Since my wife and I purchased our house in August of we have never made a late payment. I think we had one payment in five years in our previous house that was incorrect (by a few cents). I pay our bills online by using Bank of America BillPay and it generally works very well. I don't use any of the auto-pay options because I want to control when the bills are paid and heaven forbid there are ever errors or we can't get to a computer for some reason, our accounts will not be tapped for bills. And I always pay all of our bills on time in this manner.
In mid-February of this year, I realized that we hadn't received a statement from Chase Home Finance for January, to be paid on Feb 1. I looked through the records and realized that I was about two days past the 'late payment date' so I called Chase immediately upon realizing the error and let them know that I would be paying it online and that it would register within a day or so.
I waited until the next day to make sure the payment posted to Chase, which it did. I then called Chase again to explain that A) they had not sent a statement in January (but we did receive statements from all other creditors - utilities, credit cards, insurance, etc.) and B) I requested to have the late fee removed. The CSR (probably in India judging by the accent) told me that 'because it was not a Chase error, [he] could not remove the fee'. I explained that I felt it was a Chase error because they had not sent a statement, and finally he agreed to 'a one-time fee waiver' and he explained to me that 'late fees could not be waived again during the life of the loan'. I accepted his gracious offer and we finished our conversation.
Now - I know what you are thinking - the payment was my responsibility and I agree. I should have been paying more attention to this and if so I would not have made a late payment. This is true. However, I thought it was very odd that we did not receive a statement and my guess is that we were not the only ones. Why the January statement? Perhaps so people who have just survived the holidays don't realize that they owe a mortgage payment? Only speculation but I have noticed that credit card statements also seem to arrive later during the Holidays than they do during the rest of the year.
OK, so that seemed to be resolved just fine. But it was not over yet. I received my next statement and noticed that the late fee was still on there. Of course I received the statement on a Friday so I had to wait until Monday to call the customer service center to try and resolve the problem (again). This time, I spoke to a woman who explained that 'the late fee can't be removed until a payment is posted to the account'. After I explained that I had made a payment and that it had posted several weeks before, she could not explain it and agreed to 'forward this to her supervisor' and that it would be gone come the next statement. I made that next payment and forgot about it.
You can probably guess what happened. I received my NEXT statement (this is now 2.5 months after the original issue) and yes, the late fee was still there. And yes, I received that statement on Friday as well so I had to wait until Monday to call their customer service line. When I did, I was polite as I could be but asked to have an explanation as to why the fee was still there. I detailed the previous calls I had made (I kept notes of days, times, and names). This time, the CSR explained that 'the fee was removed on the 18th' (a few days before I called) but she could not explain why it had taken so long.
Mostly, I'm upset because of the multiple calls I had to make to get this resolved. I see my own part in this that yes, I made a payment that was a few days past the 'late due date'. However, because that late fee was not removed immediately, it incurred interest (albeit a small amount). Not what I would call stellar customer service, particularly because we are very careful with our finances and pay our bills on time all (or at least nearly!) all the time.
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