Consumer complaint received 2018-12-29
Company: ASSOCIATED BANC-CORP
State: IL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
Hello. I have an issue that I have been unable to resolve with my mortgage company. My original mortgage was with XXXX XXXX   and it was sold to Associated Bank, XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX, WI XXXX, XXXX, a few months into my mortgage. While I was a costumer of XXXX XXXX I was able to use my online banking to submit my monthly payments. I have never missed a monthly payment. Recently, I went out of town and tried to set up a payment with my online bank, XXXX, to ensure that my mortgage payment would be made on time while I was away from my home/computer. When I was with XXXX I was able to submit electronic payments through XXXX within 1-2 business days. Now, with Associated Bank I can not make electronic payments through XXXX  and the total time it takes to submit a payment has more than doubled as XXXX has to submit a paper check to Associated Bank each month. As I explained to the nice employee at Associated Bank, my original mortgage was not through Associated Bank and I was never even given the option to have my mortgage not be sold to Associated Bank. As such, I would like to continue to use electronic/online banking to make my monthly payments as I was able to do with XXXX. I was informed that I could make electronic/online payments to Associated Bank but ONLY if I opened another bank account with Associated Bank. I feel like that is coercion and that forcing me to open an unnecessary bank account benefits Associated Bank but does not benefit me, the consumer- is this illegal? - I do not want to have another bank account and I do not feel that I should be forced to open another bank account in order to be able to pay my mortgage in the most timely manner. I have been using the same XXXX account to make all monthly payments since I began paying my mortgage in late XXXX ; again, I have established a history with my XXXX account from which payments are made and established a history of making payments in the total amount owed each month. I asked an employee via phone to file a complaint with Associated Bank and I did receive professional and courteous email correspondence on XX/XX/XXXX and and XXXX/XXXX which did not resolve the matter- I was told that the company would be " filing your complaint '' with no plan on an actual resolution. 

XX/XX/XXXX " Good morning XXXX, I certainly apologize for your frustrations regarding making payments electronically to your mortgage. As it appears our other agents had advised, in order to make payments using Associated Banks online banking system, you would need to have some type of internal account. However, many banks have a feature called bill pay which allows you to make payments to other merchants using their online banking system. I see that you do have a XXXX bank account and I do know that they offer bill pay through their online banking. You can certainly set up Associated Bank as a biller and pay us that way, as you would not have to manually make that payment each month. We also have an automatic payment option. If you would be interested in that, we either need to mail you the forms initially or you can stop at any one of our branches to sign those forms. Again, I apologize the feature for payment is not available within our online banking system for you as you do not have a type of deposit account with us, but I do recommend looking into using the bill pay feature offered within XXXX  online banking system or setting up automatic payments. If there is anything else that we can assist you with, please feel free to reach out to us at any point in time. '' Customer Care Center XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX XXXX to me Good morning XXXX, I understand your frustrations regarding this situation and will absolutely be filing your feedback regarding this matter. When I file your feedback, your concerns will be forwarded onto our Consumer Affairs team and they take and file the feedback and work towards resolutions to the concerns. I can not guarantee a change, however, this is the process we take to push for changes in procedures. If you are looking for a way to make the payments electronically, we do still have the option for automatic payments available if you were interested. Again, I apologize for any inconvenience and if there is anything else that we can do for you, please do let us know. 

Thank you, XXXX XXXX Training Specialist | Customer Care Center

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation