SOLTuesday: In Banking and Credit Card Purgatory

             On April 5, I spent two hours on the phone with my credit union and American Express about a check I had sent American Express. The ensuing conversations were so bizarre that I need to share with others. My daughter suggests this is why the banking system is such a mess.

            After getting an e-mail from American Express that my most recent payment, for March, had been rejected by the bank, I called PenFed Credit Union to find out why. The woman I spoke with said there was no record of ever having received the check (#226), and she even checked with a supervisor. (In addition, she said the most recent check they had a record was in January (#224), and there was no record of their receiving check #225. This was odd, since I’d never gotten any notice that that check was rejected.)

            I then called American Express, who assured me that the e-mail I’d received was an authentic e-mail from American Express. This customer representative also said the check had been presented, through an automatic process, three times to PenFed, and it was rejected with the message “Cannot be processed. Please refer to your financial institution.” (It appeared these words came from Amex, since PenFed wouldn’t use the words “your financial institution,” would it?) When I told this person that PenFed had no record of the check being presented to them, he said he would set up an investigation, which could take a maximum of 30 days, and I would be sent the results.

            Okay, back to PenFed. Here I spoke to a young man, who had no idea why there was no record of my check being submitted and wanted to know what the reason for rejection was. When I read him what the e-mail from Amex said, he asserted that couldn’t be the reason from PenFed because “the bank wouldn’t be processing its own check.” When I mentioned this was a check, he said with much surprise, “You sent a physical check?” He was the first one to suggest a conference call between PenFed and American Express, but I didn’t know how to do that, and he didn’t suggest any way

            Back to American Express. This time I spoke to a woman named Sarah, who was very encouraging. When I asked where the physical check is, she said it went to the payment center, where they verify that it’s a check from me, and it is automatically submitted. I wondered whether she could see the check, and she said, no, and there was no way for her to contact the payment center. And she knew nothing more about the reason why the check was rejected. Talking with her, she used the term “process” and it began to seem to me that there was a problem with semantics, that “process” meant one thing to Amex and another thing to Pen Fed. When I asked about a conference call, Sarah said there is an account services team, and they could take part in a conference call. She even gave me a phone number: 1-800-441-0518. I asked who should initiate the call, and she said PenFed.

            So, back to PenFed, this time a woman named Alice. I had to give the same long story to each person I spoke to, and each time added the number of people I had already spoken to at each company. Alice said it was impossible for her to call Amex for the conference call, and she checked with a supervisor and reported it was impossible for the supervisor to do that either. And she also couldn’t find any notice of check #225.

            So I called American Express again, this time to verify that they had been paid by my check #225. And they had. So why is there no record of it at PenFed? This was beginning to make me nervous about the PenFed system. Maybe I shouldn’t keep a checking account there. And it seemed I had been shunted, by the recording that always answered the phone both for American Express and for PenFed, to Credit department, not the same department wherethe previous people I’d been speaking to were. Why?

            This was getting weird. Back to PenFed, this time a very enthusiastic man named Anthony. I told him both of the problems — why was check #226 rejected? why no record of check #225 in the PenFed system since PenFed had sent American Express the money? — and he seemed quite taken by them. He also said he would have to do some research, and it would take more than five minutes. He would call me back tomorrow. He had a very joky manner; we had some back and forth about the Giants, football or baseball, and saying I was a Jets fan gained me his deep sympathy.

            That was almost it for the day. A total of an hour with each company. But what about the money I owed American Express? The payment is due April 11. What if this isn’t settled before then?

            The last person at Amex I spoke to suggested I pay online, and if the check is finally unfrozen and paid, I’d have a credit at the end of the month. So I went to the American Express website and tried to set up an account. For some reason I couldn’t figure out, it first told me I’d put in the wrong password or username, then I was blocked because I’d tried to log in too many times, and I was repeatedly told to change my password. Enough of that. I quit. Still haven’t paid, and have no desire to call American Express again. 

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