Customer Service Hell vol 4815162342 -- Capital One: Long and lame

The BBQ Pit
1

From the company that offers the “No Hassle” Card and makes a big deal out of their customer service.

Oh. My. God. Today, my personal Customer Service Hell record (previously held by Sprint PCS) was busted wide open by the fine folks at Capital One. I am slow to ire but boy howdy get me angry and I will never forget. Capital One today took my anger today and took to it like a loan shark with a tire iron. It is now lying at a Jersey wharf somewhere, bleeding onto oily cold concrete.

Our mortgage was through Hibernia. In the semi-yearly mortgage shuffle, Hibernia was bought by Capital One two months ago. Usually these things go smoothly. Bills come from another company and we change the online automatic bill pay address. Hibernia was nice enough to send a nice letter informing me in pleasant Helvetica that nothing would change – keep your same loan number, your same payment schedule, your same receiving address.

So nothing changed. Payments for the 5/1/06 and 6/1/06 due dates went out automatically from the online banking. Or so I thought, until Capital One sends me notice that my May mortgage is delinquet, I am being reported to a credit agency, and I have a $40 late fee on top of it. I got that Saturday. Luckily I am on vacation, so I thought I would take care of what is obviously a clerical error this morning. I am armed with the new Capital One account number, the old Hibernia number, and every document necessary. Should be a breeze, right?

Bright and early, at 8 AM sharp when the customer service opened up, I Capital One Mortgage Services. Press 1 for English, 6 to speak to a customer service representative – click, click, click – “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.” I tried again, same thing, something is broke. Checked the website, got two other customer service numbers, same dealy. OK, let’s try arranging this online, the website says that all Hibernia and Capital One stuff can be handled online. Nope, “Account is Restricted/Not Found in System” – either Capital One or Hibernia account numbers. OK, phone Online Customer Support and I have to say after only 20 minutes of hold time, they were very helpful. After trying to convince me to phone the Capital One Mortgage folks (which I refuse), they tell me the mortgage was being managed by City Mortgage or something, gave me two contact numbers, and a direct number to phone Online Customer Support with an extension in case of problems. Unfortunately, both numbers for City Mortgage are wrong. I try the three Capital One Mortgage numbers again – still disconnected. I try Capital One Main Support line, keep “on hold” for 15 minutes with no hold music or anything, figure that something is broken. I try again, same business, give up after 5 minutes of dead silence. I give up with main support and phone my new direct number to Online Customer Support, unfortunately there is no extension prompt so I try with a number sign, hold 20 minutes, speak to a new customer service person, convince him that I can’t get through to Capital One Mortgage, he tells me my account actually is being managed by Dovenmuehle Mortgage, two contact numbers, and of course I try them but both numbers are wrong.

Elapsed time so far, 3 hours.

For shits and giggles, I try Capital One Mortgage again. Holy fuck it is ringing and not hanging up on me. Goes to hold, I hold for 15 minutes, it starts ringing, I let it ring for 10 minutes, it puts me back on hold for another 10 minutes and lo and behold someone picks up. A real, honest to god human being. Or so I thought. I breathlessly explain what all has gone on, and to find out I have been connected to some unnamed extra double cast as Evil Cyborg/Heartless Bitch #3. She’s having no part of this. She can’t tell me where my two mortgage payments have gone, if they have kept the money, and tells that despite them having bought Hibernia, despite Capital One never having billed me, I am delinquent, I am being reported to a credit agency this week, and I owe them two months mortgage plus $40. I slowly move from pleading to annoyed to irate to full blown batshit yelling in the phone “I can’t believe you are doing this to me!!!.” She refuses to let me speak to a supervisor. She refuses to budge with anything. She tells me I had better fax them copies of both sides of this online check today to avoid being reported. She tells me that it is all my online bank’s problem even though the first I heard from these folks (and indeed, the first time I had seen my new account number) is my delinquent notice. She will knock of the late fee as a one time courtesy, but I am eligible only once over the 30 year period of the loan. I even did the whole “I’ve got access to legal services, can I get an address to send a certified letter for legal action?” Didn’t budge. She had superhero levels of uncaringness and unreasonability, a veritable Terminator of Compassion “Have You Seen This Legitimate Excuse?”. She certainly ruined my Monday (and Tuesday). I, in my once-ever-three-years loss of temper, wasn’t even a bug on her windshield.

I phone the online bank (Bank of America – total hold time under 10 minutes), ask them the status of the checks – the April one (due in May) has just been returned to them a few days ago – they had sent another check to a new address for Hibernia on Friday. The May for June 1 also went out on Friday. I stop payment on all three and cut a new check (without the late fee – they’ll pry that out of my cold dead hands.)

Phone back the Capital One Mortgage people to tell them I had paid up and to again demand my late fee is knocked off. Hold for 20 minutes, get a new guy “Our systems are down please try back tomorrow.”

Sum total, around 5 hours on the phone. Accomplished? Nothing. And I have another 30 minutes at least of on-the-phone pleading tomorrow. And guess what arrived in the mail today? My first bill from Capital One Mortgage…

How does anyone who isn’t on vacation accomplish this shit? Are these people for real? Why would anyone voluntarily give any kind of business to such a shitty assed company? What the fuck kind of childhood trauma is necessary to turn someone against any notion of helpfulness? What the fuck is wrong with the world today when simple clerical/billing problems prompt threats of ruined credit and take a full day to resolve?

2

That blows. I’d file a complaint with your state’s banking commission, attorney general, better business bureau, and any other bureaucratic agency I could find.

3

I don’t have any advice (no experience with mortgages), but I will let you steal my name for them:

Crapital One

4

I just have to day, “Bravo” on a superior rant! I also dislike Crap One, so this hits home with me. I even tried to use their “convenient” Blank Check auto loan service once, which was neither convenient or much of a service.

5

That was a long post, so I’m not sure I got it all but here are two pieces of information that you might find useful:

First, you cannot be reported to a credit reporting agency as late on a mortgage until you are in excess of 30 days late. From your post, it looks like you have a few days to avoid that one.

Second, there are laws that govern the sale of loan servicing, and there are special provisions regarding how the first payments after transfer must be treated.

I am, by trade, an Escrow Officer. If you’re interested, I will post below a few excerpts from an actual Servicing transfer disclosure agreement.

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSULT AN ATTORNEY FOR LEGAL ADVICE.

Your situation is covered under RESPA (Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act).

Servicing Transfer Disclosure excerpt:

Complaint Resolution

Section 6 of RESPA (12 U.S.C. 2605) gives you certain consumer rights, whether or not your loan servicing is transferred. If you send a “qualified written request” to your services, your servicer must provide you with a written acknowledgement within 20 business days of receipt of your request. A “qualified written request” is a written correspondence, other than a payment coupon or other payment medium supplied by the servicer, which includes your name and account number, and the information regarding your request. Not later than 60 business days after receiving your request, your servicer must make any appropriate corrections to your account, or must provide you with a written clarification regarding any dispute… During this 60-business day period, your servicer may not provide information to a consumer reporting agency concerning any overdue payment related to such period or qualified written request.

Transfer Practices and Requirements

*If the servicing of your loan is assigned, sold, or transferred to a new servicer, you must be given written notice of that transfer. The present loan servicer must send you notice in writing of the assignment, sale, or transfer of the servicing not less than 15 days before the effectove date of the transfer. The present servicer and the new servicer may combine this information in one notice, so long as the notice is sent to you 15 days before the effective date of the transfer. The 15 day period is not applicable if a notice of prospective transfer is provided to you at settlement. The law allows a delay in time (not more than 30 days after a transfer) for servicers to notify you, upon the occurence of certain business emergencies.

Notices must contain certain information. They must contain the effective date of the transfer of the servicing of your loan to the new servicer, the name, address and toll free or collect call telephone number of the new servicer, and toll free or collect call telephone numbers of a person or department for both your present servicer and your new servicer to answer your questions. During the 60-day period follwoing the effectice date of the transfer of the loan servicing, a loan payment received by your old servicer before it’s due date may not be treated by the new loan servicer as late, and a late fee may not be imposed upon you.*

When you closed your loan with Hibernia, there should have been a document in your paperwork that spelled out these things. I would pull out my old loan docs and take a look, and see if Capital One has abided by the terms of the agreement and by RESPA Section 6 requirements. If they have violated Section 6, you can report them to your local HUD (Housing and Urban Development) office.

6

When Capital One took over Hibernia, they moved 300 jobs from the New Orleans headquarters of Hibernia to Dallas. The move was said to be in response to Katrina but a few friends who work there said it was planned well before and Katrina provided a nice excuse. I figure most of this is the pains of changing over facilities and systems. The best bet is to do what our customer at Chase do, go into a branch and sit in front of a banker to get it resolved.

7

Well I think that the simple way to apply this thread to my own life is to follow edwino’s clear advice to not take out a mortgage.

It’ll be a cardboard box for me, no matter how much I ultimately stand to make through my lucrative eBay used children’s wear and cod-liver oil wholesaling business.

8

But think of how low your overhead will be!

-Joe

9

I was all set to come in and say “That’s what you get by choosing Capital One, dummy!” I had no idea Cap1 was buying up the accounts of people who avoided doing business with their horrible company.

Good luck, you’ll need it.

10

A great rant, edwino, full of pathos and ire. It had a good beat, and I could dance to it!

As KSO says, write any and every applicable agency from the banking commission to the better business bureau. Heck, maybe even your state rep. You never know what may come of it.

Heh heh. “Crapital One”.

11

Re-Fi. Get away from Capital One. Run- don’t walk. Pay the costs involved with a smile.

12

It’s a nice theory. But what do you do when they buy up the company you move to?

13

Called this morning again. 15 minutes of hold, different operator, same attitude. I think one of the prerequisites for working there is surgical removal of any sense of empathy. It is a company filled with Roy Battys. I nearly asked the operator if he had seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Wilbur Mercer, dude. Or perhaps they use an MMPI to recruit only antisocial personality disorder people.

Anyway, started off again with my pleasantest voice. In this case, I got the operator to yell at me before I started yelling at him. He accussed me of being irresponsible, of not checking my bills, etc. etc. Apparently, even though Hibernia had never complained, they had changed my account number (or so Capital One claims, although I trust that company about as far as I can kick em), and I was irresponsible for not checking my account number every month. Of course I check the balance, make sure the bill is paid, which it always is. As mentioned above, I do automatic bill pay, never had a late payment in 3 years, never had an issue, but because my account number changed now I am a credit risk, irresponsible, and worthy of scorn and late fees.

So he yelled at me for about 5 minutes. First I tried to be reasonable – “Sir, if your power bill account number changed from month to month, would you notice?” He answered “Of course, I study my bills every month.” So I suppose this guy has Sherlock Holmesian levels of observational skills, which have apparently served him very well in landing a highly coveted spot in a collection agency call center. And Jesus it sounds like he loves his job. Perhaps the operators there have contests on “average time to caller’s lost temper” while pulling the legs off of spiders. Of course between his yelling and the situation, it quickly devolved into me yelling, this time with him yelling back. Quite reasonable behavior for a multi-billion dollar company and really worth that $40 late fee. Perhaps he gets a percentage.

So I took the once-in-30-years late fee waive that he offered. As I mentioned, the house is on the market and hopefully I won’t have to deal with these fucks. And Capital One, in any incarnation, will get no business from me or anyone on which I have any influence.

Fuckin’ androids.

14

Thank you all for being so reasonable. And thank you Cherry2000 for letting me know about that 30 day thing. When they threatened again today to report me unless they got payment IMMEDIATELY (the check will be there Thursday), I let them know that I knew that I had 30 days. That shut Mr. Batty up about that this morning… I also threatened to report them to my HUD office about RESPA but he didn’t seem moved by that.

People, please, avoid Capital One like the plague. No matter how cute you find their commercials.

15

Oddly, their ads are highly realistic when you realize that they are really about their own customer service. :smiley:

Ponder- they can’t buy all of them.

16

One of my consumer rules is that the cuter and more elaborately-produced the commercial is, the more likely it is that the product and customer service will suck. Thanks for the warning about Crapital One; it confirms my theory.

17

Wow, that sucks ass.

I had something similar, though not quite as bad, happen maybe 15 years ago. It was before the phone company was busted up.

Since I didn’t have a checking account at the time, I paid all my bills by money order.

So I sent in a money order to the phone company maybe 3 weeks before it was due. 3 weeks later, my phone was dead. I called the support center and spoke to a very nice guy. I explained my situation. He said it was no problem, just put a stop payment on the check and send in a new one, and service will be restored later that day. I did and it was. All was well with the world.

Some 3 weeks after that, my phone was cut off again. The ignorant cunt of a poor excuse for an ignorant cunt that I got that time was not nearly as nice or understanding. She accused me of being a deadbeat. “You stopped payment on your check, of course we cut you off!”, she oozed. When I explained that I was instructed to do so by one of her collegues, she called me a liar. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, she refused. She was a nasty, belligerant, scumsucker of an ignorant cunt.

I can’t remember how it was resolved, but I know I went phoneless for about a week.

As it turns out, any mail sent to the phone company not in their special bill-paying envelope goes to a special unread mail center, where it might not be opened for months.

18

Preach it. We refinanced our house, and took a good hit when we did, just so we could get out of Capital One. We went through the same nightmare you did with customer service. No matter what you threaten, they have the ultimate power: They can always foreclose.

The dispute that finally tipped it over the edge was compounding late fees for a payment while we were in dispute over that payment. They started foreclosure proceedings, and we cried “Uncle.” Not once did we talk with anyone that didn’t act like we were weasels trying to get out of an honest obligation.

Sure, we could sue, and in the dream world where money is no object, I’d would have loved to (and if you look on the Internet, you’ll see plenty of other disgruntled people), but it was cheaper to just refinance and take a hit with their questionable owe-to-date formulas.

I’m becoming a bitter, cynical cudmudgeon.

19

Yeah, that’s 'cause Chase owns the rest. Lousy banks.

20

What’s with mortgage companies? I had one a few years ago, I would send in my payment on time, they would hold the check for a couple of weeks and cash it on the 15th, the last day it was due without a late fee. Sometimes they would send me a notice saying if they didn’t get the check by the 15th I would have to pay more, but I could of course pay a fee and pay by phone.

When I moved I got a new company, who of course sold my loan the next month to the same damn company. The first month they didn’t cash my check as usual and sent me a late fee. I just threw it away and they haven’t bothered me about it. But they still hold checks for weeks, unless of course I send it in a week or so early, then my checks get cashed within two or three days. I think they just like to see how many people they can get to pay a late fee even though they don’t owe it.