I bought a house just over a year ago and Countrywide picked up the mortgage on it, everything has been swell. Over the last few months I’ve been moving more and more bills to online payment for a few reasons.

  • It saves me postage
  • Instant confirmation of my payment and when it will be posted
  • I can use Google Calendar to keep track of when I need to pay what bills

At this point, I am still receiving paper bills in the mail for everything because I’m not 100% sold on going paper-less, but it is getting more attractive. It would be a lot less I’d have to shred and it is better for the environment. The one bill I have been avoiding online payment for was with Countrywide because I was having problems registering with their software. Anytime I have problems just registering with a site much less actually using it is a red flag that something is not right.

Tonight I realize that I need to pay the bill and it needs to be in the mail Monday morning, however I can’t find it. This is really odd because I keep really good records, but I have had a busy week so maybe it got misplaced or tossed in the trash with other garbage mail. I pull up their website and get the toll free 800 number. No big surprise they have normal customer service hours and are closed but the automated system will let me make a payment.

After fighting with the automated attendant who wanted me to say Yes or No and couldn’t understand me, the time comes to make the payment; this is where the fun begins. I am told that a service fee of $15 will be applied for making the payment via phone. Being that I can’t find the bill, I have no option but to pay. After paying and feeling like I was jipped, I poke around their site again. They have the same service fee for paying online too!

I plan on calling tomorrow and talking with a customer service representative to see if I can get the service fee removed from the payment. In the 15 months of payments I’ve made, I have never been late, why should I be penalized for using an automated phone system? Updates to this will come when I talk with them tomorrow, to this post.

Update (March 12, 2007): After spending nearly 6 minutes fighting with the automated phone service before I could get to a customer service representative and then another 8 minutes of listening to horrible music, Shannon finally took my call. I explained my situation and told her that I was disappointed that I would be charged for paying over the phone or the internet and was wondering if there was some way this could be waived. She told me that there was a chance it could be done, took some of my account and banking info and put me on hold for about five minutes.
When she came back she explained she tried to call my bank to see if the transaction went through, sadly they are closed. She went on to tell me that she is going to try first thing tomorrow and see if they can reverse the $15 transaction since that is done separately from the actual mortgage payment. After explaining some more of what she was doing she told me she would call back tomorrow and let me know if she could indeed reverse the transaction and credit my account for the $15 or not, but she was feeling pretty hopeful about it. I’ll continue to update this as I get more information. I do feel better about being a customer now though; the service is great when you can actually talk to someone living on the other end.

Update (March 20, 2007): Shannon called me back last night but I didn’t have a chance to talk to her until today.  After some phone tag, I finally got her on the phone and she explained that she was able to reverse the $15 transaction fee and gave me her extension again should I have further questions.
My overall feeling about the company is now very good, they seem to really care about the customers and my experience with them has been beyond great.  I’d recommend them to just about anyone at this point, just on the customer service experience.

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