Saintsfanfl
TUG Member
Just a warning that this is a painful read but putting it down is therapy for me.
This year I paid my maintenance fees online just like I have always done. The only difference between the last few years is I paid everything in one transaction since I had the credit card room. I put the full amounts in each unit box, skipping a couple units that were in the process of being transferred out. 19 units billed at $27,940.72 and paid for the same exact amount. I received the automated receipt showing the amount paid. What then happened behind the scenes is anyone's guess. I always thought paying online would be automated on the payment application but it appears people really are manually involved in the process. Only two or three properties were actually paid in the system with a fourth having an over-payment of over $24k. Only the properties that are jointly owned with my spouse had payments applied even though all the units for both ownership numbers show up in the payment screen. I have never had this error happen before even though I had payments for both numbers on the same transaction.
I did not know there was an issue until I started getting late fee notices in the mail. I looked in my online account and saw the amounts still due. Now there are late fees and interest tacked on. I call and end up being on the phone for 45 minutes. I am assured that the issue will be fixed and the late fees and interest reversed, although they also say to keep checking and call back if it isn't fixed after 7 days. I wait more than a week and it is still not fixed and I get more past due notices. I call again and spend an hour on the phone. I am assured that the rep will fix it themselves and email me once it is completed. I end up getting an email several hours later stating notes were entered in the system and it would be 7 days before it is resolved. (notes again?)
I wait a week and this time they did fix it partially. There was still about $1,700 due total on two units. I call and spend over an hour on the phone. It is a rep in finance working through it with their supervisor. They claim that the penalties and interest were not reversed which resulted in the sum of the total of those fees being left as unpaid on the two units. That was my theory so their explanation made sense. They want to keep me on the phone while they fix it but I ask if they can just go ahead and fix it and I can hang up. In retrospect I probably should have stayed on the phone. The problem was that their explanation was not actually true. Had they reconciled the account properly they would have discovered the real issue and being in finance you would think they know how to reconcile a customer's account. Instead they made a knee jerk assumption without reconciling anything which resulted in the problem being unsolved. The only thing that changed is the two unpaid accounts had the late fees and interest reversed but not the actual unpaid fees, which still resulted in about $1,600 past due on the two units.
I did not keep checking the account because they assured me it was being resolved. I get a registered signature required notice yesterday and spend my lunch break going to pick it up only to find out it is a past due notice from Grande Vista for $116.52 with a threat to file a lien. I call again and spend about 45 minutes with a rep. I felt like I was starting at square one. Most of the time it is spent on hold only to have this rep come back and say there is still a balance due on the account. I say how can their be a balance due on the account when you billed me the exact amount of my payment. He says "I see your payment of $27,940.72, but you still have a balance of $1,6XX.XX. I'm like, how is that possible when the 19 properties were billed to me at the same $27,940.72. "Sir, there is still a balance due". Ok, let's go through each property and add them up. He doesn't want to do that. I ask how much I was billed and he says he doesn't know. What? I say we have to go through each property for him to realize it doesn't make sense and he won't do it because he doesn't know how. He transfers me to a supervisor. I didn't ask for one but he gave up.
While on the very long hold I realize that the unpaid amount between the two properties minus the most recent penalties and interest is $1,608.77. I check and that is the same amount as the maintenance fee for one of the units that was being transferred out. A unit that I definitely did not pay the maintenance fee on. Somehow when they were fixing the payment application error they mistakenly applied my payment to a unit that was being transferred. The transfer was very late but it still was gone from my account before they were fixing the error. I have no idea why they applied money to it but in either case they made an error fixing another error. When the supervisor finally gets on I ask him if he is up to speed on the issue which he had just quickly been filled in. I then explain what apparently happened and it took him a while but he eventually agreed. He said these errors happen sometimes if a transfer is late. I say only if the money is not applied correctly in the first place because I chose and paid the specific 19 units in question. He agreed.
Now I get to wait another 7 days to find out if I have to call a 5th time.
This year I paid my maintenance fees online just like I have always done. The only difference between the last few years is I paid everything in one transaction since I had the credit card room. I put the full amounts in each unit box, skipping a couple units that were in the process of being transferred out. 19 units billed at $27,940.72 and paid for the same exact amount. I received the automated receipt showing the amount paid. What then happened behind the scenes is anyone's guess. I always thought paying online would be automated on the payment application but it appears people really are manually involved in the process. Only two or three properties were actually paid in the system with a fourth having an over-payment of over $24k. Only the properties that are jointly owned with my spouse had payments applied even though all the units for both ownership numbers show up in the payment screen. I have never had this error happen before even though I had payments for both numbers on the same transaction.
I did not know there was an issue until I started getting late fee notices in the mail. I looked in my online account and saw the amounts still due. Now there are late fees and interest tacked on. I call and end up being on the phone for 45 minutes. I am assured that the issue will be fixed and the late fees and interest reversed, although they also say to keep checking and call back if it isn't fixed after 7 days. I wait more than a week and it is still not fixed and I get more past due notices. I call again and spend an hour on the phone. I am assured that the rep will fix it themselves and email me once it is completed. I end up getting an email several hours later stating notes were entered in the system and it would be 7 days before it is resolved. (notes again?)
I wait a week and this time they did fix it partially. There was still about $1,700 due total on two units. I call and spend over an hour on the phone. It is a rep in finance working through it with their supervisor. They claim that the penalties and interest were not reversed which resulted in the sum of the total of those fees being left as unpaid on the two units. That was my theory so their explanation made sense. They want to keep me on the phone while they fix it but I ask if they can just go ahead and fix it and I can hang up. In retrospect I probably should have stayed on the phone. The problem was that their explanation was not actually true. Had they reconciled the account properly they would have discovered the real issue and being in finance you would think they know how to reconcile a customer's account. Instead they made a knee jerk assumption without reconciling anything which resulted in the problem being unsolved. The only thing that changed is the two unpaid accounts had the late fees and interest reversed but not the actual unpaid fees, which still resulted in about $1,600 past due on the two units.
I did not keep checking the account because they assured me it was being resolved. I get a registered signature required notice yesterday and spend my lunch break going to pick it up only to find out it is a past due notice from Grande Vista for $116.52 with a threat to file a lien. I call again and spend about 45 minutes with a rep. I felt like I was starting at square one. Most of the time it is spent on hold only to have this rep come back and say there is still a balance due on the account. I say how can their be a balance due on the account when you billed me the exact amount of my payment. He says "I see your payment of $27,940.72, but you still have a balance of $1,6XX.XX. I'm like, how is that possible when the 19 properties were billed to me at the same $27,940.72. "Sir, there is still a balance due". Ok, let's go through each property and add them up. He doesn't want to do that. I ask how much I was billed and he says he doesn't know. What? I say we have to go through each property for him to realize it doesn't make sense and he won't do it because he doesn't know how. He transfers me to a supervisor. I didn't ask for one but he gave up.
While on the very long hold I realize that the unpaid amount between the two properties minus the most recent penalties and interest is $1,608.77. I check and that is the same amount as the maintenance fee for one of the units that was being transferred out. A unit that I definitely did not pay the maintenance fee on. Somehow when they were fixing the payment application error they mistakenly applied my payment to a unit that was being transferred. The transfer was very late but it still was gone from my account before they were fixing the error. I have no idea why they applied money to it but in either case they made an error fixing another error. When the supervisor finally gets on I ask him if he is up to speed on the issue which he had just quickly been filled in. I then explain what apparently happened and it took him a while but he eventually agreed. He said these errors happen sometimes if a transfer is late. I say only if the money is not applied correctly in the first place because I chose and paid the specific 19 units in question. He agreed.
Now I get to wait another 7 days to find out if I have to call a 5th time.
