More Banking Difficulties

I have previously described my dealings and difficulties with banking giant JP Morgan Chase.   Yesterday, I sparred with the Indiana-based regional bank (damn those Hoosiers) which holds the mortgage on the farm I purchased five years ago, and which was responsible for this agricultural loan marketing travesty.  Years before, the predecessor institution had been a local Savings and Loan, based in Miami County.  It had later become a savings bank, and it was local enough that I actually knew of some of the people on the board of directors of the bank.  It had struggled to grow, and eventually sold out to MainSource, which was growing by acquisition. 

Anyway, when I bought the farm (obviously not in the figurative variation of that phrase), I financed through Fifth-Third, because a family friend was a loan officer there, and could get me the best financing available.  Within a year, he moved to MainSource, and offered to refinance us at a better rate.  I got a three year fixed, and thereafter annually resetting adjustable-rate mortgage.  I would deposit cash farm receipts, or later, cash rent payments in a checking account at the bank, and the monthly loan payments would be directly withdrawn from the account.  At a point midway through the three year fixed rate portion, I made a sizable cash payment on principal.  The interest rate reset in the fall of 2011, and the monthly payments were reset based on the 7 year amortization period of the original loan.  Since I had put in that large principal payment, my monthly loan payments were reduced by 60%.  When I deposited my cash rent check in the account in late 2011, there was sufficient capital to pay nearly 18 months’ worth of loan payments.  This would seem to be extremely beneficial to the bank, since they are not paying me interest on the deposited funds, but I am paying them interest on the loan.  The main reason I went ahead with this setup was to give me some flexibility on future financing.  That, and I am lazy and dumb.

Now I will fast forward to the beginning of this month.  I got a letter from the bank informing me that because the account did not have any activity for at least a year, the account was considered dormant, and if the account balance was below $2500, the account would be assessed a monthly fee.  Since the account had a balance above $2500, and the loan payments had been withdrawn monthly throughout the previous 12 months, I didn’t anticipate any issues, and assumed I would activate the account when I made my next deposit.  However, last Saturday I got a notice that I had a late loan payment and was being assessed a $69 late fee. 

I went to the bank at lunchtime yesterday to get the issue straightened out.  Nobody at the bank understood why the account had been made dormant, or why the automatic loan payments were cancelled.  They called the main office over in Indiana and didn’t get much guidance.  Finally, they told me that they would get the matter settled and contact me.

When the lady contacted me, she said the bank would deduct the payment (minus fee) and re-establish the automatic loan payments going forward.  However, to keep this from happening again, I should make at least a small deposit in the checking account every 90 days.  When I asked why I would need to do this, she told me it was so that the bank knew I wasn’t dead, and that they would know I was aware of what was going on with the account.  I didn’t point out to her that I already knew the status of the account, but did point out that as long as the checking account had cash in it, the bank didn’t really need to concern itself with whether I was dead, because somebody would eventually contact them if I was.  She then asked me if I thought I could make at least a $1 deposit every 90 days to keep the account active.  I told her I might be able to.  What a pointless pain-in-the-ass.  As soon as I pay off my loan, I will cease doing business with these jackasses.  That will probably be sooner, rather than later.  Go to Hell, you Hoosier morons.