so i called progress energy to make a payment and the automated system(billpay) would not give me a confirmation # . so i call in to talk to a person and explain that i can't get the automated system to work so i'd rather do it through him... well guess what both payments went through and now i'm -$600($400 in fees) from paying my $250 power bill twice. progress energy has already canceled the second charge but i'm still in the negative bc of the over draft.i called sun trust and they said i'd have to take it up with progress energy . anybody ever done this before and gotten their $$ back? this fuckin sux

[Edited on September 14, 2007 at 4:39 PM. Reason : .]

9/14/2007 4:35:32 PM

You might be able to argue enough to get your money back saying it was a clerical on the part of Progress Energy. I wouldn't hold my breath though. Things like this are why you leave enough cash in your account as a buffer to prevent this kind of shit.

9/14/2007 4:40:22 PM

You're not the first person that this has happened to and you're not the last person that this will happen to. Like the first guy said, I wouldn't hold my breath as far as Progress Energy is concerned.

The only time that we have ever been successful at getting ANYTHING at all out of the company that screwed up was with TWC. They drafted the hell out of our account after we canceled our service at our apartment and it took several bill cycles to get them to fix the problem. With enough complaining, we were able to get free service from them for a month or two and some other comps when we connected service at our new house.

Sometimes if you get the right person on the right day, you can get someone with the bank to at least refund part of the fees incurred -- especially when you've gotten a fee on top of a fee on top of a fee.

9/14/2007 4:53:26 PM

He said it's $400 in fees, that's ridiculous. This probably means that there's been a series of small purchases on the premise that the money is still there.

The bank is supposed to investigate these kinds of things, one time I got triple charged because they were fixing the wireless in my building at the time (unannounced, and it caused the payment to think it was submitting three times instead of once); I explained the situation to the bank and they'd taken care of it within five days.

If the energy co. has already reversed the charge (and I see that this is the case), the onus is SOLELY on the bank to undo the overdraft fees. I know that overdraft fees help the bank make money but even that should never be done maliciously.

9/14/2007 4:53:48 PM

$400 in fees?

please explain that.

9/14/2007 4:56:24 PM

Progress has to pay you back, they jsut can't fuck with your money and then expect you to have the bill for it.

9/14/2007 4:59:44 PM

if they don't, what are you gonna do--close the account? sue them?...you may as well write it off now. if you're gonna pay online, always do it with a credit card, so you can have it charged off if necessary

[Edited on September 14, 2007 at 5:13 PM. Reason : ...]

9/14/2007 5:10:29 PM

who do you bank with? i'd try them first.

9/14/2007 5:12:49 PM

me thinking i have $250 more than i do i buy lunch everyday, gas a few times , pay another smaller bill and with each of these charges comes a 32$ service charge. my account is exactly -650.34 , the return check fees total to $455

9/14/2007 5:13:33 PM

you people are such alarmists

its not like progress has taken his money and is headed to mexico with his bling, a couple 8 balls and bunch of hookers

if everything happened as he explained (aka he made two payments on the account), he has a credit on the account and can request that a check be cut to him for the credit amount. its not like progress screwed up, dude made two payments.

and yeah, NEVER use your bank account to pay bills.

9/14/2007 5:15:35 PM

Quote :

"the return check fees total to $455"

you shouldnt have to pay that. i dont know how to advise you to get out of it, but those charges are bullshit.

9/14/2007 5:16:35 PM

i'm surprised that you can't dispute the charge with the bank. Then they investigate the charge, and when they see progress double charged you, you get your money back plus they rescind the overdraft fees. I don't think Progress is liable here, nor will they pay any overdraft fees otherwise.

9/14/2007 5:34:56 PM

Quote :

"(aka he made two payments on the account),"

as i said the automated system did not give me a confimation #. i call and the frist thing i said ot the guy was i just tried to use your billpay and i coudln't get a confirmation number so i'd like to just pay through you while he was staring at my account info he should have seen the payment made 2 mins earlier and said oh yea man it's gone through already not ok well let's get u setup.

9/14/2007 5:39:26 PM

My mortgage company accidentally took 4 payments at once out of my account to cover me until October. I called them immediatly and told them they needed to wire that money back to my account...2 days later I had all my money minus the correct payment wired back to me.

9/14/2007 5:42:26 PM

I was double charged which caused a overdraft. The company refunded the second charge and my bank (bbt) refunded the overdraft. I just explained to the bank that it was mistake and they fixed it in a couple of days...

9/14/2007 7:33:01 PM

take it up with your bank. Progress isn't responsible for a double-payment that you caused.

9/14/2007 7:55:30 PM

Ask an official at the bank if they would remove the fees this time. If this has not been on going, they may credit your account the fees. I would then ask them to remove any overdraft protection from your account to avoid those fees in the future. Of course you will have to manage your account so as not to come up short.

9/14/2007 8:59:08 PM

Quote :

"NEVER use your bank account to pay bills."

Then what the fuck are you supposed to use? Credit cards? Because that's a great way to get into revolving debt.

9/14/2007 11:00:23 PM

yes. its called, paying off your credit card every month.

if you cant manage your credit, then write checks and stick em in the mail.

9/14/2007 11:52:24 PM

if you can't afford to pay for your utilities with a credit card and then pay the balance in full at the end of the month, then you couldn't afford to pay the bills in the first place. having them draft automatically off of a credit card is a lot safer than having your banking information on file somewhere.

[Edited on September 15, 2007 at 12:33 AM. Reason : typo]

9/15/2007 12:33:25 AM

Quote :

"Then what the fuck are you supposed to use? Credit cards? Because that's a great way to get into revolving debt."

what are you, 12? checks are preferable, also credit cards and pay them off every month. the point is to NEVER give your bank account number and routing number to a company if you have other options...bad things usually result. hell if its a "need to pay it yesterday" sort of thing you can take cash down to place that takes utilities payments (pawn shops, check cashing places etc).

9/15/2007 10:12:50 AM

I bank with Wachovia, and the few freak times something like this has occurred they have taken care of everything and my account was fully restored. This was a clerical error on Progress Energy's part... make sure that they take responsibility for their mistake. Don't accept less than a 100% refund of all charges.

9/15/2007 11:52:46 AM

Quote :

". the point is to NEVER give your bank account number and routing number to a company if you have other options...bad things usually result."

On this one the bank should refund your overdraft fees. They are junk charges from your bank......progress is not going to pay them. It is not progress energy's fault that your bank rapes you for a bunch of lunches clearing your bank account. If I was you I would call SunTrust, explain the situation again, and if they don't take care of it tell them you want to close your account. Either they will take care of it or you will not invest money with them anymore.

9/15/2007 12:14:04 PM

Quote :

"This was a clerical error on Progress Energy's part... make sure that they take responsibility for their mistake. Don't accept less than a 100% refund of all charges. "

this was a clerical error on stopdropnrol's part. Progress Energy did nothing wrong here.

9/15/2007 12:27:44 PM

Quote :

"write checks and stick em in the mail."

This is how we pay all of our bills at this point because we actually feel like we have far more control over the situation than just letting companies automatically pull money out of our account. Sometimes companies can overcharge you in error and you do not catch them in time to dispute them before the money is pulled out of the account. This is even better for someone who doesn't have a lot of extra cash and needs to juggle bills and paychecks. The late fee that a company charges you for being a few days late on your payment is far less than the overdraft fee charged by the bank.

[Edited on September 15, 2007 at 2:17 PM. Reason : .]

9/15/2007 2:17:06 PM

Quote :

"the point is to NEVER give your bank account number and routing number to a company if you have other options..."

You do understand every time you write a check, you give all this information to the person you give the check to don't you?

9/15/2007 2:21:13 PM

You paid online and you paid by phone. Progress Energy did what you asked them to do. Then you say that Progress Energy refunded the second payment, so they don't owe you any money.

Talk to the bank about the abusive bank fees.

9/15/2007 2:55:26 PM

Quote :

"Talk to the bank about the abusive bank fees."

9/15/2007 2:59:24 PM

you will have to take progress energy to small claims court if you expect to get any money that another company charged you.

[Edited on September 16, 2007 at 1:24 AM. Reason : ]

9/16/2007 1:23:45 AM

take em to court for what? completing two separate transactions that he completed himself?

9/16/2007 1:50:22 AM

Some of you can't fucking read. The automated system did not give a confirmation of payment, so he called PE to talk to a person. This person should have been able to tell whether the payment had been accepted. He was taking the necessary steps to make sure his bill got paid. Their shitty system & inability to adequately track/confirm payments is to blame. For this reason, I feel PE is atleast partially responsible.

9/16/2007 2:03:46 AM

I had this problem with Embarq a few months back. I paid for the bill on the phone like I usually do and I didn't get a conf. # at the end of the call, it hung up as it was processing. So I called customer service and they told me that the payment didn't go through. 2 days later I found out that it did go through. After a certain hour of the day, the payment won't post until the next day, so you're kind of screwed about not knowing. Didn't have any charges on it but they wouldn't refund the excess payment because they said it was my fault for paying twice, so we just let it go on the next bill.

9/16/2007 2:21:16 AM

A check of your bank account should have shown the first charge going through. This is just another classic case of people not staying on top of their finances. I check my accounts online once, sometimes twice a day.

9/16/2007 2:21:36 AM

It will be hard to get those fees back (especially since they know you have to have power etc). Progress energy does suck though because they charge $4.95 to use a credit card to pay your bill online. In addition, it doesn't post for 2 days (even though they say it's instant) and it's bullshit that a huge company like this charges that fee (my bill was 55) so if I needed to use my credit card that would be almost a 10% fee.


However, you should have never paid again knowing that your account was that low and there was a slight chance the first payment would have gone in. Even if it was due that day it would have been worth paying their small late fee (they don't report a late issue for months) to insure the first payment went in or failed.

[Edited on September 16, 2007 at 6:46 AM. Reason : .]

9/16/2007 6:33:25 AM

it usually takes 2 to 3 days for the payment to show up, so he most likely could not see that a payment has been made on your account. I know this is the way with loan payments, even online payments, takes 2 to 3 days for it to show up. Next time dont wait until the last moment to pay your bill.

9/16/2007 9:30:29 AM

Unless he said it was last-minute, that's IMPOSSIBLE to deduce.

What he did say is that

Quote :

"both payments went through and now i'm -$600($400 in fees) from paying my $250 power bill twice."

Quote :

"me thinking i have $250 more than i do i buy lunch everyday, gas a few times , pay another smaller bill and with each of these charges comes a 32$ service charge."

he thought he had $250 more than he actually did. He's made as many as 14 different card swipes since the fail-ass double transaction.

He's recuperated the $250 back from Progress

Quote :

"progress energy has already canceled the second charge but i'm still in the negative bc of the over draft."

and now needs to recover those bank fees, and according to the bank the OTHER company should be obligated to pay those back

Quote :

"i called sun trust and they said i'd have to take it up with progress energy ."

which is bullshit because Progress didn't charge him the overdraft fees, the bank did. The bank has sole authority to reverse the fees but more importantly, the bank has the obligation to inject some goddamned human element and realise that $455 in ISF fees over a clerical error -- which has already been resolved -- should be returned to him.


Shit like this -- which has happened to me twice, the last occurrence being in June that I'm STILL paying back -- is the reason I'm extremely untrusting of banks and will only use my bank account to pay bills where no other option is present or feasible.

9/16/2007 12:47:06 PM

I had a two month old check get cashed when I least expected it and due to my college kid mental ability I didn't notice this until after a weekend where I used my check card several times.

I had 550$ in overdraft fees for stuff that cost at most 10$.

Feeling emboldened courage by my no Michael Moore level of raging nerd rage, I stormed into a Wachovia branch and made them drop all the charges.






Yea not really. I begged and pleaded till the lady behind the counter, having a dumbshit college kid herself, felt sorry for me and dropped the charges so long as I promised never to do it again.


Talk to your bank bro, and good luck.

9/16/2007 1:27:44 PM

Go talk to them in person. Be sweet and rational. It works everytime.

9/16/2007 5:36:44 PM

i dont understand why the check card still works, when theres a <=$0 account balance. bastards.

9/16/2007 5:40:46 PM

Of course it works. How else are they supposed to make money off bullshit fees.

9/16/2007 6:38:31 PM

hey guys thanks for all the advice i called suntrust and spoke with 3 different people and finally i got a supervisor who reviewed the situation. i pleaded and said some like if u can even cut the fees in half i'll be happy said shes going to run it through with her boss and i'll get at least $280 in fees back .

9/17/2007 1:03:30 AM

do what i do, have one account for living expenses and a second for bills/rent

9/17/2007 1:07:01 AM

^^Man you're getting raped if you only get half of that back. Shit like that is the reason I left Suntrust.

9/17/2007 11:17:08 AM

Is he related to this guy?

9/17/2007 11:19:23 AM

Quote :

"do what i do, have one account for living expenses and a second for bills/rent"

Thats about the only way to avoid ever paying NSF fees on a college budget. You don't tie the second account to a check card but only use that for writing checks and account drafts. Then you should know exactly whats going through on it.

9/17/2007 11:21:35 AM

The same thing happened to me. I paid my TWC bill online, setting the payment date a week ahead. Well, I got the confirmation #, except it went through that day. $300 in overdraft fees a few days later nearly gave me a heart attack. Went to Wachovia to explain the situation, and they basically said "tough shit". So did TWC. Moral of the story, makes lots of $$ and keep it in your account so the stupidity of others, yourself, electronics, ect. is not somethng you end up paying for.

9/17/2007 12:28:57 PM

I had a bill draft for more than the amount it should have been at the time, which resulted in an overdraft fee. After about 2 hours of bitching to both the agency and the bank. The agency agreed to credit the overcharge back to my account and the bank agreed to dismiss the overdraft fee once they saw the agency replaced the money (in essence saying it wasn't my fault).

9/17/2007 12:32:35 PM

I'm on automatic bill pay through my debit card with TWC. We moved and there was about 2 weeks between our service getting cut off at the old place and turned on at the new place. They decided that we had cancelled our account and opened a new one rather than transferred (don't ask...I thought it was a lame excuse too), and charged us $350.00 for equipment, which they took out of our account, since they had our card information. Of course, assuming we have $350.00 more than we actually had, we overdrew a few times. After an entire day of bitching and eventually obtaining a customer service representative's full name and cell phone number, we got our money back, are now getting 3 free months of digital cable+internet, and were reimbursed all of our overdraft fees.

Bottom line, don't take no for an answer. I threatened to file fraud charges on them for unlawfully taking money out of our account and after that, they were more than willing to work with me.

9/17/2007 1:28:54 PM

My bank, Wachovia, was kind enough to set me up with an instant line of credit as a form of overdraft protection.

So, if anything like what everyone is describing here happens to me, Wachovia will immediately give me a loan in $100 increments up to $500 to cover it. All I have to pay is interest, which is a matter of pennies when the loan is only for a week or two. I have not used it for years, but it is comforting to know it is there.

9/17/2007 2:19:44 PM

setemup

9/17/2007 2:41:19 PM