Consumer complaint received 2023-12-12
Product: Vehicle loan or lease — Loan
Issue: Managing the loan or lease — Billing problem
Company: BMO Bank, N.A. (MO)

My loan was a transfer from Bank of the West ( who you bought out ). I did not choose to do business with your company, I was forced, my opinion was not solicited. No alternative options were offered.

Problem 1 ) Stopping my monthly due date e-mail notifications. Forcing me to accept a paper statement.

Problem 2 ) Bad training. I was told both on the phone ( multiple conversations ) and during an in-branch visit that I could not schedule payment through an external bank via the BMO Harris online platform .

Problem 3 ) Call center people. They speak poor english and are difficult to understand. Are they either US citizens or based out of the United States? I refuse to provide personal or financial information to foreigners.

Problem 4 ) Contacting me to tell me my payment is late after my payment has been received and processed by your bank. When I call up the day payment is finally posted to my account, your phone rep tells me payment has not been received from my bank. Your phone rep suggests I need to contact my bank for the check number and to submit it via some email address or form yada yada yada -- at that point I stopped listening. A check was submitted, and it is NOT MY JOB to process the payment. Your a bank. Do that yourself. It's kind of like, your whole job, right? Making money off of loans...

Problem 5 ) Please spend more time developing effective and worthwhile service practices and please spend more effort and money training implementing these practices. If you face budget shortfalls, I humbly suggest you stop building giant palaces for your main branches. That place I visited looked like XXXX XXXX. 

I'm a XXXX, I work for XXXX months a year XXXX and out of the country. I don't want my financial information sitting in an overflowing mailbox for anybody to come along and steal. Except for this account, I currently receive XXXX ( ZERO ) statements by mail .... for my own personal protection. 
After your bank suborned my loan account from XXXX, I struggled just to submit my initial payment to you guys. XXXX, did I try. I made multiple phonecalls, and even visited a BMO Harris branch in person. You people were not helpful. I was told by all your reps that e-mail monthly notifications are not an option and that I had to have a mailed statement. I had trouble setting up my online account ( information wouldn't show ) and your phone people were not helpful ( I already said I don't provide info to foreigners ). I had to visit a branch just to get my online information to show up, which your account rep did apologize for and said that the entire account takeover was messed up and that this issue had happened to many different accounts. It was at this point that I ran into issue ( 2 ). He ( and your phone reps I talked to previously ) said I had to pay in person, mail a paper check, or make a payment directly from a BMO account on the platform. I was expressly told external payments were not an option. I'm just trying to pay a bill, and you guys are refusing my money? Issue ( 3 ) : I ran into this during my many phone conversations. 

I've been getting collection phonecalls for the last several weeks, including on the XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX of XXXX. I called you on XX/XX/XXXX, explaining that my bank sent payment, nothing much I could do otherwise, since I'm ON A BOAT IN THE OCEAN. 
What in the??? ( please insert expletive ) are you guys doing? 
After getting tired of the phonecalls, I called you guys late in the afternoon of XX/XX/XXXX. ( During my working hours, since I'm near the international date line and your business hours coincide with when I'm supposed to be working ). 
Your rep told me payment was past due. I told her my bank had confirmed a check was received and cleared by BMO several days ago. Your rep told me I had to submit something ( a check number?? ) to somewhere ( an e-mail address? an online form? ) to prove payment. 
XXXX XXXXXXXX? How do you think you can require your customers to process accounts receivables themselves? What the heck is this XXXX.? 
I told her I'd look into it later and hung up. 
Fast forward to now : I log online to BMO to get my account info, discover that I can, after all, submit external bank payments through your website. 
I also discover that you received my check on XX/XX/XXXX, and eventually posted payment to my account on the XXXX. 
People, get your XXXX together. Don't tell someone to process their own loans. Don't harass people with phonecalls when the bill has been paid.