Consumer complaint received 2020-06-08
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest — Problem with fees
Company: U.S. BANCORP (PA)

Fidelity Investments solicited me for a Fidelity Visa Card, which I have had for over a year and consistently paid on time. On XX/XX/2020, while on the Fidelity site, I directed payment of {$21000.00} to the credit card. The popup window gave me options for making the payment, and the default option was " Pay from this Account : Fidelity Investments -- Ending in XXXX. '' I elected the option to pay from that Fidelity account. On XX/XX/2020, I visited the Fidelity site and saw that my payment had been reversed and that a {$25.00} reversal charge had been imposed. I called the " XXXX '' number and spoke to a representative from Elan Financial Services, which manages Fidelity 's credit card operations. Elan responded that Fidelity had rejected the payment due to insufficient funds and that Elan had no responsibility in this case. I called Fidelity and was told that although the default menu gave me the option to pay from a certain account, there was insufficient uninvested cash in that account in order to cover the payment. I responded that the payment menu did not mention " cash available '' within the account, but only the specific Fidelity account with an account number. I noted, in contrast, that when a customer tries to use the Fidelity site to invest from a Fidelity account, there is a popup window that shows the cash available for investment, but there is no similar reference on the payment window for its credit card site. Fidelity denied responsibility, saying this was Elan 's policy, even though Fidelity 's name is all over the credit card site and you can not find Elan 's name unless you scroll to the bottom and read the tiny print. I suggested to Fidelity and Elan that the payment window should not refer to payment from a specific Fidelity account unless it clarified, as Fidelity does with online brokerage transactions, that a customer can only use the uninvested cash portion of a specific account, not the entire account as suggested by the popup payment menu. The payment window that encourages a customer to use a specific Fidelity account is misleading in that it does not clarify that the customer can only use the uninvested cash portion of the customer 's listed Fidelity account and also because it does not list the cash available as Fidelity does with brokerage transactions on its site. I asked both Fidelity and Elan to reverse the {$25.00} fee and they both refused, each claiming that the other was responsible. It would be interesting to know if the two institutions split these fees when they trap unwary customers like me. It is unfair for Elan to just respond that Fidelity is an unrelated party ( when the entire site refers to Fidelity with only a tiny reference to Elan ) and then disclaim Fidelity 's  standard practice of telling customers how much cash is available for actions with their accounts. If Elan is inextricably intertwined with Fidelity, it should not be able to disavow Fidelity 's standard practice and collect a penalty fee that bears no relation to any damages to Elan.