Paying Off is Harder Than it Looks

Being in Kabul, my financial life these days seems pretty boring.

It feels that I’m on a witch hunt to pay down our second mortgage with WaMu. As our regular readers know, we are feed up with the crappy service provided by WaMu.

I’m currently on skype sorting out the situation with the latest antics. It appears that when you want to pay off you account early they’ll do about whatever they can to screw you up.

After reviewing some irregular issues with payments I think I’ve sorted it out (not that I’m happy with the outcome). The basic case is that I had signed us up for an autopay of our home equity loan. We had it set up and approved to pay the regular payment that is due, $186.86, plus an extra amount. Before we’ve had this at $150 per month and now we bumped it up to $750.

However, WaMu is kind enough to think that if you are paying extra payments on your loan that you suddenly don’t want to pay your regular payment and extra principle payment that is scheduled through them (even though this still shows as an authorized payment). If I weren’t watching our accounts like a hawk I would think we were paying off our loan at great strides, when instead we just continually get screwed by WaMu.

Now as luck has it their online pay bill isn’t allowing me to cancel my autopay. I guess it doesn’t much matter since as long as I’m paying extra they won’t honor the deduction that I’ve authorized. The anal me decides to go ahead and rip the band-aid off by following up and calling the number they’ve provided to cancel the autopay by phone. As should be expected, once I do reach a human they tell me that I have to call another number; not the one listed online. I run out of patience and hang up on the teller. Can’t stand it. Now I’m the one that is punished since I’ll have to go back again and deal with the whole thing over again…

The result of all of this has been some fiddling around with payments here and there. I confirmed that my regular extra payment from my paycheck is supposed to be credited today for $200. I also added another $400.09 from extra money that I had in that account, which will credit on Monday. I also transferred an extra $500 from our mortgage account into my electric orange checking account, added another $250 to it of mine, and sent another $750 out in the mail. This means that by next week should have another $1,350 paid off, minus the interest accrued over that time.

Of course WaMu wins in the end because this means we pay for the extra days in the holiday mail. At the same time I figure that the best way I can focus my anger about the whole thing is to just throw my money at it.

While we are talking about a relatively high interest mortgage, it still reminds me acutely of the comments received this week about credit cards. I for one am in favor of the consumer. I can’t stand that WaMu does everything in their power to extend the time that we are paying off on our mortgage. Sure, they are taking a risk on us and doing us a favor by loaning us money, but I also feel that we are a client that shouldn’t be constantly jerked around. It’s just not good customer service. I know that many banks have similar practices, but I can tell you that this will be our last loan with WaMu.

Good luck if you are trying to pay off your mortgage!

My advice: Take out the big guns!

Cheers,

Miel