Consumer complaint received 2022-04-11
Company: PENTAGON FEDERAL CREDIT UNION
State: PA
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Loan
Issue: Managing the loan or lease
Sub-issue: Billing problem

Complaint:
Primary Owner XXXX XXXX XXXX Account # XXXX PenFed Routing # XXXX Personal Loan application # XXXX Auto Loan application # XXXX XXXX Card number application # XXXX To whom it may concern, XX/XX/2022 I have been locked out of my account ( can't login ) for since XXXX. For the first 6-8 weeks or so, I was told by various customer service representatives that my inability to login was a technical problem, that the problem had been referred to your technical department, and would be solved soon. 

In the month of XXXX, I received an email from you that my personal loan application ( # XXXX ) was approved. I still could not login to my account to finish the acceptance of the personal loan, despite repeated calls to customer service. A few weeks later, I was notified by email that my personal loan application ( # XXXX that had been approved ), was now expired. 

I was notified by email ( also in XXXX while still locked out of my account -- that I could now transfer funds between my XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX account and my PenFed account. Though I still login to my PenFed account, I transferred the necessary funds to pay my monthly bills from my PenFed account using ACH transfer from my XXXX account. 

Soon after, I was notified by XXXX that you reversed the transfers I made from my PenFed account to my XXXX account, without a word of explanation to me ( nor did you give a reason to XXXX for reversing the transfers ), after you giving me explicit permission by email to make transfers of fund -- if you would like, I can forward that email back to you. I am actually afraid to look at my XXXX account, knowing that I must have tremendous overdrawn fees. 

In early XXXX ( still unable to login to my account ), you notified by email that my auto loan ( # XXXX ) was approved, and that I should login, and accept the terms of the loan. I called your customer service line for the XXXX or XXXX time. This time I was told to upload ID documents, which I did immediately, carefully preserving the ID document reference numbers. 

Still, though I tried daily, I could not login. Approximately a week later, you notified me that the auto loan, like the personal loan, had expired. 

I signed documents to buy the car from the seller at the time that you notified me by email that my auto loan was approved ). Consequently, I am now in breach of the contract I signed to purchase the vehicle, ( due to my inability to login, and complete the auto loan acceptance form ). In addition, some of my monthly bills are still outstanding because you reversed the transfers from my PenFed account ( that you notified me were permitted by email ). 

So I called PenFed customer service again ( the 5th, 6th or 7th time, I lost count ). This time I was told to upload ID documents, which I did weeks ago ( carefully preserving the reference numbers given by your software for the upload of each ID ). Still I could not log in to my account. 

Finally, when the seller of the car ( the car for which I obtained the PenFed auto loan that expired because I could not login ) threatened to sue me ( again ) for breach of contract, I contacted you again. 

This time I was told I had not submitted the ID documents, so I gave your customer representative the reference numbers I received from your software at the time I had uploaded the ID documents. 

After asking me to hold, your customer service representative returned to the call, and verified that I had indeed uploaded all the ID documents requested, and that all the ID had been verified, and accepted. 

Then your customer representative told me that the ( real ) problem was that I had conflicting email addresses on my account ( different spellings of what seemed to be the same email address ). After some minutes, he and I figured out that my email address was not transferred correctly by the PenFed software ( copied from one location in your records, to another location in your records ). 

The correct spelling of my email address is : XXXX ( my last name has a space in it, so I use a period to represent the space in XXXX XXXX ). However, your software copied this email address to another location in your records as : XXXX ( ie, without the period following my title, and also without the period that represents the space in my last name ). 

I explained to the customer service representative that the presence of the periods in my email address should not matter, because all email software ignores punctuation marks in email addresses ( ie, XXXX is the same as XXXX ). 

The representative agreed that my it is true that all email software protocols ignore punctuation marks in email addresses, but that the PenFed software does not ignore punctuation in email addresses ( ie, the PenFed software sees XXXX and XXXX as two different addresses ). 

However, ( illogically ), the PenFed software does not transfer any punctuation in email addresses when copying addresses from one location in your records to another location ( in your records ). 


These conflicting software rules alerted your Fraud department that there was a problem with my account. The original customer representatives I spoke with ( in the first months of my account lockout ) were not skilled enough to determine the nature of the problem, so they forwarded the situation to your technical department to solve. 

Evidently, your technical department ( also ) could not figure why I was locked out of my PenFed account, since they never fixed the problem. Perhaps they tried to solve the problem however, they never communicated with me, or with your customer service department. Therefore, your customer service representatives continued to give me an inaccurate answer the many times I called XXXX to say I still could not login ( that the technical department must still be working on the problem ). 

The inaction of the technical department left me hung in the same position for months ( ie, waiting for someone at PenFed to fix the problem, or at least give me an explanation as to why the problem could not be fixed ). 

Instead, my inability to login was always in the hands of your Fraud department. Months have gone by without an explanation ( or with an incorrect explanation ), causing all the damage to me that I described above. 

Your customer representative had the grace to agree with these conclusions, and promised earnestly that he would get the problem corrected by the Fraud department. He assured me that I would be able to login in two more days. 

Well, two days ( and more ) have passed. 

Can you guess what I am going to say next? 
I still can not login! 

Therefore, I am : 1 ) still being sued for breach of contract because I can not purchase the car for which I obtained the now expired auto loan from you, and 2 ) I still can not pay the last two + months bills ( nor pay all the bounced payment charges ) because you reversed the transfers you gave me permission to make ( from my PenFed account to my XXXX account ), and because I could not complete my PenFed personal loan documents ( due to the fact I could not login to my account to do so ). 

So what would like me to do now? 

Sincerely, XXXX XXXX XXXX, MPH, PhD P.S. I should also say that I am seriously ( perhaps terminally ) ill, XXXX for a decade, almost XXXX XXXX XXXX, and this whole debacle is killing me. 

I expect my login to be activated, and my personal loan and my auto loan applications to be reinstated so that I can pay my bills ( and so that I can sign the acceptance forms on both the personal loan and the auto loan, resolve the breach of contract suit, and pay my all the overdrafts as well as the overdraft charges on my XXXX  account. 

I will certainly be most appreciative of your prompt action in this matter. 

CC : consumerfinance.gov ; www./ncua.gov ; www.dobs.pa.gov In case you need the reference numbers for each piece of ID I uploaded : Identity Authentication - XXXX Government Issued ID Identity Authentication - XXXX Government Issued ID Identity Authentication - XXXX Social Security Card Identity Authentication - XXXX Utility Bill Identity Authentication - XXXX Other ( ID )

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation