I am pretty new to blogging, so I am not sure that just venting on a personal gripe is really the way to go, but this thing is just sticking in my craw, so maybe writing it down will help.

I pay most of my bills online by logging into my bank’s website, where I can view the balance, activity, etc. in my checking account, and I can direct the bank to pay whichever bills I indicate. In some cases, when the payment is going to a large established company, I believe that the funds are transferred electronically, but in many cases the bank simply creates a check and mails it to the creditor.

In early April I directed the bank to pay a premium on my, and my wife’s, long term care insurance in the amount of approximately $2,500. In late May I received a notice from the insurance company that my payment was overdue. I looked at the record of my account online and saw that the check had been paid, or at least the amount of the payment had been deducted from my account. I called my agent who then checked with the insurance company and found that it had no record of receiving the payment and would need a copy of the front and back of the check to show that the payment was made. When I asked the bank for copies of the check, they responded that the check had never cleared.

Now, it is not the fact that the insurance company lost the check which is irking me. What makes me ticked off is that the bank deducted this amount from my account without ever having made any payment, and furthermore, now insists that in order to get that money put back in my account, I will have to submit a ‘stop order’ request and pay $25. Go figure.

I have written a strongly worded letter to the bank and have threatened to take this up with our state banking officials if they won’t put the money back into my account without charging the $25 fee. It is unlikely that I’ll actually do this, but just making the threat and blowing off some steam seemed worth it.