plaintiff had an amount past due of $0.00, and that Plaintiff was making progress paying off his loan.”

“Defendant’s Resolution Specialist for Regulatory Complaints, Valerie Hernandez, called Plaintiff and explained that Fidelity contacted Defendant in September 2024 and requested that Defendant reverse 12 payments of $646.64 because Plaintiff had reported those payments to Fidelity as fraudulent. Plaintiff never reported the payments as fraudulent.”

“Defendant’s counsel explained that, as of September 2024, Fidelity ‘no longer honored’ 15 payments (not 12) that Plaintiff had made to Defendant on his car loan. Defendant’s counsel explained these 15 payments were therefore reversed… Plaintiff’s Fidelity records confirm that Defendant never transferred an amount equal to 15 payments back to Plaintiff’s Fidelity account in September 2024. Plaintiff’s Fidelity records confirm Defendant never debited the 15 payments in the first place.”

Societal Impact Mapping: Who Else Gets Hurt

Public Health: Financial Stress as a Medical Condition

The harm in this case is fully documented: a person’s financial system dismantled over nearly two years without their knowledge. The documented impacts on Swift extend beyond money.

• Credit score destruction approaching 100 points: A single derogatory charge-off, especially one appearing without warning, can push a borrower out of qualification thresholds for housing, employment background checks, and emergency credit lines. Swift’s complaint documents this as a direct result of Bank of America’s cancellation and false statements.
• Debt collector harassment: Once a loan is charged off, collection activity begins. Swift documented being harassed by debt collectors, a pattern that research links to elevated cortisol levels, sleep disruption, anxiety, and avoidance behavior that leads to further financial deterioration.
• Blocked vehicle title transfer: Swift cannot complete a title transfer on his own vehicle because Bank of America holds the title as lienholder on a charged-off loan. This creates practical immobility: the inability to sell, trade, or fully own property that is already paid for in the borrower’s mind.
• Documented emotional turmoil: The complaint explicitly lists “considerable stress and emotional turmoil dealing with the fallout of Defendant’s misconduct” as a harm suffered. This is not a generic claim; it is anchored to hours spent filing complaints with Bank of America, the CFPB, and multiple credit reporting agencies.
• Blocked access to refinancing: With a deteriorated credit profile, Swift’s ability to refinance his home is impaired. For working and middle-class homeowners, refinancing access directly affects housing stability, emergency liquidity, and long-term wealth accumulation.

Economic Inequality: Autopay Was Supposed to Level the Playing Field

Autopay programs like Bill Pay exist precisely because people are busy, because financial management takes time and cognitive bandwidth that not everyone has equally. Bank of America’s program, as alleged, transformed that leveling tool into a mechanism for extracting fees and cross-selling accounts from people who trusted the system.

• The undisclosed eligibility requirement functions as a loyalty tax: Customers who bank exclusively with Bank of America face no disruption. Customers like Swift, who use external accounts at institutions like Fidelity, are silently penalized. The people most likely to use external accounts are those seeking better interest rates or fewer fees elsewhere: precisely the people already trying to protect themselves from predatory banking.
• Credit score damage compounds across time for lower-income borrowers: A charge-off on a record can affect employment screening, apartment applications, and insurance premiums for years. The financial penalty of one bank’s undisclosed rule change radiates outward into other institutions and other sectors of a person’s economic life.
• Another bank closed Swift’s credit card due to his deteriorated credit score: This is the cascade effect. Bank of America’s action did not stay within Bank of America. A third-party institution saw the damage and made an independent adverse decision. One bank’s misconduct triggers financial exclusion at institutions that had no involvement in the original wrong.
• The class includes at minimum 40 Pennsylvania residents who experienced the same undisclosed cancellation: The complaint’s conservative lower bound of 40 class members represents 40 separate households that received the same false statements, the same vague late-night cancellation emails, and potentially the same downstream credit damage, each fighting Bank of America individually without the knowledge that hundreds of others share their exact experience.
• A related California case, Chen v. Bank of America, survived a motion to dismiss before settling in February 2025: This means Bank of America’s conduct was not a Pennsylvania-only phenomenon. Customers in at least two states experienced the same undisclosed Bill Pay eligibility requirement, pointing to a national policy decision rather than a regional processing error.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric: What Bank of America’s Scheme Is Worth

What Bank of America Told Customers vs. What It Actually Did

What Now? How to Apply Pressure and Protect Yourself

The class action is active. The attorneys who filed it are seeking all Pennsylvania residents whose Bill Pay enrollment was cancelled because they didn’t maintain an active Bank of America consumer account. Here is who is accountable and what you can do.

Accountable Parties Named in the Complaint

• Bank of America, N.A.: Defendant. Delaware corporation. The entity that operated Bill Pay, cancelled enrollments without disclosure, sent false statements, and charged off the loan. Named in the complaint and in a prior related case in the Southern District of California.
• Valerie Hernandez: Bank of America’s Resolution Specialist for Regulatory Complaints, named in the filing. Delivered the first (false) cover story to Swift on December 4, 2024.
• Bank of America’s Counsel: Delivered the second (also false) cover story in a letter dated December 17, 2024. The specific attorney is not named in the source document.
• East End Trial Group LLC (Pittsburgh, PA): Attorneys for plaintiff Patrick Swift. Lead counsel Kevin W. Tucker, with Kevin J. Abramowicz, Chandler Steiger, Stephanie Moore, Kayla Conahan, and Jessica Liu. Contact: (412) 877-5220.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Has direct jurisdiction over unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices by banks and financial service providers. Swift already filed a CFPB complaint; the CFPB tracks patterns across thousands of similar complaints and uses that data to open investigations.
• Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office: Enforces the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (UTPCPL), the exact statute at the center of this case. Accepts consumer complaints and can pursue civil action independent of any private lawsuit.
• Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC): The federal regulator for national banks, including Bank of America, N.A. Accepts complaints about national bank conduct and has the authority to require remediation and impose fines for systemic deceptive practices.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Covers deceptive advertising and unfair trade practices at the federal level. Bank of America’s marketing of Bill Pay as a free, no-conditions autopay tool, when a hidden eligibility requirement existed, falls within the FTC’s core enforcement scope.
• Credit Reporting Agencies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion): If you experienced an unexpected charge-off or a credit entry resulting from a Bank of America Bill Pay cancellation you were not notified of, you have the right to dispute that entry under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. A successful dispute can require removal of inaccurate derogatory entries.

Mutual Aid, Local Organizing, and Direct Action

• If you are in Pennsylvania and Bank of America cancelled your Bill Pay enrollment without explanation: Contact East End Trial Group LLC at (412) 877-5220 or via ktucker@eastendtrialgroup.com. You may be a class member. You do not need to have already suffered a charge-off; the class is defined around the undisclosed cancellation itself.
• Check your external account records, not your Bank of America statements: If you used Bill Pay to pay a Bank of America loan from an external account (Fidelity, Schwab, a credit union, any outside institution), pull the actual debit history from that external account and compare it to your Bank of America statements. If they do not match, you may have been subjected to the same false statement scheme described here.
• File your own CFPB complaint regardless of whether you join the lawsuit: CFPB complaints are public-facing data. The volume of complaints against a specific company on a specific issue directly influences when the bureau opens a formal investigation. Every complaint filed adds to that pressure. Visit consumerfinance.gov/complaint.
• Share this case with your local tenant, labor, or community finance organization: Credit score damage from predatory banking is a housing justice issue, a labor issue, and a community economic stability issue. Local mutual aid networks that help people understand credit disputes, navigate debt collector harassment, or access emergency credit need to know this case exists.
• If you have been harassed by debt collectors over a Bank of America charge-off: The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) sets strict rules about how, when, and how often collectors can contact you. Document every contact with date, time, and caller ID. This documentation is evidence in any subsequent legal action, including potential FDCPA claims separate from the class action.