It's true: Bank of America refunded me $200 in fees, cut the rate on my home equity line of credit, AND gave me a personal apology.
Wow.
As a journalist who has covered personal finance issues, I consider myself reasonably savvy, but I am still stunned by my experience.
My story in brief: I have had a Bank of America home equity line of credit for a couple of years, which I've never used. But my husband and I are about to embark on a kitchen renovation project, so I decided to comparison shop before drawing on this line of credit.
Our rate at Bank of America was prime minus 3/4 point, plus we were paying $50/year in fees (despite the fact that we have excellent credit and are long-time Bank of America customers). I learned that Charles Schwab offers prime minus 1 point, with no fees at all. I decided to call Bank of America and see if they'd match Schwab's rate.
The Bank of America rep said no; I asked her to speak to a manager, explaining that I'd switch to Schwab if Bank of America didn't improve their offer. She put me on hold for quite a while and came back with the same answer. No.
I was annoyed and decided to start the paperwork at Schwab.
Then I saw this posting on The Consumerist, the Gawker Media blog that covers consumer issues.

"A former Bank of America employee provides these email addresses and says they're the people to complain to about getting fee'd to death (or any other customer service related issue you want to escalate)....Don't forget that people have had good success with writing letters to the Bank of America CEO. "

I decided to send an email to the woman whom the Consumerist described as the head of "national customer experience." Three hours later, I came home to a voice mail from "Christie" at Bank of America. This was on Friday December 21.
On Monday morning, we spoke, and Christie told me that the home equity of line credit customers haven't had to pay the $50 fee for a while, so my fee would be waived here on, and that the Bank would match Schwab's rate too. Also, they had an introductory offer which had just expired two weeks ago (funny, how the rep I spoke to never bothered to mention that to me): it offered 1.5 point lower than whatever rate we'd had with Bank of America until March 2008. As a courtesy, Bank of America would extend that to me, which would give me a rate of prime minus 2.5 points until March 2008.
Christie said she'd spoken to the rep and informed her of the error of her ways, but I pointed out that it wasn't just the rep--it also was her manager. Christie apologized sincerely and said if I wanted, she'd have the rep call me and apologize too. I didn't think that was necessary.
But I told her I'd appreciate it if Bank of America would refund me the annual fees I've been paying since the Bank has stopped charging customers that fee. She agreed.
She called me back late that afternoon--Christmas Eve. The total amounts to $200 (four years of unnecessary fees!) and it will be credited to my account by Wednesday.
Some might say that the lesson here is the importance of research (if I'd kept abreast of B of A's various promotions, I would have known that I was overpaying in fees). Others might talk about how the banks are overcharging. But I think this also proves the power of the consumer in the internet age. Many thanks to The Consumerist. Stumble It!

More data to back up my belief that the lesson of the Jamie Lynn Spears story is the failure of "abstinence education" in this country.
According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the teen birth rate was 41.9 births per 1,000 females aged 15-19, the first increase in fifteen years. At the same time, the federal government spent more than 1.5 billion dollars on abstinence education since Bush took off.
And here's more from an article by earthtimes.org:

Cash-strapped states are required to match the federal spending, meaning they often have no money left over for more effective sex education. The result is that "fewer than half of public schools in the US now offer information on how to obtain birth control, and only a third include discussion of abortion and sexual orientation in their curricula," according to Planned Parenthood.

Research has shown....some 88 per cent of teens who pledge to keep their virginity in school still engage in premarital sex but are less likely to use contraceptives than other kids.

I'll give Bill Albert, deputy director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, the last word. "That Spears was shocked that she was pregnant suggests that she wasn't ready to have sex...Anyone who has sex can get pregnant, and if you don't know that, you probably shouldn't be having sex. Zoey 101 needs sex education 101."
Stumble It!

I don't normally pay much attention to celebrity news, but in my corner of suburbia, all parents are talking about is 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy.

Yesterday, during a doctor's appointment, my doctor told me the news, then proceeded to launch into a 10-minute monologue about what an awful mother the Spears daughters must have, and how would she (my doctor) ever explain this news to her own tween daughter.

Then, this morning, at the holiday concert at my daughter's elementary school, I overheard the a bunch of PTA moms opining.

"Nickelodeon should fire her!"

"She is supposed to be a role model!"

"What an awful mother!"
And so on.

As the mother of two daughters, age 11 and 6, I worry as much as the next about the influence of pop culture. And I am full aware that judging others' parenting skills seems to have become a national pastime.

But, if we're going to discuss this pregnancy for more than five minutes, we should look at the larger issues it raises. Before I explain:

first read what Jamie Lynn Spears said about her and her 18-year-old boyfriend's reaction to her pregnancy:

"It was a shock for both of us, so unexpected...I was in complete and total shock, and so was he."

And now pay attention to her mother's comment:

"I didn't believe it because Jamie Lynn's always been so conscientious. She's never late for her curfew.."

You could argue that this shows Mama Spears' woefully inadequate parenting skills--her failure to teach her daughter the basic facts about unprotected sex. (Bonnie Fuller already did that.)

But I'd also argue that it points up the larger failure of abstinence education, which has been promulgated by the religious right. I have no idea if the church that Jamie Lynn met her boyfriend at is a proponent of abstinence education. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was and if mama Spears believed in the ignorance-is-bliss approach too.

After all, Mama Spears apparently had a parenting book due out soon, to be published by a "Christian" inspirational publisher. (Too bad that's on hold now. Would have made for some fun reading.)

Keeping kids ignorant about sex and birth control--and refusing only to talk about abstinence--does not prevent teen pregnancy or sexual activity. There is quite a bit of academic research showing that.

Now there may be an anecdote too. Stumble It!

A Centers for Disease Control-sponsored study of scientific research found that minors handled in the adult court system were 33.7 percent more likely to be rearrested than youths handled in the juvenile justice system.
In recent years, there has been a move to prosecute children as adults. But we're now beginning to see the fall out of this get-tough policy. Children as young as 13 and 14 have received life sentences without the possibility of parole and are serving sentences in adult prisons. (Disclosure: I did some freelance work for the organization that released that research.)
The U.S. is alone in its tough treatment of juvenile defendants. One hopes that this study will help show there is a good reason why no one else is following the U.S. example.

"We are unique in this country, and we don't get good results because of it," said state Rep. Alice Bordsen, an Alamance County Democrat. "If we did get good results, then everyone would be clamoring to be like us. But they're not." Stumble It!