Consumer complaint received 2024-08-20
Product: Payday loan, title loan, personal loan, or advance loan — Installment loan
Issue: Problem with a company's investigation into an existing problem — Problem with personal statement of dispute
Company: SCHOOLSFIRST FEDERAL CREDIT UNION (CA)

Thank you for offering your services. Normally, I would not go this far protecting myself against bad financial practices. However, my experience with SchoolsFirst has been the worst banking/credit or credit union experience of my life. I want to detail everything that happened in excruciating detail because SchoolsFirst offers no leniency towards individual consumers and exist only to protect themselves from any culpability. I will start by saying that it is through SchoolsFirst poorly-trained or mix-trained customer service representative in person, on chat, and on the phone the led to a series of miscommunications as well as a poorly designed UI that all came together to contribute to my late payment. Therefore, I feel a compromise is in order regarding the reporting a late payment to credit bureaus. SchoolsFirst, to this day, has refused to accept any culpability at all, and has only been unhelpful, passive aggressive, uncaring, and completely unsympathetic to my issues. All of this over a $ XXXX loan payment for a {$1000.00} loan seems excessive on their end. I've had no credit issues in my entire credit history and have never had a late payment except in this loan from this institution. This says more about the institution than it does about me, and is NOT reflexive of my creditworthiness. Because of this, I have suffered a XXXX point hit to my credit score and have been refused much-needed credit lines for my business and for pushing forward life with my fledging family. 

A compromised result in SchoolsFirst providing a goodwill deletion of reporting my {$1000.00} loan installment account to credit bureaus. This is well within their right to do so. If it was not, they would not repeatedly ask me to send in disputes for them to assess their own culpability and offer me fair and just restitution in the form of a non-reporting to credit bureaus. 

I'll start at the beginning. I was a XXXX  at a high school in XXXX XXXX. A SchoolsFirst representative came to solicit us at a teacher meeting. They offered me an account and access to a {$1000.00} school supplies loan with 0 % interest. The representative was slightly aggressive, but this is normal for this type of solicitation. At the time, I had no cash money for school supplies and this seemed like a very good deal and I was desperate. I went to their XXXX office ( which is now permanently closed, btw ) and opened an account and applied for the loan. The system there was rather easy -- However, I was dismayed to learn by a team member there -- it was a woman whose name started with XXXX  is all I remember -- that, there was no way to do automatic payments from an external account and I would have to transfer money each time to my checking account which then could be used to pay off the loan. These transfers would take up to 3 business days and were not automatic. Whether this was true at the time or not, this is what I was told. If SchoolsFirst claims " we had the system for autopay during that time, '' that might be true, but it was not advertised to me and it was not readily or apparently available on the website, which was laden with glitches and poor design. Similarly, another customer was also was told this exact same thing, and had identical issues with the website, as evidenced here :. The lack of ability to do auto-payments, unfortunately, was only revealed to me AFTER the loan was approved. This, was already a problem but I went with it and had them open my account with some funds to pay for the initial monthly payments. Nonetheless, I made payments via this poorly devised system of wiring/sending money to the account, from which I had to pay the loan from. Here is a breakdown of the payment scheme SchoolsFirsXXXX is reporting. As anyone can see, the " amount due '' makes little sense with regard to my payments. I've also noticed SchoolsFirst has made several other mistakes in reporting -- including once claiming I was 30 days late on a XXXX payment which they quickly redressed. I am not aware of the history of reporting before this but I would not trust it. I later learned that the loan amount was changing because SchoolsFirsXXXX was quietly adding late fees to the loan balance. Since i had a specific method of transferring payment, I couldn't understand at first why, as my payments were being scheduled on time. I either called or went in person to a branch ( I cant now remember which preceded which ) and asked about the late fees. It was then i was told that actually I COULD set up auto-payments from an external account but would either need to call back or call to another number to help get it set up. My first encounter with a customer service rep acted like it was once again impossible to get auto-payment set up on an external account, while another said it was possible and asked me to visit a local branch to help get it set up. 

Some time in the next month, I had to leave the country for an emergency. However, as an auto-payment from an external account was set up, I assumed I did not need to worry about my payment for that month. Additionally, I was told my late fees that were waived would be reflected in my balance ( as would be the normal thing to do ), so I knew I should be okay for that payment. This was the only mistake I made. In assuming I did not need to worry about the payment. When I came back to the country, I discovered I was short for the payment of that month. The payment was still being made to my spending account and not to an automated external payee. In short, I was late more than 30 days. I quickly redressed the issue by paying for the month missed and another month ahead of time. To my dismay, the 30 day late notice was reported to credit bureaus. I was shocked, as a customer agent once told me that SchoolsFirst cares about their members and gives leeway in situations like this. They did not. 

I had initially asked to dispute by phone and was sent a secure message for a for the send by mail. I did this. Nearly 30 days passed and I received no notice of them receiving the dispute. Frustrated, I made a post on social media saying how horrible my experience with SchoolsFirst was and I was immediately direct-messaged by someone asking to redress the issue. Unbelievably, they had magically found my mailed dispute just then and sent it for processing. I find this immensely suspicious, and I think it is fair to say that my dispute was ignored until I had given SchoolsFirst bad press on social media. This is highly inappropriate for a credit union. 

Several more weeks passed and I heard nothing about my dispute. I went to third-party dispute services XXXX, XXXX, XXXX XXXX , etc. I received no human response to anything, only boilerplates. I finally received notice, only after filing these disputes of my mailed dispute after calling it. It was another boilerplate about FCRA reporting. It is odd why I was asked to send in this dispute with details if I would only receive notice about FCRA reporting qualifications. Incidentally, a fellow SchoolsFirst member informs me that they did receive a goodwill adjustment from SchoolsFirst in XXXX after a late payment on his home loan. There is little reason why SchoolsFirst would be so selective on their willingness to do this. It would seem heavily inappropriate. There are also no mitigating circumstances, to my knowledge, of this goodwill deletion. Why selectively enforce their alleged FCRA obligations? 

Ultimately, I only ever received human feedback after sending an email to CEO XXXX XXXX, where I was redirected to XXXX XXXX, VP of Member Experience. XXXX only spoke in boilerplates as well, and by the last email, ignoring nearly everything I had mentioned, told me I was wasting time and resources away from SchoolsFirst. Imagine the gall of telling a member that them fighting for their creditworthiness because of numerous mistakes and incompetencies from a corporate business was a waste of their time. This was the last straw for me and why I am filing this consumer dispute. 

In Summary : Numerous different consumer service agents and representative miscommunicated, or erroneously handled my auto-payment tech services Several customer service agents misrepresented how late fees are waived, leading to a miscommunication on amount owed False reporting to credit bureaus SchoolsFirst claims 60 days late ( untrue ) to XXXX and erroneously reported a XXXX late payment as well ( since redressed ) Unhelpful, alienating member experience help pretending to file disputes when ignoring them, only offering boilerplates, rude insinuations wasting their time. 

Additionally, I have ample evidence that I am not a unique case, as a user posted a near IDENTICAL complaint against SchoolsFirst in XXXX of XXXX, almost a year before my complaint. The exact same circumstances ( nearly the exact same ) led to them receiving a late payment reporting as well. Either this is pure serendipity or SchoolsFirsXXXX is culpable and should grant us both goodwill non-reporting of our loan payment. 

As this is a {$1000.00} loan ( a tiny loan in the scheme of things ) and a single missed payment, it is negligible to actually establish creditworthiness and should be treated as such by a credit union that actually cares about its members financial well-being.