This Place is Dead so I Blog

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by TheDavisChanger, Dec 7, 2011.

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  1. TheDavisChanger

    TheDavisChanger Well-Known Member

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    Monday November 28th I awoke thirty years old and penniless--the thirty-years-old bit I had anticipated; the penniless bit I did not. I would not become aware of my bankruptcy until late in the morning of the 28th when I check my e-mail and remark a message from my credit card company claiming that I am approaching my credit limit. "I had better pay that down," I think to myself and proceed to log into the website of my bank to see how much of my funds are available to pay down my credit card balance. Much to my surprise, there is not a great deal of money available to me--my checking account is zeroed out and my savings are a mere fraction of what they typically are. Alarmed and fearful that my account had been hacked, I investigate why my savings account is nearly empty to find that thousands of dollars from it had been transferred to my checking account to prevent overdrafting my checking account. I proceed to investigate why I would be overdrafting my checking account and notice a sizable sum being paid to my mortgage company.

    You see, on November 24th I had scheduled my mortgage to be paid via my bank's BillPay service. I do this every month, but in this unique case I had slipped a decimal point, paying ten times my typical mortgage payment to my mortgage for the month of December. As a mortgage typically represents the bulk of an individual's expenditures during a month, this relieved me of 95% of my liquid assets--and I still had a higher-than-average credit card balance due! Fortunately, the workings of the BillPay service affords me a reasonable window of time to address this issue.

    For my mortgage company, my bank debits my account the amount I specify, writes a check on my behalf, and mails it to my mortgage company. The 24th being Thanksgiving, a bank holiday in the States, it was probable that the check was not made until Friday the 25th and possibly not sent until the 26th. The check being in transit, it would not have reached my mortgage company by the 28th, so I decided to stem the flow of cash at its source by instructing my bank to stop payment on that particular check. The helpful madam who handled my issue stated that she would indeed stop the payment on that check and that in these situations it usually takes three to five business days for the unpaid funds to be returned to my account. Due to the extreme sum of the mispayment she expedited the process so that I could expect to again control my funds in as few as two business days--plenty of time to make my credit card payment and pay my mortgage company the appropriate amount. Situations like these encourage me that not waiting for the last minute to pay my debts is a good policy because it leaves me room to correct errors such as these.

    I was left with enough money to make my minimum payment to my credit card company by its due date of the 1st of December and the helpful chap who handled my issue with the credit card company assured me that if I were to pay the remaining balance by the 3rd that I would incur no penalties on outstanding balances. Let this be a lesson to those who use credit cards: there is a grace period from when one's payment is due to the beginning of the next billing cycle (in my case, this period is two days). If the minimum payment is satisfied by the due date and the balance paid before the next billing cycle, then interest should not be applied to your account. I scheduled a minimum payment to be applied to my credit card account for the 1st, transferred some funds from a stock trading account to my bank account, and attempted to schedule another payment to my credit card company for the remaining balance. Then I became abruptly familiar with my credit card company's policy of allowing a payment to be scheduled only every three days so I call my credit company and attempt to place a phone payment only to find that the three-day policy applies to payments made by phone as well. A helpful chap informs me that Sears will facilitate credit card payments, so I proceed to deliver a check to my local Sears for the remaining balance.
     
  2. TheDavisChanger

    TheDavisChanger Well-Known Member

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    By Friday of that week--well after the two-business-day threshold of the process--my unpaid funds have not been returned to my bank account so I again call my bank to check on the status of these funds. Fortunately this Friday is a payday so my need for my capital isn't as dire as it would otherwise be. The less-than-helpful chap at my bank explains that the BillPay department is especially busy and that I should allow another business day for the issue to be resolved; I can expect my funds on Monday of the next week or Tuesday at the latest. This chap also recommends that I notify my mortgage company of the bogus payment they are about to receive. If I instruct them not to attempt to cash it, then I can expect to avoid a bounced payment fee. I thank the chap for his recommendation and endeavor to practice it.

    I check my mortgage account online and verify that my bogus payment has not been applied to my account. The absolutely useless lass at my mortgage company claims that there is no way to prevent a payment from being applied to an account once it is received. Seeing as how there is at least one manual step from receipt to crediting, I find this hard to believe. This woman offers to annotate my account with the information that the next payment received is not to be cashed but offers no guarantee that this note will be honored. She does explain that I can file a dispute against any fee I incur and while a fifty-dollar returned payment fee may seem insignificant when compared to the thousands of my dollars presently wafting in the Aether, I refuse to pay a penalty for a lack of responsiveness of some company's operating procedure. I keep this dispute process in mind.
     
  3. TheDavisChanger

    TheDavisChanger Well-Known Member

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    Monday of this week I again check the status of my mortgage account and find that the mispayment from weeks previous has in fact been applied to my mortgage. Frenzied, I contact my mortgage company to make certain that while the payment has been credited to my account no funds have actually been deposited to the account. While not understanding the specifics of my concern, in a roundabout way the lass on the other end of the phone suggests that my mispayment probably has not actually been applied to my mortgage account, but that I should follow up with my bank to make certain of this. I thank her for nothing and do just that.

    The useless chap employed by my bank assures me that payment has been stopped on the check that my bank has issued to my mortgage company on my behalf and that there is absolutely no way that any of my funds can be available to my mortgage company. While that is fine and dandy, I inform this bloke that when I began this process the previous Monday I was told that my funds would be available to me by Wednesday of last week. While he cannot vouch for me what the hell is going on with these vaporous funds he can check the status of my BillPay case and can inform me that the status of the case will be updated within 72 hours and that I should again check my account after that interval. Here it is Wednesday, and what was a latency of one-to-two business days has become a latency of one-to-two-give-or-take-six business days, and seeing as how my bank sure as hell isn't going back in time to correct an issue, I can assume that this is a case of take six business days and that my original time frame is violated, perhaps indefinitely.

    EDIT:
    I'll update with the actual resolution of this issue, but in the meantime feel free to comment on this circumstance. In true The-House-of-Lords fashion, I would appreciate it if constructive criticism of my folly were kept to an absolute minimum.
     
  4. Arthgon

    Arthgon Well-Known Member

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    Are not you a bit to fast to conclude that this here is dead?

    Wow. And I though that the troubles that I have with the bills of the dentists was that bad. I really hope that your troubles will be over.
     
  5. TheDavisChanger

    TheDavisChanger Well-Known Member

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    I meant "dead" as in "slow" or "exhibiting very limited activity." I don't think that The House of Lords is in need of revival, but am more hoping that a deliberate application of some energy will reactivate the joint.

    Thanks for your kind hopes. I also hope this is resolved in short order.
     
  6. Grossenschwamm

    Grossenschwamm Well-Known Member

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    I'm going to tell you what people here have been telling me for quite some time;

    This is GD, I don't come here to read about other people's problems. You need to get over yourself.

    Though, I find it hard to not care what's going on in another person's life - unless they're my mom, at this point.

    I'm a bit surprised your bank didn't inform you that you were paying outside of your means. I opened an IRA and the amount I specified to open the account, along with the average amount of money I make per month, made the person assisting me in the creation of said IRA say I should probably start with about 20% of my initial number just in case things go wrong in the near future and I need a cushion in my savings account.
    It's not Bank of America, is it?
     
  7. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    I think he is already over himself. He's posting this for his own, and our, entertainment. And, as far as I am concerned, he is succeeding marvellously.
     
  8. wayne-scales

    wayne-scales Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, until you actually do kill yourself, you're not interesting enough for my taste.
     
  9. wobbler

    wobbler Well-Known Member

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  10. Zanza

    Zanza Well-Known Member

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  11. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    One thing I don't understand though, TDC. Why do you have to manually type in the mortgage payment amount every month? Can't you set up a regular transfer?
     
  12. Grossenschwamm

    Grossenschwamm Well-Known Member

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    Alright, for one thing;
    Sarcasm. It was wholly implied.
    For another, that's what I was trying to do when I would post about myself, but I got shit for it because it was all the time. I even limited it to what I thought would be most entertaining, but...meh. I never thought you guys could fix anything for me, I just like your various opinions.
     
  13. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Geez, Gross. Get over yourself.
     
  14. Grossenschwamm

    Grossenschwamm Well-Known Member

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    Why the hell are you talking about me, Smuel? This is about TDC's bank not being responsible and potentially limiting the amount of money they can make from this particular account.
     
  15. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    You started it. You came into TDC's thread and tried to make it all about yourself.
     
  16. Grossenschwamm

    Grossenschwamm Well-Known Member

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  17. TheDavisChanger

    TheDavisChanger Well-Known Member

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    I had intended for this to be an amusing recounting of my financial misadventure and the responses have run the gamut of what I've come to expect from The House, including Zanza's good natured antagonism. Also, the irony wasn't lost on everybody, perhaps not even on smuel.
    I prefer to keep manual control over my finances. Remaining involved keeps me aware of what's going on and helps me to catch problems like this in ample time to turn them around. Setting up a regular, automatic payment is an available option, but in the unlikely case that the same error occurred with an automatic payment I don't believe I would have caught it and responded so immediately.
    Not knowing to whom this is directed I'll just cover what I feel are the likely recipients and discourage Grossenschwamm, smuel, and myself from committing suicide.
    Can't say as I blame you; I'm just as easily put off by blocks of text such as my first post. However, if you can get beyond that setup, I decided to organize the subsequent posts into more manageable chunks...
    Thanks! Not all of us are content to bloat our post counts with half-baked one-liners.

    Having waited at least the 72 hours as instructed by the last associate of my bank (which is not Bank of America), I check my accounts online and find that my funds are still not available to me. Speaking with yet another representative of my bank I find that the check was in fact cashed on Monday of this week (the 5th), a full week after I had instructed my bank to stop payment on that particular check. The associate also verifies that I took action on the 28th of last month to have payment stopped on this check and is herself perplexed on why the check could even be cashed. She mentions that she will escalate my case--and I hope this escalation is different from the escalation promised by the first associate I spoke to more than a week ago, who "expedited" the original order of stop payment to my mortgage company--and I find it odd that she mentions more than once that the team will do what it can to reimburse me the funds that have been in flux for going on two weeks now. I scarcely believe that I will have an extra thousands of dollars in equity in my estate while also having thousands of dollars at my disposal as a reimbursement by my bank, not that the bank couldn't weather the loss of thousands of dollars more easily than a private individual such as myself, I just find it difficult to believe that this matter will be resolved in this way. I give my phone number to the associate as requested and when asked when a good time to reach me is, I declare that for an issue of this severity, any time is good.

    I mention this to my girlfriend and being schooled in legal matters, she informs me that since this is a bank error, the bank will reimburse me and will have to take up being reimbursed by my mortgage company. This is just as well, because this is a battle I'm already tired of fighting and wouldn't want to continue it with my as-useless mortgage service department. Perhaps it is the case that my bank will find itself out tens of thousand of dollars while it resolves its error. Perhaps it would be better to set up automatic payments because manual control does not appear to do a damn bit of good for me or my bank.

    Also, I'm grateful for the legal insight shared with me, because without it, I would have probably shat a loaf in my pants.
     
  18. Grossenschwamm

    Grossenschwamm Well-Known Member

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    Well, if you had decided to go vegan, that loaf would be a convenient and natural source of B12 for you to consume without additional supplementation to your diet. I'm glad the issue is somewhat resolved, and I hope the bank doesn't make a stink about effectively stealing your money and getting caught.
     
  19. DarkFool

    DarkFool Nemesis of the Ancients

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  20. wobbler

    wobbler Well-Known Member

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    I tend to only red posts that are maximum three lines.
     
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