Problems Persist on the BofA Website for a Fourth Day

Bank of America’s homepage and other sections of its website went down again Tuesday morning, in a continuation of website problems that began last Friday and occurred intermittently throughout the weekend.

When the homepage first went down, Bank of America posted a notice saying the page was “temporarily unavailable,” as we reported. Now that’s been changed to read “We’re sorry, our site is running slowly.”

Either way, the effect appears to be the same. Bank customers may not be able to access their accounts online, according to the warning message. Customers may have to wait until the end of the day to use online banking.

“We’re actively working to resolve these issues. You may wish to defer your transaction until a non-peak time,” the bank says on its homepage.

Spokespeople with the bank did not immediately return calls or emails seeking more information.

The problems began Friday, the day after Bank of America announced it would begin charging customers $5 a month if they use their debit cards to make purchases. The timing made some people in the blogosphere question whether the website may have been attacked by hackers.

So far no hackers have taken credit for the bank’s website woes.

The website is just one of many issues facing the nation’s largest bank at the moment. The bank’s decision to start charging debt card users a $5 monthly fee has been roundly criticized, and those complaints rose all the way to the White House last night when President Obama questioned them in an interview with ABC News.

Bank of America also has been hit with expensive lawsuits, damage to its balance sheet and months of bad publicity by its decision to buy Countrywide Financial, a major subprime lender during the mortgage boom that has been accused of using corrupt and deceptive practices to sell loans.

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Updated 10/4/11 at 1:40 pm:

Bank of America spokesperson Tara Burke responded: “Online banking is largely operating normally. It’s not hacking, it’s not denial of service, or anything like that. We don’t break out the root cause, we’re assessing the situation.”

Burke says most sections of the site should be back up and running later today.