Maybe that's not your method of accepting payment -- but that's what they did

[Pixilated]

bg/One of my credit cards was recently bought out by Large Canadian Bank. Somehow their internet paying capabilities didn't get transferred properly, or something. The last time I tried to pay the bill online the money bounced back to my account. I've not done business with the LCB that now owns the credit card so can't pay from an LCB account./end bg

A faceless voice on phone advised me some months ago to go to local branch and pay there. I've been doing that. This last time they charged me a $3 service charge (don't remember them doing that before, but ...)

This last payment was made Feb. 10. Yesterday (Feb. 15) I get a call from Credit Card Central asking where my now overdue payment was. I explained that I'd paid it at the branch and they said I would have to go to the branch and find out what happened because they hadn't gotten it yet.

So I go to the bank today and in fact get the same cashier. She explains that since I paid by cash, they took the cash and tore off the bottom of the bill, stamped both halves of the bill (I have the date-stamped upper half) and the lower half was sent to Credit Card Central in their normal outgoing mail. Which means it will get there whenever National Post gets it there.

I call Credit Card Central back and explain the situation. I make a point of saying I don't have an account there, and thus paid cash, and so they stamped the two halves of the bill and sent the one half off to CCC via snail mail.

Faceless Voice: "But ... that's not how we accept credit card payments."

Me: (finally getting PO'd) "Look, sir, that is what they told me they did. I don't know what else you expect me to do. That is how they accepted my payment and that's what they told me they did with it."

Then he got diverted by asking why I was having so much trouble paying my monthly balance. Pity I didn't think to remind him I'd sent a $1,000 payment last fall, via online banking, and it bounced back because when Large Canadian Bank took over the credit card, they didn't seem to do a good job of overhauling their online banking system ...

Anyway, I finally bowed to the inevitable and opened an account with this particular bank, so I can pay from the account (that's supposed to mean the payment will go through in 24 hours). But man, I can't wait to sever all ties with this bloody credit card company.

[Sapphire Silk]

You should also sever ties with this bank. I have never in my life heard of such a ridiculous policy for processing credit card payments.

[Pixilated]

Panacea, indeed, I plan to -- as soon as the credit card is paid off. That's the trouble with the huge banks: the individual sites may be fine (the people here were very helpful and almost abnormally cheerful ) but the overall corporate attitude is, shall we say, typical.

[dalesys]

An appropriate song: We're The Bank - Cheryl Wheeler.

[MoonCat]

Weird shit happens when policies or owners change.

We got rid of our advertising customer service dept. (guess who gets to do it all now?). Last month, a customer sent a check to pay for an ad. Somebody sent it directly to accounting, rather than to me (I took the ad) so I never knew it came in. So the ad never ran. The money was sitting on the guy's account & no one called me to say so. We do not send payments directly to accounting without applying them to the ad...but somebody did. No idea who. And it's taken a month to get them to cut a check to refund the man's money.

[RealUnimportant]

My bank's only just started accepting instant online payments for cards I have with them from an account I also have with them... It's taken 5 YEARS to get this set up, since they first started allowing instant payments to other institutions until they actually accepted them to/from themselves.

Fortunately they've always been very good to me, so I wasn't worried about the facility's non-existance; now I have it, I love it.