For the second month in a row, I’ve gotten a late payment notice from CitiMortgage. This is very frustrating since in both months my payment has been on time.

When we got our first bill, I set up a bi-monthly recurring payment though my online banking to pay half of the monthly payment plus a little extra towards principal. This worked fine (as far as I can tell) for the first few months, but the last two it’s been a disaster.

Last month, I spent nearly 2 hours arguing with a rep trying to get the late fee removed. What had happened was that they had received the money on time, but hadn’t applied it to my account until nearly a week later. Yes, it took 2 hours to convince this jerk that I shouldn’t get charged a late fee for this. Look buddy, my responsibility is to get the money to you by the date you specified. I can’t control how long it takes you to process it.

This month, I got a letter saying that no payment had been received at all! Fortunately, the gal on the other end of the phone was a little more intelligent. She looked in the account, saw the payments that had been received on time, got them applied correctly and put in a request to remove the late charge.

I’ve decided it isn’t worth having to argue with one of their reps on the phone each month so I’ve given in and will now make only one payment each month – well in advance.