I am noticing a trend here . . .
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I am noticing a trend here . . .
| Wed, 03-22-2006 - 10:14pm |
I have been reading over some of the posts and am noticing a trend. There seems to be a lot of "mistakes" made by financial institutions that cause a lot of grief for people trying hard to organize everything. So here is my quesiton:
What is the worst screw up has ever happened to you? How long did it take you to resolve it (if got resolved)? How did if affect you in the long run?
I am just curious!
Becky

I guess I could start, LOL.
When I was 12, my mom took me to open a child savings account. Obviously she needed to sign me up because I was 12.
Fast forward to 18. I get a notice saying telling me I know have to choose another account because I am no longer eligible for the no fee child account. So in I go, sit down with a rep and pick out my new account (with the monthly fee of course!!!). Again things go along fine.
First year University, I get my loan and deposit it into my account. I had calculated how much needed to be in there to cover car insurance for 6 months. Two months later I get a statement from my car insurance telling me that my payment bounced and because of my age they are cancelling my insurace. I freaked out. Got my bank statement and noticed all large withdrawal. I went into talk to the rep who promptly informed me (none to nicely) that they were my mothers mortgage payments. Since her account was low ( a screw up on her part that month), they pulled out of mine. WHAT??????????? I freaked out and told them that it was MY account and NOT my mothers and I want the money back plus the NSF fees, to which the snooty lady essentially told me too bad it was a joint account. I argued with her and she wouldn't do anything and told me I needed my mothers permission to do ANYTHING to that account (ie change it, take her off etc). So I demanded the manager who tried to tell me the same thing until I cut her off and said "well if I can't do ANYTHING without my mom, why did you let me change it from a child account to the full fee account without her???
Then the manager goes red and says, "Did you by any chance open this account in 1992?" Apparently that year that year whoever entered the accounts incorrectly entered them as joint rather then minor!!! So of course the manager refunds the money and the NSF charge and wrote a letter to the insurance explaining things. Unfortunately, since the insurance had been cancelled, I had to start all over at a new (higher)rate, of which the bank refused to compensate. I talked to a friends Dad (lawyer) who said I had a case, but it wasn't worth it.
So, their screw up ended up costing me over 2000.00 over the course of a few years.
Not too bad eh?
Becky
PS- I promptly switched banks, and so did my parents out of principle!
Bex -
Hello,
I normally have my mortgage payment taken automatically from my bank account every payday using Wells Fargo's bi-weekly payment plan. This pretty much guarantees that there will be money in the bank to cover the charge. However, in the past, I had another mortgage company (Homeside Lending) automatically withdraw payments once a month. One one occasion, the mortgage company had a glitch that posted the payment *twice*. We owed rent the same week and one of my roommates had just lost his job, so we had to cover more rent that month than expected. The bank account had enough to cover the mortgage payment and rent payment, with $100 left until payday.
When the double withdrawal posted, it caused the rent payment to bounce. We lost our deposit on the apartment because of the bounce and also had to pay bounced check fees to the bank, to the apartment complex, and to the GA Dept of Transportation, because a check for our car tag ($20) didn't clear.
In fact, the GA Dept of Transportation does not allow me to pay with a check, even 4 years later, because it took some time to clear up all of the fees and get a positive balance again. We ate a lot of ramen noodles for lunch & dinner that week.
The mortgage company refunded the extra amount withdrawn 2 days later, and the NSF fees for the bounced rent check were forgiven, but it took several weeks to get it all sorted out.
Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke
Sincerely,
Lindsey Schocke
Geeks on Tap: Mission Accomplished
Well, this one comes to mind b/c it is the ONLY mark on my otherwise perfect credit & it is both the creditors & my dh's fault so I am still pretty fumed about it.
Pumpkin
&nbs
Well, this isn't as bad as some of the other experiences, but our worst happened nearly ten years ago, with Iowa State Bank and Trust. They failed to credit a $1000 deposit to our account, causing several items to bounce. That was a fairly common mistake, but their attitude about it was so abysmally bad that we closed our account immediately while speaking to their customer "service" rep.
First, he blamed us for the mistake, saying that obviously we had written the wrong account number on the deposit slip. But all he had was the printed slip showing that the account number had been entered into the computer wrong--unlikely that we wrote the account number wrong, since it's our account and I had the number memorized. Much more likely that the teller simply typed it in wrong. But even if it was written wrong to begin with, they should have checked the account name against my identification and against the check--they should never have deposited a check made out to me into someone else's account without my signature (and I never sign checks--I always write "for deposit only" on the back). So I would have had to have written my account number wrong on the check AND on the deposit slip for it to begin to have been my fault (and still they should have said something when the account didn't match my name!).
Anyway, he stood firm that it was our fault, all the while acting like we were a huge waste of his time and he had far more important things to do (they weren't even busy that day--there was no one in line behind me). When we finally got him to admit that it might have been their fault and that maybe they should do something about it--like put the money back in our account--he did it very grudgingly and with a great deal of sarcasm and rudeness. When I said that the bank really ought to care more about it's customer's satisfaction, he said, "Obviously we care. We're fixing it, aren't we?"
I also insisted that he write a letter to each of the places that bounced the checks, and he at first refused. When I asked for a manager, he said he was the manager and that I was wasting enough of his time as it was. He finally agreed to write the letters, just to get us off his back. I then asked him to close our account, to which he rolled his eyes, and told me I'd have to do that with the teller.
Once in receipt of the letters and the money (including late charges and bounced check fees, which I also had to pull teeth to get), I immediately went to the teller, asked to withdraw all my funds and close my account. I then drove down the street to the credit union and opened an account there.
We no longer live in Iowa, but we still maintain a relationship with that credit union. But I will never do business with ISB&T again.
Thanks for a great question!
Heather
When we built our new house 4.5 yrs ago, the mortgage company screwed up the escrow account such that they were only taking $16 each month to pay my taxes and property insurance. Now, I am partially to blame because I guess I should have checked that at some point, but my house payment was the same from day one so I never did.
Fast forward over a year and a half - one day my bill comes in the mail and the amount has almost exactly DOUBLED. Turns out they went ahead and paid my taxes/insurance and as a result my escrow account was in the red by about $6K (plus 7 mos into the next year of holding out only $16 each month). So, without even notifying us, they split that out into 12 payments and added it to our mortgage. In addition to that, they fixed the amount they were holding out to what it should have been all along. The result of those two adjustments doubled our house payment and that is what sent down our house of cards and drove us to CCCS.
The escrow shortage has been paid back now, but it was a very *VERY* painful process!!
Good question.
My worst experience was consolidating my student loans with the U.S. Dept. of Education. It took over 18 months to straighten out. Was not taken seriously when I complained so eventually I wrote to the senator in charge and finally got it taken care of. I was actually told my a Dept. rep. "We assumed you didn't know what you were talking about." I'm like, this is my money and credit we are talking about. I know it.
I have had two mortgage companies put mortgage lates in my report. Both sent me acknowledgments of the error but I went to re-finance 3 years later and my score was lower than my husbands because of this error. I was able to fix but still... The first one was because they credited my payment to another client. Took two months for them to "find it" before they would believe me and post the payment to my account.
I'm all about documentation...
We once had a bank assign us a total of five account numbers and manage to lose our money between them. We had checks bouncing so high they pierced the ozone! It started when the bank we were using was bought out by another bank. Customers were notified that they needed to come in to sign new cards and in essence open new accounts with the new bank. The bank was a small town bank and was located in the same building as DH office. You would think it would all be simple enough. DH had been injured while at work and was in a cast from toe to mid-thigh and was bed ridden for nine or ten weeks. He was receiving workers comp which came in large lump sums which I deposited upon receipt. It was the dead of winter. I was pregnant, working full time and trying to keep up with the schedules for kids in two different private schools. We actually lived in another city. DH could not travel to sign the card. The bank would not let me take it to him. Apparently their system kept rejecting the account numbers they were assigning us. Each time they would close the accounts they missed the fact that I had made deposits using whatever deposit slips they gave me at the time. I was writing the checks they gave me but in the meantime they had changed the account. We of course learned of it when every single check I wrote bounced.We had proof of thousands of dollars in deposits and yet we had no money in our (latest) checking account. Needless to say the situation did get resolved. The bank ended up covering all of the charges accrued for the bad checks and wrote letters to every single place with a bounced check. It was a nightmare!
About 10 years ago, I mailed in a $1000 payment to my Discover card (a check through the mail). My check cleared my bank, but my account was never credited the $1000. It turns out, they credited the money to someone else's account. It was straightened out after about 2 months. I'm sure it negatively affected my credit score, but back then I was oblivious to credit scores. Now, I pay online.