My wife has a condo that her and her sister own, the mortgage is through Countrywide home loans.
As with any mortgage, she techinically has until the 16th of the month to pay, without incurring any late charges. Not being very tech-savvy, my wife has me pay many of her bills online this way.
Last month (march), Mindful of the two days that they say it takes to process a wire tranfer, my wife asked me to pay that mortgage for her on the 13th. Her online banking bill-pay indicated that this was an electronic payment (as it always had up to that point). (Our bank is Chase, by the way)
On the 19th, I got an email from my bank, saying that the payment had been rejected. Since my name wasn't on that particular mortgage, I told my wife that she needed to call countrywide to ask why her payment had suddenly been rejected.
When I got home, my wife told me that she'd spoken with them, and they'd told her that it was a problem with chase, not tiwth them, and if she wanted to continue to make her payments online, she needed to to it through their own website. (To which I already had a log-in, since we used to live in the condo and own it jointly). She ended the conversation by making the payment over the phone, also paying the $30 late fee.
Naturally, my wife made it one of my priorities to go to the countrywide web site and sign up her checking account for electronic (Two day) payments. Upon arriving on that section of the website, I read that, besides through their site, there were only two other ways to pay electronically; through Yahoo billpay, or through quicken, (Both of which, charge comparatively hefty monthly fees, compared to chase, which is free).
I stumbled through all sorts of options, which was giving an online "hard sell" for having the money automatically deducted on a particular day of the month. When I finally came to the option I wanted, I got an "error" message, stating "This account needs immediate attention, please call. (customer service number)
So I called. Right away, I told the girl I was talking to that this was my wife's account, and asked why the payment I'd made for her the previous month had been rejected. I also asked her why they were no longer accepting two day electronic payments from out bank, and politely pleaded ignornace.
She told me that she could waive any charges for this month (april) and told me that she could set my wife up for the two day online payment option through the site, for which I'd just been denied. She had my wife's info on file and could take the money right away. (What? On the phone, they'd told my wife there was some kind of server conflict that made the transaction impossible. Although it took them three days to deny it!)
I asked her if there was a fee for their online two day payment and she said "Only if you pay after the 4th"
I was like "What?". She explained, that making the two day electronic payment through the country wide website, was free. As long as it was done by the 4th of the month. Between the 5th and the 10th, there was a $4 "transaction fee" and if the payment were made between the 11th and the 15th, that fee went to $10.
I asked "Now technically, we have until the 16th to pay, am I correct?" And she told me that that was correct. So I asked why she would be charged a fee for paying at any given time after the 4th. She implied that it was a fee that our own bank was charging but couldn't be sure.
I told her that I had a hard time believing it was my bank, when it was them who was charging the fee, and that they had imposed this policy very suddenly.
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