Consumer complaint received 2024-03-05
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments — Problem during payment process
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY (MA)

I use a credit card from XXXXXXXX XXXX to pay rent and other purposes. This card has a feature " XXXXXXXX XXXX  '' that processes rent separately from other purchases, so it withdraws the rent cost from my bank account around the same day it issues payment to my landlord. This prevents large credit utilizations for rent. I have scheduled this payment for the XXXX of the month, while my typical automatic statement balance payment is the first of the month. 
I noticed on XX/XX/XXXX an abnormally large payment to XXXX. Typically my expenses outside of rent on my card are < {$1000.00} per month, so I was concerned to see a ~ {$4800.00} charge for my XX/XX/XXXX statement balance payment. Upon investigation, I noticed that this amount added up to both my rent payment ( XXXX ), and my other charges for the month. However, XXXX had also withdrawn my rent payments properly the past several months, so this would indicate I was double charged for one of these payments. 
Upon further investigation of both my bank and XXXX statements, I noticed that for my XXXX rent, the amount was withdrawn from my bank account on XX/XX/XXXX as expected, but was not credited to my XXXX account until XX/XX/XXXX. It appears that when my monthly statement was issued on XX/XX/XXXX, it included the XXXX rent that had yet to be credited. Therefore, although the rent payment was eventually credited, my automatic statement balance payment also included this number, and withdrew on XX/XX/XXXX, causing a negative balance. 
This caused me to go below my bank account 's minimum balance requirement ( although in this case no fees were incurred ), and came closer than I'd like to overdrafting my account. As I hadn't been expecting quite a large payment due to the double payment, my account could have been overdrawn for later payments this month, as the double payment left me with < {$150.00} in my checking account. 
In addition, it was quite difficult to get customer service to respond to to this issue promptly. On my first call, I was told I needed to use email or chat support to get a refund. After discussing the issue over chat, I was told we would have to move the conversation to Email, but I never received a follow up. When I called back and explained the issue again, was told the issue was my fault because of the representatives incorrect understanding that the XXXX protect payments were payments from my bank 's bill pay service with variable processing times, when actually they are automatic withdrawals by XXXX like any other automatic payment. When I asked to speak to a supervisor as clearly there was a misunderstanding, I was placed on hold for over 40 minutes before my schedule forced me to hang up and call another time. Only on the third call was I able to reach I representative after a 30 minuite hold that was able to help me initiate a refund for the full XXXX. This took significant effort to recover money that is mine, and a customer with significantly less spare time during customer service hours would not have been able to recover their own money if a similar issue were to occur to them.