Credit card won't post my last payment even though the check cleared my bank 11 days ago!

Posted Tue May 30, 2006 8:49 am, by Jill A. written to First Premier Bank Visa

I recently had a payment I mailed to this credit card company of mine get lost in the mail somehow, a fact which I did not find out until I received my current statement and noticed the "late payment fee" and also saw that no payment was reflected. When I called the company to question this, I was told they had received nothing from me last month. No problem, I figured - the check had not been cashed (info I got from my bank), so I decided to do a check by phone payment to cover the missed payment and the current month's payment to avoid any confusion. So I authorized a $250 check-by-hone payment on May 15th, and was told it would post in 5-7 days.

7 days passed - BUSINESS days, mind you, not calendar days - and the payment had not posted. I called to question this, and the customer service rep was exceedingly rude. She cut me off before I could explain my concern and said, "Well, you skipped your payment last months, what do you expect? Of course they put a hold on a payment!" I tried to explain about the lost-in-the-mail check, and she just kept cutting me off and saying, "Ma'am, are you even listening to what I'm telling you?" I repeated her own words back to her, and immediately asked for a supervisor! I was told, "Supervisors don't deal with this kind of complaint, there's nothing you're saying that I haven't already given you the information for."

So I hung up, and called back, and when a rep answered, I asked for a supervisor right away. This rep transferred me immediately. Then, the supervisor I spoke to said my funds would be held until June 2nd! "Pending verification from your bank" is the reason she gave. Okay, understood, you pay by check, they want to make sure the check clears before they post it to your account and make that credit available. Well, I received my bank notice LAST WEEK, and the $250 had most definitely cleared - there it was on my statement, one of my itemized deductions, already paid to the company (I called my bank, they said it was definitely already paid to that company, not pending).

So I called First Premier back to explain this, and was rudely told, "Well, you missed a payment, so the penalty is that you have to wait until June 2nd for everything to post." Then I was actually told, "We don't have any way to verify from the bank that your payment cleared, sometimes it takes 30 days for us to receive that verification from your bank." So I asked, "How do you know that verification will be there by June 2nd?" and was told, "Oh, if we don't get it by then, we'll post the payment anyway on good faith." What?!? If they can "post it on good faith" on the 2nd regardless if they get some sort of verification or not, why can't they do it now, when I offered to fax them my bank statement copy, or get them on a 3-way phone call with my bank?

I also asked why, if there is a hold until June 2nd, I wasn't told this from the start, since the initial rep told me 5-7 days for payment to post. And a SUPERVISOR actually said, "We're not responsible for reps who give you the wrong information, sorry." They're not responsible? Aren't the supervisors the ones who train them and are supposed to give them the right information?

I'm not dying to hurry up and use those funds, but it's irritating to see that a whopping $250 deduction from my checking account is now tied up until Friday. I'm leaving on a car trip tomorrow - so if I have an emergency, I don't have those extra funds available to me if I need them. If I'd known the payment would be held that long, I would have simply sent a Western Union QuickPay or something. Sure, I still have available credit on that account even without the payment posted...but given this experience, if I charge anything that puts it close to the limit, like if my car breaks down and I need a repair, they'd probably hit me with extra fees and stuff. I will definitely be paying off this card and cancelling it within the next couple of months!

Not much can be done to improve my experience with this company, since they absolutely refuse to post the payment, even though it has cleared my bank (and it was cleared as of May 19th). But I would like to see their employees trained better, so as to give out correct information instead of miseleading the cardholders. And I would also like to see supervisors more sympathetic to customer concerns, though that is definitely too much to hope for!

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Wait! It gets better! by Sava Posted Tue May 30, 2006 @ 8:03 PM Now I'm told that if I make any more payments to the account before June 2nd (which I was considering, since I now want to pay off the account as fast as possible), that the original $250 I paid will have the hold extended until the NEXT payment clears - unless I spend the $12+ to send it Western Union QuickPay. Even if I send a money order, they consider it a "non-guaranteed" form of payment, the same as personal check, which is totally ridiculous. So now, I will wait until June 2nd when the first payment posts, then make another payment - no big deal, in the grand scheme of things, but it still strikes me as a totally bizarre way to do business. I understand if they want to put a hold on a new payment, but why would that affect one that was already made, and already cleared my bank? For the record, I've never had any payment returned as NSF or anything else. But the fact that I filed bankruptcy 7 (yes, 7!) years ago is affecting their decision - odd, since I also have never been late with this card, and regularly pay over the minimum. Word of advice to anyone who gets a First Premier credit card offer: DON'T ACCEPT IT! I must also mention this - they charge a yearly "account maintenance" fee, but they don't even have reps there 24-7, only during normal business hours. Reply Re: Credit card won't post my last payment even though the check cleared my bank 11 days ago! by Sava Posted Tue May 30, 2006 @ 9:02 AM By the way...I see from the list that I am not the only one who is dissatisfied with First Premier's business operations. It always amazes me how a company can have so many dissatisfied customers, yet do nothing to change/improve their business dealings. Reply Same for me by Fri July 7, 2006 @ 12:36 PM