Consumer complaint received 2023-10-29
Product: Credit reporting or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a company's investigation into an existing problem — Was not notified of investigation status or results
Company: U.S. BANCORP (RI)

I am writing to complain about a " late payment '' reported for my FidelityRewards credit card on my credit statement. I made substantial efforts to make the reported payment on time, but the payment mechanism implemented on the card services website was misleading and poorly implemented in a number of ways. In the end, the fourth payment attempt, which was successful, was four days past the 30-days-late mark after three attempts I made to make an ACH payment. 

<p> I believe that the delay was substantially the fault of Elan or their agents as follows : <p> 1 ) Their website only requires that an account number be entered once, and it is not visible to be checked. Other sites have users enter an account number twice to make sure that the two entries match. 

<p> 2 ) The site states that the account number will be verified, but that does not seem to happen until the payment is actually attempted. Other online payments I've made identify an incorrect account number immediately or within a day. Verification was not made for months on my initial auto-pay setup. 

<p> 3 ) Notification of a failed payment was extremely slow. Failure of the initial autopay setup was only reported to me 2-3 weeks after the failure. From the time my next payment attempt was entered until I received notification that it had failed was 2-3 weeks. I immediately made yet another online payment, this time successfully, but it was four days beyond thirty days late. 

<p> 4 ) The website clearly stated, " Thanks for your payment, '' when I made an immediate ACH payment online. I have attached a screen grab of that page ( the second page in the attached file ) made recently with a small test payment. I considered that to be confirmation that the payment had been made.

<p> 5 ) I was only able to speak with " collections '' personnel at the " customer service '' number, and they were unhelpful in resolving the issue. 

<p> Here is a timeline of events : XXXX XXXX : Fidelity forced us to close our checking account and open a new one, requiring autopayment to be set up again XXXX : I attempted to set up new checking account for XXXX XX/XX/XXXX XX/XX/XXXX auto=payment listed on statement {$220.00} XX/XX/XXXX =============payment due date XX/XX/XXXX XX/XX/XXXX payment reversal {$220.00} XX/XX/XXXX date on paper notification from Elan / Fidelity Investments XXXX receipt of paper notification XX/XX/XXXX payment thankyou {$220.00} XX/XX/XXXX XX/XX/XXXX payment reversal {$220.00} XX/XX/XXXX date on paper notification from Elan XX/XX/XXXX ============= payment due date XX/XX/XXXX receipt of paper notification XX/XX/XXXX payment thank you <p> Given my urgent, sincere, and repeated efforts to make payment and the difficulties of doing so with Elan 's website XXXX I believe that the delay in payment was substantially caused by Elan. My record of XXXX late payments to Elan for many years and XXXX late payments to any creditor for many years should indicate that I take these obligations very seriously and am very responsible. This one reported late payment has lowered my credit score, as well as my wife 's, and both of my sons ' by XXXX points each. I am motivated to strongly pursue this case if this attempt is not successful. It is unfairly damaging our finances. 

<p> I did request help with this from Fidelity Investments. They reported reaching out to Elan and said that Elan would be sending me a letter in late XXXX. It has been a month since then, and I have received no communication from Elan, so I feel forced to take the step of making this complaint. I also had several phone conversations with Elan, who stated that they would not speak to me about this credit reporting issue.