A lawsuit was recently filed against Bank of America by a California consumer who claims the bank confiscated the cash rewards earned by her with her BofA credit card when the bank chose to close her account.

The consumer, Christy Ngo, says in the lawsuit that last September her debit card stopped working because the bank told her they had frozen her account and would close her checking and savings account by the end of the month. Preemptively, she withdrew all the money. How these account closings are related to her losing her accumulated credit card rewards is not explained in the lawsuit. We questioned her lawyers directly about that too, but they did not respond. And BofA declined to comment about the case to another media outlet.

For simplicity sake, let’s assume that the bank closed her credit card as well. Certainly the bank has a right to do that. But why didn’t they give her whatever amount of cash back she had already earned on her cards (assuming she had paid off her balance)?

*MOUSE PRINT:

The terms and conditions statement of BofA’s current “cash rewards” credit cards says that any unredeemed cash rewards at the time of closure, whether the closing was voluntary or not, would be forfeited.

Bank of America is not alone including fine print in their credit card agreements like this. Recently, after a TV reporter’s 98-year-old mother passed away, a California bank did the same thing. See story.

Most people don’t read the fine print of credit card agreements, and if they did, would any accountholder even remember this restriction perhaps years later? And is it fair for banks, even with proper disclosure, to confiscate already earned cash back that had not been redeemed rather than to automatically refund it?