Consumer complaint received 2023-03-28
Company: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
State: FL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Home equity loan or line of credit (HELOC)
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
Throughout my career, I've had to make financial decisions to protect my home from foreclosure due to changing wages and jobs. When I changed jobs years ago, I was concerned with making my mortgage payment during the low paying early years with my then company and took out a home equity line of credit with USAA Federal Savings Bank, XXXX XXXX, Texas. I've had this line of credit drawn to some extent since that time and am now in the last few months of attempting to pay off the equity loan to USAA. With any other account at USAA, customers are allowed to set up recurring payments on the USAA website, which is mostly quick and seamless and allows us to manage our interest bearing accounts in a timely manner. However, with USAA HELOC payments, USAA does not allow us to set up recurring payments on their website but forces us to submit paper documents through the US mail in order to set up recurring payments. As many people know, these payments can be large, which requires payments to change from time to time, based upon changing financial situations. USAA blocks our ability to seamlessly change principle recurring payments because these loans are interest bearing loans and USAA benefits from actions like this because it makes it difficult for members like myself to change principle recurring payments. USAA allows only ONE TIME PRINCIPLE payments via their website but will not allow me to make a recurring principle payment, nor change interest payment accounts, on the USAA website. Today, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates monthly and customers need a seamless way to change payments to HELOC loans. USAA is intentionally keeping this policy because this discourages those who are less capable for whatever reason that may be ( no printers, no access to computers, etc., ... ) from changing their payments for their benefit. If USAA can put obstacles like required paper documents having to be mailed to the banks headquarters in Texas, USAA knows that a portion of people will choose to delay this action or not to do this at all and USAA can capitalize on interest payments for these large HELOC loans. Today, I asked XXXX in the USAA Home Equity Loans Department why USAA does this and her explanation was to simply tell me the name of my Home Equity Line of Credit account as if the type of account was justification alone and with no explanation at all of why this is mandated. When I explained to XXXX the reasons why USAA is doing this to customers, her only reply was to state, " I don't think that is the reason why ''. When I asked her why she had that opinion, she admitted that she had no reason why she would say that, that she wasn't going to tell me why she thought that and was simply blindly backing USAAs decision to block our seamless ability to change HELOC recurring payment changes on their website. This action by USAA is not due to any local, state nor federal rules nor regulations nor laws and is simply being done to make more money from their members ... something they routinely state that they do not do. It is a corrupt practice and needs to be changed so members can immediately and seamlessly start or change HELOC recurring principle and/or interest payment details. USAA allows for automatic payments of many kinds : Automatic future payments of their VISA card balances ; third-party automatic recurring checking payments outside of USAA ; and on the USAA Pay Bills page, USAA allows members to both, " Set Up Automatic Payments '' and to " Modify Automatic Payments '', but when you ask to do this with a high interest yielding HELOC loan, USAA refuses to allow this to be done via the USAA website ... .. so they can make money off of the members, period. USAA needs to invest time, energy and money ( instead of the multi-million dollar contract paid out to XXXX superstar XXXX XXXX, one of the most famous and wealthy XXXX players in recent history for the most recent and well known membership add on national TV ) in order to provide a means by which members can both initiate and modify recurring principle and interest payments, just like they've done for almost every other account on USAA.com. This is a gross mismanagement of USAA members funds- paying millions to an extremely wealthy XXXX superstar rather than making programming features available to members, which will save them time and money. And this is an obvious tactic to abuse members for revenue instead of a seamless and service based experience. There simply is no regulation which prevents members from paying off HELOC loans seamlessly through the USAA website. USAA is simply doing this to extort money from their long time members.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation