I was hoping that someone could help me with situation, I'm a bit of a novice & could use some advice. I have never been late on any payment to anyone until this past month. I sent a payment for my car in January & thought nothing else of it, b/c I have never b/4 had a problem. In Feb. I get a notice that I am past due. I checked my bank account, & sure enough the check had not cleared. I tried to explain to GMAC what happened & sent another payment. The day after I sent it & notified GMAC, they called my co-signer & told her that I had not contacted them. I called again, explained again, & asked that calls be directed to me. I took all of their repeated calls (pretty much a daily basis) & explained everytime that the check had been sent. 8 days after I sent it, I finally talked to someone who didn't treat me like a liar. He told me that I should pay my Jan. payment by phone & when the check came in, it would be applied to my Feb. bill. If the check didn't come in, I should cancel it & pay it by phone as well. The address that I might had sent payment to, wasn't the best so he said it might just be taking some time to process. At this time, my payment was not a month late. I took the steps to do the phone payment & was told by them that it would be posted on my account by midnight. I could not contact the finance co. again b/c they were updating their systems for 3 days. I get yet another call this Monday telling me that they had not gotten my check (11 days after I sent it) & my phone payment had not been processed yet. I then decided to cancel the check & pay both by phone. At this time my Jan. payment was officially a month late & this is going to be a mark on my credit. I tried to explain that I had sent 2 checks & I had worked with them everyway I could. I had paid the extra fee to do it by phone & TWO fees to stop payment on the checks that they didn't get. I realize to them, I probably sound like I am making excuses but I do have the paper work on these stopped checks. The lady told me she would have someone call me so I could discuss it with him but she didn't think they would remove this from my report. "b/c it is my responsibility to get payments to them & they can't control the postal system" Well, neither can I. & short of driving across country & placing my payment in their hands I don't know what else I could have done. Frankly, I would assume that it has more to do with their processing dept. than the postal system since I have had this problem twice with them but no one else. I honestly don't know how 2 checks could have gotten lost no matter where it happened, but I assure you, I wouldn't pay a stop payment fee on something I didn't send. I have never had a problem with GMAC until now, although there have been occasions where I didn't get my billing statement (including this past month), which seems to point to their processing rather than the mail. I have yet to recieve the phone call to discuss my credit, I don't really expect them to make any efforts to contact me regarding it. I WILL be making optional payment arrangements as I no longer trust sending payments to them. Well that was the long way around to getting to my questions...One, is there anything I can do to keep this from getting on my report? Two, do I have a legitmate complaint or do I just sound like I am making excuses? Is there a place that I could file a complaint not just about the mark, but the fact that 2 payments were lost or delayed. Who all should I contact? I am just so upset by all of this. I normally let things slide, but I have taken pride in building my credit AND I truly made the efforts to make my payments and I strongly feel that it had more to do with their mistakes than mine. I was wondering if this has happened to anyone else. Sorry this got so long. Thank you for any help you can give me.
Check your report to make sure it isn't on their yet. If it's not you may be in the clear. How long have you had this account? Do a search for "litigious nutcase letter". Edit the letter to fit your situation, place the blame on them and send copies of your stop payment proof. Notify them that this has happened before and also note about your payment history being perfect. I would also try to planetfeedback them.
Sorry to hear about your frustrating situation. I have been down that path too w/ GMAC. Regarding payments-I had a similar experience. They actually keyed in the wrong payment amount towards my payment- of course, it was about 300$ less than the payment that I made! The only reason that I found out about this prior to my next billing statement was that I was paranoid about GMAC receiving payments and I would call nearly daily after I had sent payment. When I did hear that the check had been received, but the payment was in the wrong amount, I immediately called. They wanted me to fax them a copy of the check right away-of course, I had to prove my innocence. I told them that was not possible, the bank couldn't get it to me for at least a week. I was worried, like you-but I did talk to a supervisor, to ensure that I would not be penalized and that I would not incur interest on this mistake! I also got her name and let her know that I would be sending customer service a copy of a letter w/ this info to ensure that we were all in understanding that I would not be penalized. It was resolved without a problem. But they aren't generally helpful, and always treat you like a deadbeat from the word go-at least in my experience. I also had a problem w/ GMAC NOT crediting payments timely during the holidays. I unsuccessfully disputed interest that I had incurred as a result of them not crediting payments for 3 weeks (I know that it wasn't a delay on my part, since other bills I sent w/ the car payment were received and processed within 5-7 days). I disputed it without success-but the rep did tell me that "we don't report you as late until you are 31 days late." Now, this is just my experience, but that is what I was told, so given your situation, you might not be penalized. But you might want to go ahead and write to the customer service department right now, return receipt, a summary of what is going on, of what you have had to spend your time on to rectify what if probably their mistake...and that you would expect not to be penalized since you have been so proactive to resolve this issue ASAP. Whew-that was long! I had a lot of bad experiences w/ GMAC finance, customer service, and products, so this is kinda a sore spot with me! Good luck though!
I had a similar but not quite similar problem with a payment. My mortgage payment needed to travel 300 miles via the USPS. 300 miles. 5 hours. I have online banking and keep tabs on which checks are outstanding. After a few days I began to worry since the check didn't clear. Called the bank they haven't received the payment. Did this for several days. The day before the actual due date, I call the mortgage company again to see if my payment has shown up. No payment. So I have to pay $15 to overnight a payment to my mortgage company so the payment wouldn't be late (we have a grace period, but it was my first payment to this bank after a refinance and having to utilize the grace period already didn't appeal much to me). I used UPS - sure as hell wasn't trusting the post office to overnight something if they can't get something there in 2 weeks. 2 days after my due date, the check showed up. It took 14 days for the PO to get my check 300 miles. Another payment took them 6 days to get it about 5 miles. I now have direct debit for my mortgage payment. I'm depending on the post office for as little as possible. No one believes the excuse that the 'check is in the mail' even when it really is. Companies (in my experience) don't bother looking at the postmark to see when you sent it. What worries me is what if I wasn't neurotic about checking my checking account every day? I wouldn't have known that the check was outstanding after all that time and I could have been assessed a late charge ($80!) Sorry to go off on a tangent, but the fact is that the postal service is getting worse. And then they keep upping their prices for service that rivals a snail on downers. <stepping off my soapbox> Ozzy.
My advice is to debit everything. I write three checks a month - our auto insurance, water bill, and electric bill. Everything else I debit out my subaccount (I don't like anyone having access to my main account...yes, I'm paranoid). I pay a week before payment is due and have never had any problems...car payments, home, credit card bills, etc. And I sleep a whole lot better. I agree with Ozzy that the service at the post office is at an all time low. Mail is taking alot longer to receive, prices are higher, mail security, etc. Unfortunately, most companies don't look at the postmark or give a good customer the benefit of the doubt. It is all about greed, not customer service. Dani
