Psycho Sensei

So I had this First USA card for many many years. It was sold to Bank One. First thing I noticed was that my interest rate suddenly went up to over 26 percent. Since I don't normally carry a balance on my cards, the interest rate was irrelevant so long as the grace period was good, which this one was. About 9 years ago I had given a secondary card on this account to our nanny, which, of course, was also changed over to Bank One.

All was well for a long time, paying the card out of my brokerage account (ALSO through Bank One) until one day when I signed up with Bank One's online payment service, which I used to pay a bill early in December. I typed in the ABA routing number and the checking account number, which was accepted, and made a payment, which was also accepted. Approximately two weeks later, I got a letter saying there were insufficient funds. I called my broker and ranted and raved at him, but found out that there was plenty of money in the account, and no checks were marked returned. We all figured they'd just re-deposit, especially since it was off of one of their accounts.

That wasn't the case. Next bill I got had a finance charge of almost 100.00 and a late charge of 35.00. That's a LOT of money to pay for nothing. I called customer service and complained. They told me they couldn't figure out why the payment was returned, and the only people who could wouldn't be in until Monday, but I could call back then. Oh boy. Meantime, the nanny went to buy groceries and her card was declined.

I finally got through to our friends on the "payment team" and was told that none of this was their fault, that they don't accept "brokerage account" checks, despite the fact that they had accepted them for the over 10 years I had the account prior, and that no, their website shouldn't have to tell people this, regardless of the fact that this was one of THEIR accounts, and the website could easily have been programmed to tell when one of THEIR accounts wasn't going to be accepted. They also claimed it was not their fault that the letter said "insufficient funds" rather than "we don't take things off these types of accounts" which would have given me PLENTY of time to make another payment and avoid the finance charge. Moreover, because this "wasn't their fault" they would not rebate the finance charge they took.

I told them to cancel the account. Slime like this shouldn't have my money.