I work overseas on government contract quite regularly, so you can imagine I rely on credit cards for my expenditures.
Recently, I had left the US on the 23rd of July to head to my overseas destination. As always, my wife takes care of the household tasks and paying the bills while I am gone.internet is barely dial up in most areas where I go, so, its difficult to keep up.
In this case, my Juniper Credit Card had a payment that was due on the 28th of July for $17. My wife had logged on and registered our banking information to make this payment online. She made the payment and received a confirmation number and went about her business as usual.
I was in a good internet area and decided to check remaining balances on my cards, turns out, Juniper raised my interest rate and had charged a "service fee" for a return payment. This, of course, was a shock considering I never miss payments and the banking information had not changed.
After corresponding with customer service, it was determined that the banking information contained one too many numbers and it took their system 5 days to report it back as not valid. However, logging into my account I see a banner at the bottom that states the checking information IS valid.
I had notified CS about this mistake and they were very stern on keeping this service charge of $39, regardless of my history with them. It was also brought up that I receive notifications on payments made through my email and payment reminders, however, do not receive notification about a returned payment or problem with my account.
They confirmed this. If you make a payment online and its returned, it takes days to even show on your account and on top of that, unless you go back and double check your account online, you wont be notified of this problem.
No phone call, no email, no nothing. When I mentioned I would be closing my account due to the poor customer service I had received, not once was there mention of my business being valued or if they would remove the service charge.
Instead, I get a reply that the fee was properly charged and if I felt I needed to close my account to go ahead and email them back or call them and they would help me with that.
Juniper Bank is a rip off. They have no problem with giving notifcations when things appear great on the account, no problems sending you emails about their special offers and the like, however, any issues that could potentiall harm your credit or your account standing... Nope. Not their problem.
They'll raise your interest rate to the highest allowed by law and charge you a fee and then not care if you threaten to close the account.
I return to the US over the next couple weeks and do fully intend to close this account. Hopefully, their actions in poor customer service will cost them plenty more than $39. Thanks for listening.
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