Bank of America has a new promotion for new checking customers. You can get $75 when you open a new qualifying personal or business checking account with a $250 deposit and make a purchase with your debit card. An additional $25 is available when you make 2 online bill payments within 30 days. This $25 bill pay bonus is also available to existing checking account customers who have not made a bill payment from BofA within the last 6 months.

Here’s the $100 promotion page for new checking customers: promo.bankofamerica.com/getmore100. Enter offer code WIWGASINT for personal account or SBECASH for business account.

And here’s the $25 promotion page for bill pay: billpayoffer.bankofamerica.com.

Some of the important small print to qualify for the $75 includes:

You get $75 when you open (1) qualifying new checking account with an opening balance of $250 during the eligibility period and (2) use your debit card for the new checking account to pay for a purchase from a merchant within 30 days after opening the new account.

This is a special limited time offer available to new customers who open an eligible new personal or business checking account online or in one of our banking centers.

Offer does not apply to second or multiple accounts.

A new customer is a person who is not currently a signer and who was not a signer within the last 6 months on a Bank of America checking account.

Important small print for the $25 bonus includes:

For new customers: To get the additional $25, use the online bill payment service to pay two bills from your new checking account within 30 days after opening the account.

For existing customers who have not made a bill payment with Bank of America Online Banking within the last 6 months: Customers will get $25 if they use the Online bill payment service to pay two bills from their checking account within 30 days.

Credit for this find goes to SlickDeals member Iqleon who mentioned this promo in this SD thread.

Hard Credit Pull

There are some things to note regarding BofA. First, many have reported that BofA does a hard credit inquiry on your first checking account. A reader noted in a previous BofA post that he received two pulls when he did this promo in early 2008. A hard credit inquiry can ding your credit score a little for a few months.

Receiving the Bonus

It can take patience and persistence to receive the bonuses. The bonuses that I’ve received only came after reminding them using their online message system. Others have had to make many calls to a banking rep. Not everyone has been successful.

Old and New Fees

According to the online application page, MyAccess Checking is “free with no direct deposit requirement. No minimum balance required.” Make sure you keep an eye on your statements to make sure no fees start popping up. You might want to make a copy of the application where it states that the MyAccess Checking will be free.

BofA charges for things that you might expect are free. For example, if you make an outgoing ACH transfer, there’s a $3 charge (see BofA page).

BofA recently notified customers of account changes which include new fees. Here’s their information page on this. MyAccess Checking monthly fee is going up to $8.95 per month starting June 5th if you don’t maintain a $1,500 balance or if you don’t have direct deposit. However, here are the exclusions listed:

Fee changes do not apply to customers who opened a free MyAccess Checking account during specific time periods at Bankofamerica.com: Customers in GA and TX after 11/1/2006; and customers in any state after 4/20/2007.

Customer Service

There have been many reports of bad customer service at BofA. Here’s an interesting one that was was posted at the Consumerist last year.

Other Bank Bonuses

Other Bank of America bonuses can be viewed in my Bank of America deals page. The last BofA bonus that I posted on was another $75 checking bonus. Unlike this new one, it required an initial deposit of $500 in a checking account rather than $250.

To find other bonus deals, please refer to my bank bonus page which has all of my recent bank bonus posts.