Consumer complaint received 2017-10-12
Product: Mortgage — FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: U.S. BANCORP (WI)

XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX advertises that I can pay my mortgage via ACH payments. They claim that this ACH can be set up via their online service at USBank.com. I have attempted to set this up via the US Bank Online but not able to do so. I have called several times and been walked through the process to set up a ach via USbank.com. I have called several times and not been able to fix this issue. There is some technological defect associated to my online user account that is preventing the option to set up ach to appear under the payment menu. I have been advised that upon hovering over the word payment the option to pay online or set up ach should display. I am only being presented the Pay Online option. Consequently, I am unable to set up the ACH automatic draft of my mortgage payment as desired. Further, they charge you a {$5.00} payment processing fee if you do not pay your mortgage payment by the first of the month. The only protection against this money grab on their part is to set up ACH. I think it is appalling that the bank that makes so much money in interest charges the customer to accept a payment online at any time. Is n't this part of the servicing duties the institution is being compensated for in servicing fee 's. It sure seems like double dipping to charge fees to make payments. 

The representatives have no clue how to troubleshoot and upon request to be transferred to a technical help desk rep to assist in resolving the issue with the online functionality I am advised there is no such technical help desk. When inquiring about opening up a problem ticket to send to the application team that supports online banking I am told they have no process or procedure to escalate technical issues to the appropriate application support team who could investigate and correct the issue so that I can use the USBank.com online tool to establish my ACH payments. Instead they tell me it is my computer. When I told them I used 4 different browsers but received the same behavior they said the could not escalate the issue because no one else is reporting it and it was my computer. I logged on to my work computer and followed the same process to log in to and navigate to the customer care net as instructed and again received the same behavior demonstrating the technical issue was with the my account configuration or the USBank.com website that would not allow me to set up the ACH. In any case my computer or not, the technical application team should investigate and there should be an avenue readily available to escalate such issues. 

Instead of resolving this issue the representative suggested I should further inconvenience myself beyond the number of hours I spent on this already and go to a US Bank branch to set up the ACH. He then gave me the option to wait weeks to get something in the US mail and pay for postage to return it you them to establish the ACH. I asked for him to set it up over the phone then, and he said no he could not do that. How about just getting the USbank.com website to do what it is supposed to do? How about that? 

My contention is simple if you have a website that is supposed to have account management functionality that functionality should work. Further, if an issue arises with a customer because of technical issue using that functionality they should be able to be connected to someone who can assist in resolving that technological issue or have some means to escalate internally to the appropriate application support team who can research and correct the defect in a timely manner. 

The level of incompetence with the customer service is appalling. Is it really to much to ask that staff have a clue on how to resolve the issues you are calling in regarding? I cant recount the amount of incorrect information I have been provided with from numerous representatives at this bank. The degree of incompetence causes me to loose patience because something that should be easily resolved is turned into a major issue.