[Updated: September, 7th
I got an email from OnPoint Friday afternoon telling me that they were refunding the entire amount they removed in error. I appreciate them doing the right thing. I'm disappointed it took me writing publicly about it to get the appropriate response, but am appreciative that they DID do it. Thank you.
I live paycheck to paycheck. This month things ended up a bit tighter than usual and my debit card was declined when I tried to buy gas with it this morning. Knowing that I was pretty sure about the amount of money in my account, I fired up the online banking and took a look at what the problem might be. I found it, a seven-dollar charge for having an account that did not meet the minimum average balance requirement. It was the first time that that has happened in a long time, but it was not something for me to get angry about, I have an account with a minimum average balance requirement, I didn't meet the balance, so I pay the fee.
That said, I don't like those kind of surprises, so I called up my friendly OnPoint Community Credit Union and asked if there were another type of account where I wouldn't have to face the sometime seven-dollar fee. The young lady was very nice, asked me for my account number and said "Ohh you have interest checking which has that fee. If you change to basic checking there would never be a fee."
I responded with "Great, I think I'd like to do that, but are their any other services I would lose out on?" and this is where things went downhill for OnPoint and the nice girl who I was chatting with.
Her response was "Well with basic checking you do have to pay a fee for electronic bill-pay."
I was quite taken aback, because I have been paying a fee for my electronic bill-pay since I started using the service. I was under the impression it was the price I paid for using the service.
I asked her why I was being charged for it if I shouldn't have been being charged and she said "I'm sorry we must have made a mistake, let me see what I can do."
I waited a bit and she came back and said "I can refund four months worth of those charges."
At this point I was a bit frustrated. I had been paying the fee, because I thought I needed to and never thought to question it, and now I was being told that they had been taking $3.95 from my account every month for thirteen months that they should not have been taking due to an error on their part, and they were only going to credit me for four of those months.
I asked her how her proposal was right, and she said "You have 60 days after each statement to dispute any charges." My response was "How was I to dispute a charge I didn't know was wrong?" her response was "well it's all over the website and your statement." at which point I requested the four month reimbursement and left the call because I was getting too frustrated to be polite.
So if anyone from OnPoint reads this, How is that right? How is it right for you to make a mistake, a mistake which your representative has admitted, a mistake whereby you removed money that was rightfully your customer's from his account, and then refuse to give it back?
To me that's stealing, and just because someone doesn't know they're being stolen from doesn't make it OK.
