I have a complaint against Vanderbilt Bank. I have the payments drafted biweekly. I receive a statement every month. With that statement comes a coupon where I can send in an extra payment. On this coupon, it says “Your account will automatically draft as agreed. Please use this form to make an additional payment by mail if desired.” I used this form to make an additional payment. They used this additional payment as a customer payment instead of an additional payment and did not draft out the normal payment. When I asked about this, customer service said that it had to be more or less than the actual payment for the coupon to work. This was done on 20 NOV. The second time I used it, the same thing happened. Only I put in over double the amount of the drafted payment. This time I was told by customer service that it had to be under the amount of the drafted payment. This was done on 24 DEC. When I asked them to fix it, they said it was too late and could not fix it. So I tried again being under the amount of the drafted payment. I was $4.89 dollars shy of the drafted payment to make sure that it was not used as a customer payment. Vanderbilt still used it as a customer payment and did not take out the drafted payment as they were supposed to. They added on negative $4.98 dollars to make it work. This was on 27 DEC. When I asked about what happened, customer service got me in contact with the accountant. I asked the accountant what happened and she asked me if I had put for PBO only on the check. I said no because it had said that the coupon took care of that. She laughed at me and told me to put PBO on the check. I asked her to correct this problem. This is how she corrected it. She took the next draft payment and took it off and used it all for the Principle balance. She however did not draft out the payment to replace it. This left me short two payments. She did not remove the negative $4.98 as I hsd asked. This raised up the amount of interest that I owed. It also took away from my escrow, making it where there would not be enough to pay the insurance. I asked how I could make extra payments. I was told that I had to go online and get a special coupon, print it out and use it to make extra payments. The side effects of the extra payments was that it messed up the schedule of the drafted payments. The payments was every two weeks on a Wednesday. Then it changed to Thursday, then it changed to Friday. I never knew when the next draft would take place. I got mad and went to the BBB. I made my case and BBB accepted my case and contacted Vanderbilt. That got their attention. All of the things that customer service said that could not be fixed was fixed. I used the new coupons with no trouble until 22 JUN. They did it again. They used the extra payment as a customer payment and did not draft out the regular payment as they were supposed to. When I asked why, I was told because it was too close to the draft date and it cancelled out the draft. The funny thing is that the first draft was taken out on 20 JUN and they received my extra payment on 22 JUN. It does not matter what date the extra payment is posted or when the next draft payment is due, this should not happen. When I asked customer service to correct this, she suggested that I use a phone check. The phone check has a $10.00 fee attached to it. I told her no. When I told her that I was going to call her manager, she found a way to fix the problem fast. If I cannot use the coupon sent to me every month and I cannot use the coupon from online, then how can I make extra payments? I was also sent an amortization. I cannot pay off the interest either by regular payment or by extra payments. I will even pay interest on my last payment. Is this legal? I was told by a customer service member that there was no magic way for me to make extra payments. I have tried BBB, CCA, HUD, and other organizations, but to no avail. Vanderbilt will not respond to them or to me. The main question is this, the coupon that is sent with the statement is misleading. The coupon says it is to be used to make additional payments, but when used, it is not accepted as that way. There is nothing on the statement or the coupon that says not to use this coupon or how to make additional payments. Why, then, send this coupon with the statement? Why not send the other coupon that I was told to use? The other coupon is more specific. It has on it *PBO* in bold print. But when used it was still used for customer payment instead of extra payment. No matter what I do, I am lied to by the customer service personnel. They try very hard for me not to put the extra payment on the Principle Balance.
0 comments