fox | FUCK YOU, BANK OF AMERICA. also IKEA.

Skip to Main Content

Current Mood: angry

Entry tags:

FUCK YOU, BANK OF AMERICA. also IKEA.

So I have my online bill pay set up. Fine. I get a bill, I punch in the amount and the due date, it gets paid. Great!

Except that for two months in a row now, my Visa bill has not showed as being paid until the day after. The funds are taken out of my (BoA) checking account at some point on the due date, but the thing isn't posted at my (BoA) credit card statement until the next day. Last month, I called them and the guy credited back the late fee, and then later in the month the original late fee went away but the credit stayed, so they took back the credit, so I saw a "late fee adjustment" in the middle of the month, and I called them and we went around and around a couple of times until I understood that basically they'd charged me $39 and then refunded me $78, so they'd corrected their repeated mistake. And then I got a letter in the mail saying they'd taken back $39 because they'd refunded me for a late fee that was never assessed, which isn't exactly what happened, but whatever. And now there's ANOTHER sodding late fee, and I called them and said (essentially) RAR, take it away, and they said they could refund half of it, but not the whole fee because they've explained to me and this has happened before, and I said AHA, BUT NO, this has not happened before, because legally speaking the late fee was never assessed in the first place, see?, look at the statement! -- and she said oh, quite right, and soon there will be a late fee adjustment, and very likely then the fee will go away and I'll get re-adjusted and get another letter in the mail.

But after a long conversation with the credit card side and then an even longer conversation with the online bill-pay side, it turns out that EVERYONE ELSE I EVER OWE MONEY TO receives the payment a day or so after the due date (which is when the funds are taken away) and sees the date on the electronic check and pre-dates the payment and considers it paid on time, but the Bank of America credit card people receive the payment 24-48 hours after the funds are taken away and don't consider it paid until then. So the only solution is to set the payment date a day or so ahead of the due date. Which SUCKS, if you ask me, especially since nobody else requires it (the guy on the phone understood my frustration and noted that he has an HSBC credit card that takes three days to process, so if his payment is due on the 21st he has to have it paid on the 18th), and in particular this month it wouldn't have been any good because payday was the 21st and until yesterday I didn't have the money to pay the whole bill. The guy said he thought I should change the due date, but I'm paid bi-weekly, so there's no point to that. Sigh. FUCKING ARGH.

I left a slip in the suggestion box.

And then I called IKEA, to see if they have a lighting thing they've been out of for a long time, and every time I stay on the line to speak to a customer service representative, it fucking loops me back to the same menu I was just in. No matter where I go from, I get back to where I came from. Okay, it's Saturday, they're busy, but there's got to be SOMEONE to answer the phone, yeah?

Must be time for some blood sugar.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

EVERYONE ELSE I EVER OWE MONEY TO receives the payment a day or so after the due date (which is when the funds are taken away) and sees the date on the electronic check and pre-dates the payment and considers it paid on time

I did not know this. I always send money so it *gets there* by the due date.

I don't think it would work if I were sending them personal checks. But when they get an electronic check from the bank, I suspect they know that the bank can't just write whatever date it wants on the check (as I could), so whatever their thinking is, I can set the "deliver" date as the due date and everything is fine.

What I'm gleaning from all this is that while Bank of America is not *Wachovia*, it's still just as well that I opened my new account at Suntrust...

I'm so confused. I also use BofA billpay. So...if your bill says due on 10/10. And you go in on...10/10 to pay it? Or you go in on 10/9 and it does that little thing where it tells you it'll be delivered on 10/10...and somehow even though it says that, it's not good enough? I just wanna be sure, since it's pretty frequent I'm sending it so that the due date and the "delivered on" date are the same.

For all my bills except Visa, what you're saying is right. You have to set it up a few days ahead of whenever the due date is, but you schedule the payment for the relevant date, and you make "due date" and "deliver on" the same day, and everything is FINE. But now it turns out that "deliver" means "begin the whole process of handling shit", so the date the payment is scheduled is the date they remove the funds from your account and cut and mail the electronic check, which gets to the payee WHENEVER, at which point the payee begins processing it. So if the payee get the check two business days later and decides that based on the date of the check you (and your bank) have paid the bill on time, great. And as I say, all but one of my payees does this. But if the payee decides at the end of the business day that the payment is due that you haven't paid it yet, and they are unmoved by receiving the payment the next morning with yesterday's date on it, FROM THEIR OWN BANKING DIVISION, then you're out of luck.

fuckers.

Dude! That's super fucked up then. I mean, in ANY case that's fucked up, because otherwise why trust the "deliver by" date at all? And especially fucked up because of who it was, obviously.

Have you tried taking it up with BofA checking, bitching about the "deliver by" date not being right, rather than the BofA Visa?

after a long conversation with the credit card side and then an even longer conversation with the online bill-pay side

Yep.

Whoops, sorry, didn't go back and reread the original after the first comment. :)

I hate BoA. I also have a card through them, and when I go to do the online bill pay, it automatically puts in the due date (which would, if I used it, make the payment late). So I always have to remember to change it to the day I am actually making the payment (or nearest business day, or whatever).

Every OTHER online bill I have to pay assumes that I am there! Paying! So clearly I mean to pay that day! Of course!

Anyway, my BoA credit card is currently the holding ground for some 0%-balance-transfers, but as soon as those are paid off I'm canceling it.

1. Fuck them all, and the horses they rode in on.

2. Your icon makes me laugh every time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only