Banking: BofA sued after repossession error

The bank has apologised, both privately and publicly to Miss Ianlelli but, several months on, she has decided to sue the bank, not least for the fact that the stress of the events, including the taking of her Blue Macaw parrot, resulted in medical treatment.

She says that the bank staff were unhelpful and that she was made to go to the contractors' offices to collect the bird she has had for ten years.

To be fair to BofA, it sounds as if the repossession itself followed standard operating procedure and went smoothly - as it should when there is no-one home and pets are found.

And in such circumstances, dispossessed will always consider bank staff unhelpful - after all, the only resolution that will satisfy them is for their home to be restored to them.

So the primary complaint appears to be the fully justifiable one as to how the bank could mistakenly order a repossession of a house where the borrower was not in default.

It suggests that there is a break in systems - otherwise the demand letters and all other subsequent documents would be originated within a sequential process calling on the same identification data. If that were so, then a series of notices and other documents would have been sent to the borrower.

That is not something BoA wants to hear: with the quality of systems at major US banks coming under scrutiny, any failure will receive more attention than usual.