Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

Bank errors in your favor only happen in Monopoly.

Thursday morning, on my birthday, I had a rude awakening. A bill I had paid with an electronic check back in November had bounced into my email account, proclaiming itself unpaid. I double checked my funds, and sure enough, I did have enough. So it wasn't that I did not have enough money in the account.

Now, that would not have been a problem, if the vendor had not assessed me lien fees, late fees, and demand payment in full for this month, as specified in that same Email. All in all this totaled three times the amount of my initial payment.

I called my bank to see what was going on and after some verbal wrangling they told me I had used the wrong routing number. I told the representative that since I had been with them for 13 years and paid this same vendor previously with checks for the same account without a problem. I also reminded her that they had returned another payment for another vendor 2 weeks ago and when I called them on that, they had said nothing about a different routing number. Once I put the payment through again (with the same routing number), it did not get rejected. How could that be? Plus, I was thinking in my head how quick the bank would react had I made a mistake!

In the middle of this conversation my phone went dead. I had went over my allotted minutes for the month (no I do not have a fancy cell phone), so that was that. I spared myself the effort of calling back from another phone. As you know, modern customer service always gives you another person and you do not get a chance to talk to whoever worked on your issue.

I called the local vendor and he told me he could do nothing about the extra charges, but he gave me the phone number for the manager. I called him, and after some explanations he said he would fix the over charges, but he could not do that until I came up with the amount for both months. He gave me until around Christmas to come up with it. I can only hope he will follow through.

There is no reason for doubt really, but you know how people can say one thing and mean another and forget about you within a couple of weeks. If he does follow through, it was a nice birthday present and I will write up a letter to send to his supervisor because he was willing to fix a problem that originated with my bank.

In the meantime, I hesitate to now use my checking account for payments. Alas, it's the only one I got. Oh, and they also started assessing a new monthly fee recently. More fees, less service - that seems to sum up today's corporate world. Did I mention I used to work for these clowns and saved them over 100 Million Dollars over the course of seven years?