Today, I received a notice from Chase that my credit card payment that was due on Sunday had not been received yet. Since I use online banking from my local credit union to pay my bills, I immediately went online and saw that the payment to Chase was withdrawn from my account electronically on Friday, August 17. So I called Chase and their customer service agent told me that there is always a delay "getting" an electronic payment and that they didn't "receive" my payment until this morning Monday, August 20, and they had assessed me a $25 late fee. I told the agent that an electronic transfer is an instant process and the money was withdrawn from my account on Friday and would have been instantly received by Chase on Friday. If their computer system does not attribute that money to my account until they perform some manual process, it is hardly fair to charge me a $25 late fee since the money was received on Friday and was sitting in Chase's funds merely waiting for someone to allocate it as a payment to someone's specific account on Monday. I have seen other credit card companies say in their fine print that if a payment is due on the weekend and funds to pay it are electronically "sent" on the weekend but not officially posted until Monday, the funds will be recognized as received on the weekend. Apparently, Chase does not follow this policy!
I asked if, since it was obvious I authorized the payment in time and have an excellent payment history with Chase, always paying each statement in full by the due date until now, they would refund the late fee. But the customer service clerk flatly refused. So I asked to speak to a supervisor then she said she would refund the late fee and asked me if I still needed to talk to a supervisor. I told her no if she was issuing the refund I didn't need to talk to a supervisor then but that I should not have had to ask to speak to a supervisor. At that point, without any reply, I just heard the tones of someone dialing a phone then hold music. After a brief wait, a man came on the phone who I assumed was the supervisor. I again explained what had happened with the online electronic payment and asked for a refund of the late fee and he agreed.
But, is this the new way banks are trying to slip in more fees on an unsuspecting public? An electronic transfer cannot occur unless both sender and receiver participate. The sending institution is including all information necessary to earmark the funds being received as to the payor's identification. Even if the computers at the receiving end must run some other subroutines to actually apply the information to a customer's account at a later date, the fact that the transmission occurred on a specific day should be the basis for recognizing receipt of the funds. Before I retired I used to design databases and know that as long as the two institutions participating in an electronic exchange have their database fields mapped properly, the exchange can be handled in a millisecond without human intervention. So why does the Federal Banking Commission allow banks to get away with slapping customers with a big late fee when the receiving institution has actually had the funds in their possession before the due date???
I asked if, since it was obvious I authorized the payment in time and have an excellent payment history with Chase, always paying each statement in full by the due date until now, they would refund the late fee. But the customer service clerk flatly refused. So I asked to speak to a supervisor then she said she would refund the late fee and asked me if I still needed to talk to a supervisor. I told her no if she was issuing the refund I didn't need to talk to a supervisor then but that I should not have had to ask to speak to a supervisor. At that point, without any reply, I just heard the tones of someone dialing a phone then hold music. After a brief wait, a man came on the phone who I assumed was the supervisor. I again explained what had happened with the online electronic payment and asked for a refund of the late fee and he agreed.
But, is this the new way banks are trying to slip in more fees on an unsuspecting public? An electronic transfer cannot occur unless both sender and receiver participate. The sending institution is including all information necessary to earmark the funds being received as to the payor's identification. Even if the computers at the receiving end must run some other subroutines to actually apply the information to a customer's account at a later date, the fact that the transmission occurred on a specific day should be the basis for recognizing receipt of the funds. Before I retired I used to design databases and know that as long as the two institutions participating in an electronic exchange have their database fields mapped properly, the exchange can be handled in a millisecond without human intervention. So why does the Federal Banking Commission allow banks to get away with slapping customers with a big late fee when the receiving institution has actually had the funds in their possession before the due date???
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