Dodgezilla

My water company is claiming that I paid my bill twice back in July. Their bill comes quarterly. They say that they put the money back in my account and for this action they are charging me $25.00!! Is this retarded or what??

1) I didn't pay it twice (I do use online banking)
2) There was never any money put back in my account
3) They couldn't just put money in my account without my bank knowing about it.
4) If I had paid it twice why wouldn't they just credit it towards my next bill?????
5) I just printed up all my statements for the last few months and there is nothing showing up to substantiate their claim.

The worst thing is that now I have to sit on the phone forever to get this resolved! I talked to them today and they are acting like there is nothing that can be done!!

We'll see!! > :-X

westcoaster

should ask them why they didn't debit the $25 from the money they credited you...

MYTRNx3

That still sounds reduclious...

AKDSLDOG

Dosen't sound good to me! A little warning, found this out the hard way. If you sign up to auto pay or have your work do a "direct deposit" and they get a hold of your ROUTER # off your checks, they have legal right to go into your account and take out or put back in! This happend to us at work with direct deposit. They over payed us and said we will just go back in and take it out, I SAID WHAT THE ! Went to my bank and talked to them about it and they said yep! As long as you signed the paper and they have a routing number they are legal! >

Shovelhead

Time to change account numbers.

bulabula

I think this is one of the better threads, and certainly not the stupidest thing I've heard.

I agree, its time for a new account to keep Big Brother at bay.

spots

NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER give your acct # for any debits. They can take WHATEVER amount they want whenever. This can lead to bounced checks etc. If a company won't deal with you paying the invoice tell them to walk..

joel

I don't think that's quite true, DSLDOG. If that were true and, say I got a hold of your routing number, does that mean I could legally take money from your account? I have direct deposit at work (gov't). I've heard horror stories that Uncle Sam has reached into accounts and pulled money out, but there's always a huge stink about it. I gave the government permission to DEPOSIT funds into my account only. I never gave them permission to withdraw any funds at any time from my account. Nor does the direct deposit sign-up slip say they have that right by default. So, while they may be able to get the bank to give them my funds, I will go after the bank to prove an AUTHORIZED withdrawl and if they can't, they'll owe it back to me.

Same goes for electronic bill paying. I authorize them to withdraw a CERTAIN amount and only that amount. Any more is theft, and believe me, I'll yell bloody murder until I get someone to listen if they take more.

Again, having said all this, it doesn't mean the big companies can't get the banks to play ball with them and make us react to get our funds back. But they can only get away with it if you let them.

So far, I've only had occasional incidents and have been able to resolve them all favorably. A $25 fee for basic customer service? ***??? I mean, I can see the $30 fee if you bounce a check and all, but because you OVERPAID they want $25? I'd first ask them nicely to "waive" the fee in the interest of customer service, but if they refuse, I'd go to the regulating authority and/or the State Attorney General's Office to find out the legalities of this... scam. 'Cause that's what it sounds like to me, right next to "deposits" they hold for 5 years and more. Good Luck.

Dodgezilla

Now that I've researched it some I have the real scenario..

The water company changed their billing address and I don't recall ever seeing a notice telling me this. I paid the bill online, on time(07-21-03). On 08-20-03 I recieved a notice that it had not been paid so I contacted my bank. They researched it and said yes it had been paid but I didn't change the "pay to" address so the payment went to the old address. They cancelled the first payment and repaid it to the correct address. Everything should have been fine except that the bill was paid late.
The problem now is that even though the water company had told me the bill had not been paid as of 08-20-03, they are showing that it was paid on 07-21-03 and that I took the money back!
You would think that if they were to change their address, that they would keep the old address active for a short while just in case!! The company I work for recently changed banks and some of our thousands of customers continue to send their payments to the old bank because they have the address programmed in their computer and they just didn't look at the change of address we stapled to each invoice we mailed out. We were smart enough to have the mail forwarded to us and then we include another change of address with each of their new invoices.

What a pain in the butt..........