Reputation Management Online

No single company has had its reputation shredded quite like Bank of America over the past few years except for maybe BP, or ‘British Petroleum’ as President Obama likes to call them. Every day another story comes out over their processes around foreclosures and mortgages. Now Nevada and Arizona have filed suit against Bank of America saying it has been deceiving homeowners trying to avoid foreclosure.The worst thing to come out of the suits is the evidence from employees that is damning in the extreme and really casts Bank of America as both the villain and deliberately heartless. Foreclosure is an emotive political issue across the states. The political power of the issue arises from it being such as widespread phenomenon: everybody knows somebody who has been foreclosed and few people take to it happily. We have learned a great deal about the Sub-prime mortgage brokers and their methods and how Countrywide which was bought by BofA in 2008 got sucked into the mess through newspaper commentary and books. Although many feel that Congress and especially the President have let the companies get away with it, the local politicians and Attorney Generals are taking a much more robust view of company misdemenours.

For Bank of America, 2008, 2009, 2010 have been anni horribili. 2011 looks likely to be worse as the company reputation continues to be shredded by film, newspapers and court cases. The big question is whether they can survive with this sort of reputation fall out over the long term. They seem to have suffered the most from the reporting though Chase s chasing hard.

What is especially significant is that much of the damage has been done by their retained suppliers: property managers, mortgage servicers and foreclosure companies. What is clear is that BofA is the one that gets the bum rap!

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