Bank Of America is supposed to be the organization helping small business, and especially black small businesses, during The Pandemic. Instead, B of A has done a good job acting like it just wants big white firms to get government help, and not small black organizations. In the case of my Zennie62Media, I posted this complaint about Bank Of America and how it was making up its own rules regarding PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loan:
Bank Of America is not being a good actor in the Payroll Protection Program. In the case of Zennie62Media and its rare-for-a-black-owned-firm-because-Bank-Of-America-wasn’t-trying-to-go-and recruit us PPP Loan of a mere $23,750 (compared to the average PPP loan size of $113,000), the bank, after months of elapsed time starting May 4, 2020, is now claiming that my firm received a completed Economic Injury Disaster Loan of $10,000, before the PPP program loan.
Complete bullcrap.
While the EIDL was applied for twice, the SBA never confirmed the loan, let alone completed the process to register it. I even called SBA about the matter, only to be faced with a constantly clogged phone system, and a computer website who’s webpage literally reset itself due to what appears to be some malfunctioning JavaScript code, thus dumping the info I inputed. And that this was happening during the initial panic surrounding The Pandemic made the entire process painful, even though I was determined to come away with what my firm needed: a PPP Loan sized to our needs.
The way the Bank of America / SBA PPP Application was written, one could mark that they were eligible to receive an EIDL. Indeed, the rule language back then during the late part of the month of March 2020 was that the EIDL was also for the Coronavirus problem. So, merging both was both logical and it seemed expected by the Small Business Administration.
Now, Bank of America said I had to have Zennie62Media pay back the $10,000 portion because the bank believes, and with zero proof because there is none, that I already got the $10,000. No.
The Bank of America representative I called agreed that they did not handle PPP loan processing properly the first time, out. Perhaps as a result of my conversation, or the first blog post, or both, Bank of America posted these updated rules:
The Economic Aid Act repealed the deduction of EIDL Advances from loan forgiveness amounts. According to guidance from the SBA:
The SBA will no longer deduct EIDL Advances from forgiveness amounts remitted to lenders, effective December 29, 2020
For those loans where SBA has already deducted an EIDL Advance from a forgiveness remittance submitted to a lender, the SBA will automatically remit a reconciliation payment to that lender for the previously-deducted EIDL Advance amount, plus interest through the remittance date
Bank of America will apply any reconciliation funds received from the SBA due to a previously-deducted EIDL Advance to the balance of the impacted PPP loan and communicate updated balance and payment information to the client
To the extent you have repaid your outstanding PPP, which included a previously-deducted EIDL Advance amount, Bank of America will refund you this amount upon receipt of reconciliation funds received from the SBA
Now, Bank of America is supposed to tell me what my “second draw’ limit is. But they have not done that, and when I press the link to a page that’s suppose to give me information on the status of my PPP, I get this:
Unable to proceed.
We are sorry, we can not complete your request at this time. If you think you received this message in error, try the link provided in your email again.
This is crazytown. It should not be.
Stay tuned.