Duplicate payment to Citi CC

[caninelover]

I'm on hold with Citi customer service right now.

So I had a statement balance of about $5500 (had a big expense that I charged, and was going to pay off at the end of the month). I have autopay set up on the acct and the payment due date was Aug 3.

Towards the end of July, I got a little antsy and went ahead and made the payment, which posted on the 27th (a lot of my bills/mortgage get paid on the 1st and I wanted to make sure this big bill was cleared before those others started to go through). I figured the autopay would see a zero balance and then take zero dollars on 3rd.

Apparently I'm a dummy because the autopay took another $5500 out of my checking acct on Aug 3. And since I don't normally leave $11K in that basic checking acct, the acct was overdrawn. Fortunately most other bills and mortgage cleared before this happened, except for 1 which I now have an overdraft fee of $39 for.

I'm mad at myself for getting antsy with the payment but wtf? Their stupid system isn't smart enough to do basic math? Grrrr.

So, a little bit of b*itching and moaning, and a cautionary tale too...don't mess with autopay I guess...

 

[avengerki]

That is why I push from my bank account instead of pull from the creditors side. It is alot easier to control although you lose the auto-balance payment or what not(Depends on the bank and how it is setup).

And you may also lose the cc seeing the payment right away for the crediting which mine still waits to see the money anyway before getting the credit. It also depends on if the bank send the money by check or actual epayment. On the plus side you can use the banks transaction history to show a check was sent if the check was lost and can possibly get any late or interest charges removed.

 

[caninelover]

Yeah, apparently I created a big mess. So some convoluted rules say they have to wait until the 19th to be able to refund the amount to my checking acct. I asked if I transferred funds from another bank if that would speed things up (plus I need some money in there to pay mid-month bills). They said yes so I just put in a transfer from my Ally savings into the checking acct but that will take a couple of days to transfer, so I have to call them back when the funds show up.

I have this card set up for autopay because its a back-up card and usually only charge $50-$60 a month on it so I had it setup on autopay (this was a wierd one-off situation), I mostly use Amex and push that payment each month.

What a pain in the rear. I learned my lesson about the limitations of autopay though, for sure.

 

[caninelover]

Oh and the checking acct is Citi too (as well as the card) so it is epay, still confused about why it takes till the 19th to resolve it

 

[avengerki]

It may be the same company but different business units within the same company for accounting purposes. It becomes a mess since it needs to be turned over to a third department to credit back or something like that.

 

[caninelover]

Yes, avengerki, they transferred me to their credit refund department (I think that's what they called it) and gave me a number to call them back after I transfer funds from Ally. That makes a little more sense but they also said something about Federal Reserve rules? Sounded very convoluted to me so I didn't really get it...

 

[RonBoyd]

In the future there will only be two employees; a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog and the dog will be there to make sure the man doesn't touch any of the equipment.