It ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings.     –Yogi Berra

Yesterday we had an email from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) about our problems with PNC Bank.  The bank has notified the CFPB that they have cleaned up their error (failing to file our paperwork) and the accompanying mess they made (keeping the account open, charging account fees and late fees, assessing a lien against our house, and notifying the credit bureau that we were delinquent on the account).

Question 1:  How could we be delinquent on an account that we closed?

Question 2:  Since I brought the whopping $50 error to their attention and filed duplicate paperwork on the same day I received the bill for the account fee, why didn’t they just work with us to correct the simple paperwork error instead of reacting like we’d committed the Financial Crime of the Century?

Question 3:  Isn’t it amazing that they “misplaced” the paperwork we signed on December 23 (the PNC letter doesn’t mention the original paperwork we signed on September 1), but “found” it and processed it on January 27, just five days after being contacted by the CFPB?  Hmmm . . . a little authorized clean-up going on inside the bank to cover their backsides?

PNC’s letter to the CFPB indicates that they have “instructed” the credit agencies to “remove all references for a delinquency” on the account.  Literally, that doesn’t mean the credit agencies have restored our credit rating.  I called the CFPB about this syntactical detail and Maria suggested I make use of my legal right to a free annual credit check with the three major credit agencies.  If I am unsatisfied with the result, I may contact the CFPB and dispute the action of PNC within the next 60 days.

As I said before (March 1), in PNC’s place, I wouldn’t want to mess up an action that’s being monitored by my federal oversight agency.  Yes, I think that’s the fat lady singing.  Tra la la!