Apparently it would seem that the integration of Countrywide into the Bank of America Corporation is not progressing swimmingly. There have been some web access issues of late as well as some errors in billing over the past months.
I pay my bills in a timely manner.
Last month I paid my Countrywide/Bank of America bill, which seemed low and it seems that they billed me only for interest as opposed to principal. This month, they sent me the whole bill for May as well as the part of April's bill which they did not bill me in error.
For two days I have attemtped to make my payment online and the system was not working. I emailed the bank and to date have never gotten a response or acknowledgement to my message.
It would not allow me to make payment. I called the help number from the webpage and it gave me an alternate web address, so immediately I became concerned.
It took a long time to get a person on the line to resolve the issue but I finally did. A very nice customer service representative helped me to not only schedule my payment, giving me a confirmation number, but also explained that they had been having a problem for a while with the website and that "I had done better than most by actually getting to a person that could post the payment for me". He even waived a $6 fee for the service. We posted the payment on a calendar date available to me, less the $6 fee, which I appreciated.
Incredible.
Despite the e-mail requests for help, the scheduling of payment by the CSR at the bank and waiving of the $6 fee, yesterday these harassing calls started. It was 800-669-0102. There was never a message and the calls were at the rate of about 1 every hour or two. Just ring ring ring and hang up.
I got one more this evening and picked up. A person from the bank said that he was collecting a debt and I asked him if he had checked his system to see the logged payment, which of course I knew they had not done. He said no, checked and then said that he saw it. He then told me that he wanted to stop that payment and put it in for right now and would keep the $6 fee and that if I did not agree, the hourly harrassing phonecalls would continue. I told him that one of his colleages had plugged in the payment within the time constaints that the bank had set for accountholders (they have a little calendar where you can set your payment date and I did that), but that was not good enough for this guy. I have always made my payment in a timely manner despite being unemployed and found this to be pretty frustrating. He said that the calls would continue and I told him that was ridiculous if I was following his rules. I went on to explain the problems that I had with the wrong bill and website and there was no apology, remorse, anything. He said the calls would continue unless I changed the payment date to tonight! I asked him how he would recommend that I handle the hourly harrassing calls from the bank until the draft is processed and he said that they were not harrassing and would offer no suggestions. I told him that I was informing him that they were harrassing and asked three or four more times. He would not answer my question. I mentioned to him that this was a clear violation of the 1978 Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (http://en. Wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Debt_Collection_Practices_Act)
and he ended the conversation.
I put the phone down, very upset, and picked it back up and called them bank. I ran through the gauntlet that is BofA's computer and then got a different associate. I explained the situation to him and he understood and agreed. I gave him the payment confirmation number and he stopped the calls and apologized profusely.
I just don't know what in the heck Bank of America is doing! Why would they blatanly break the law???
0 comments