Consumer complaint received 2018-08-28
Company: PNC Bank N.A.
State: MN
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Lease
Issue: Managing the loan or lease
Sub-issue: Billing problem

Complaint:
I have been having problems with this company since early this year. 
I had emailed my 'portfolio manager ' information that I wanted to set up auto draft. I hadn't heard back from him so I figured everything went fine because I submitted the document that was forwarded and requested from them. I did not know at the time that I had no choice in the date for an auto-payment withdrawl at that point. I submitted a couple emails with the form filled out with no reply. 
Several months go by and I realize that the money is not coming out of my account when I start getting collection calls and emails. So I reply to the emails since my work schedule doesn't allow for me to make too many personal calls during the day. 
I stopped receiving calls shortly after, thinking that they received my request to pull the past due amounts from my account and to make sure the auto-draft was started. 2 weeks later the calls start up again and again I finally get someone on the phone. I do not recall who it was but it was a customer service person. I got my account back in good standing and stated I will email in the form once again to the address they have listed and I double checked that was still the right address. So I did just that. I didn't hear back from them that anything was wrong. No email reply. 
Time goes by and with spring being a busy time for me running an equine boarding stable plus working a FT job, I start getting collection calls again. I am irate at this point. I have done everything they have asked me to do and yet they still refuse to set my account up on automatic drafts as I had requested. So I finally get in touch with a supervisor, a XXXX XXXX, which the reps were trying so hard to not do, and he and I exchanged emails after a very heated discussion about the past rep not doing what I had stated he would. He stated that they can not take payments out any other day but the 1st of the month. Everything I had sent indicated I wanted the 5th or later, but XXXX XXXX XXXX stated this was not possible. So I guess they just chose to ignore my emails instead of address the issue? I forwarded the emails I had sent to the previous rep with the forms, and it was confirmed from XXXX XXXX in an email that he would follow up on that rep 's email management. Either way, I was still behind on lease payments again. Along with late charges that they refused to remove even though their lack of communication caused the late charges to accrue. 
I then replied stating that while having the payment withdrawl date be on the 1st is a financially difficult thing for me, just go ahead and set it up that way because they don't take payments any other way except mailing a check ( which I don't trust that they won't mysteriously misplace like they have in the past, akin ignoring my emails to set up auto-draft ) or making a payment over the phone which they charge you {$15.00} each time they take the payment over the phone, which is extortion. No company charges that much to take money from you. There is no option to pay online or even through an automated system. This makes it very difficult to give them the money to do so. When I signed the lease originally, it was not disclosed to me that changing the payment date would not be possible and back then it wasn't as much of a concern. Back when I signed the lease, I was in a different job that paid weekly so money in the account was not a concern. Now I am paid twice a month from my new salary position, which is the XXXX and XXXX of each month. I am lucky to receive any payments from my XXXX   on the 1st. It is rare because most of them are paid in a similar interval to me. 
So thinking that XXXX XXXX XXXX had followed through with my email to set it up on the 1st, I moved on. Boy was I wrong. XXXX XXXX XXXX had not followed through, just like the portfolio manager he was supposed to follow up on. I get a call today saying I am behind ... with more late charges and they insist on charging me the {$15.00} phone-payment fee to take the money they were supposed to be auto-drafting. So I check my account ... and yep, none of the payments had been drafted. Yet because I had already assumed they had been taken out as I intended. So now, if I talk to the person over the phone to get caught up, they want to extort more phone-payment fee money from me plus late fees that should never have been charged to the account. XXXX XXXX XXXX claims to have not deleted emails nor to have received the one I replied to/sent. Given that this is what the other rep ( XXXX XXXX in the email chain ) had stated, this seems to be a trend that I wonder if XXXX XXXX has taken notes from XXXX XXXX on unethical business practices. To charge late fees after claiming they never received a check, nor my emails, and then to get the account caught up I have to pay another fee on top of it unless I want to mail another check they can lose. This is excessive and they deliberately make it difficult and expensive to make payments to charge late fees. 

I have continued to connect with the company via email to resolve this. Since the above has happened, I have also requested on XX/XX/XXXX that {$250.00} be taken from my account to complete the XXXX payment that their incompetence had made late and not paid. I continued to get calls and emails. Today, I stated that I would like them to withdraw two payments in the amount of {$220.00}, for a total of {$440.00} for the XXXX and XXXX payment. I was then notified that the XXXX payment had not been made, despite me receiving an email confirmation from agent XXXX XXXX. She claims I never replied to her email so she didn't make the payment. Yet I have confirmation of said reply to her email. She claims she has never received it. 

This continues to be a problem and as I see it, it is a way to get additional fees and charges and finance income by intentionally not putting requested payments through and any check I send, they claim they don't receive, despite having tracking numbers stating that it was received by their office.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation