National City Bank And Mbna Visa Outdid Bmg Beware of on-line banking Guarantees.

[Mich 0]

Since my vent about BMG Music, I have encountered even more inefficiency.

 

On May 31st I jumped on line to make an on-line bill payment. I sent a check for full payment of my credit card account with MBNA Visa that was due on June 10th. My bank, National City, "guaranteed" payment by June 6th.

 

On June 8th I checked on-line with MBNA to make sure the payment was received, but it didn't show on my account. So I called MBNA to inquire if they had received it. They said they post payments within 24 hours as a rule and if it wasn't posted, they had no way of checking if it had been received.

 

On June 9th I called National City Bank to see if they had indeed sent the payment. I was told by them that the payment was "guaranteed" delivered by June 6th and if it wasn't posted, the payment was probably lost in the mail. I learned that the payee determines the type of payment transactions they accept. That is to say, some payees will accept electronic transfers and others want checks in the mail. MBNA chose the check method. Now this is important people. THE NATIONAL CITY BANK'S "GUARANTEE" DOESN'T INCLUDE DELAYS DUE TO FIRE, FLOOD, OR US MAIL DELIVERY FAILURE. So the they wouldn't "guarantee" anything and left me hung out to dry. Not only would it cost me $29 to stop payment on the check that they wrote; they wouldn't even send a letter to the payee letting them know that the payment was sent. I was told to send MBNA a print of my on-line payment history to prove this. I would have to also pay any late fees to the credit card company, which is $39 at MBNA.

 

I called MBNA again on June 10th, my due date, and my payment still hadn't been posted. When I check my bank account on-line for my payment history to send to MBNA, it showed a payment June 6th to MBNA. Now I was confused. This didn't prove that the payment was sent on time. Since banks are not available on weekends I had to wait until Monday to talk to them again.

 

When I called the National City Bank on Monday, June 12th, I was told that the date showing on the payment history is the date they "guarantee" ( this is laughable) delivery, not the send date. The check had been sent out June 1st. So, I called MBNA again and talked to a supervisor. I told her of the situation and she said that the late fee had already posted because the payment was past due. I reminded her that I have been a customer of theirs for 10 years now and have an excellent payment record with them. She said she could remove the late fee if I would agree pay interest on the account total from the due date until they received their payment. This would give me time to sort out things. Now I pay the balance off monthly, so I am not accustomed to paying interest, but this was much less than $39 so I said OK. I also told her I was going to wait one more day to make sure the check was lost before I paid my bank $29 to stop payment.

 

Well guess what folks?! When I checked on-line the morning of June13th with MBNA, my payment had been posted as of June12th. THE TRANSACTION DATE WAS JUNE 5TH. This means my check had been in their hands all this time and they had taken 7 days, or 1 week, to be process it. Hmm, what every happened to the "post it in 24 hours"? All that fuss, muss, bother and worry was for naught. Somebody wasn't doing their job. There is no sign of the late fee showing on my account, which I suppose automatically reversed when someone typed in the transaction date. But come on, this could have cost me $70 through no fault of mine. I sent payment on time. With all this ado, I could have prematurely put a stop payment on the check. Now that really would have steamed me even more.

 

SO, BEWARE PEOPLE! READ YOUR BANK ON-LINE BILL PAYMENT GUARANTEE CLOSELY. If they exclude US Mail delivery failure, you might as well put the payment in the mail yourself to payees who won't accept electronic transfers.

Edited June 16, 2006 by Mich (see edit history)

[Hadi 0]

Lucky you! You didn't loose any money, but here in my miserable country if that happened to me then they won't give @#$% for it. Plus they take 10% of the money that you want to send. Plus 10% on anything you buy with your credit card. Not only that but with a problem like that the people working in the bank won't even respond. So in our country you just keep paying but you won't get any money. So thank God we are rich!

[wariorpk 0]

Banks in general are really annoying. You can never really trust them to do what they say because its not like you can do anything about it if you don't accept leave the bank and unless you have a commercial account with millions of dollars to support their loans they won't even care. Also, if you start a business you can be sure they won't give you a loan but when your business does well they will do anything in their power to get your money. Banks are just horrible period.

[terminal2k 0]

i find a similar lack of service from a lot of large organizations, they seem to care only about money, and having good service just costs too much, nobody cares about anything these days, and even when "guarantees" and such are made they're not enforced. I know in the organization i work for the law is breached quite often each day and nothing happens, the government doesn't care, the people i work with don't care, and if I was to go and tell people outside of the company i'd get sued and probably never get another job working in a big company ever again.. hmmm, theres my "vent" anyway

[Mich 0]

On June 9th I called National City Bank to see if they had indeed sent the payment. I was told by them that the payment was "guaranteed" delivered by June 6th and if it wasn't posted, the payment was probably lost in the mail. I learned that the payee determines the type of payment transactions they accept. That is to say, some payees will accept electronic transfers and others want checks in the mail. MBNA chose the check method. Now this is important people. THE NATIONAL CITY BANK'S "GUARANTEE" DOESN'T INCLUDE DELAYS DUE TO FIRE, FLOOD, OR US MAIL DELIVERY FAILURE. So the they wouldn't "guarantee" anything and left me hung out to dry. Not only would it cost me $29 to stop payment on the check that they wrote; they wouldn't even send a letter to the payee letting them know that the payment was sent.

New developement on this folks. I received my latest statement from National City and it shows that the check I hand wrote to MBNA for my recent payment was converted to an electronic transfer. This means, National City allowed MBNA to dip into my account (using the account information on the bottom of the check) and take the money from my account without processing the actual check I wrote them. How is this? National City won't make an electronic transfer from my account to MBNA initiated by me, but they let MBNA initiate it. What protection is this? Now MBNA can jump into my account and take out whatever they want without processing the check and I have no proof of what amount I actually paid them. Somebody at MBN's end could make a huge mistake with a decimal point and I would spend months trying to get back my money. I am closing my account with National City as soon as I possibly can. Edited November 21, 2006 by Mich (see edit history)

[iGuest 3]

Oh the same thing just happened to me with my very 1st mortgage payment EVER. I submitted payment to be there by 8/31/09 and guess what! Still not there. I just had to stop payment on the check and pay the fee. What a fiasco that was. Good thing I caught it and wrote another check by the 15th.  I totally stopped the online bill pay and from now on will be handling it MYSELF.

-reply by Melissa