The person who responded informed me that she, personally, had spoken to me on the phone on 3/17 when I called to activate monthly billing, but that if I've changed my mind, she'd turn it off. I told her that I had not called.
She ignores this and tells me that billing has been turned off. I repeat that I did not call, express confusion that it was turned on in the first place, and ask for reassurance that a mistake like this won't happen again.
She insists that she remembers speaking to me, but "if this did not happen", she apologizes. Her fix is to put a note on my account so that automatic billing can *never* be turned on in the future, no matter what.
I reiterate again that we had never spoken, and express concern that if she had spoken to someone pretending to be me, they don't seem to be taking this very seriously. Her response is that "we take detailed links to assure that all your information is safe and secure," and that "if you don't believe you called, then I cannot change your mind."
My entire reply was to ask her to have her supervisor contact me. She said that she had forwarded my emails to her supervisor, and I haven't heard anything since.
I tried calling today, but the person I was talking to (after getting past all the security stuff with no problems) kept insisting that she couldn't hear me, and I finally just hung up.
Another person had individually responded to my initial email, and I explained the situation to her, and she basically ignored it as well. "We at ECSI take security and privacy very seriously. However, if someone wishes to call and make a payment on your account, we will set this up, as long as we are provided with banking information to do so."
Now, I really don't believe that anyone actually called regarding my account. I certainly did not. According to my telephone bill, I made no outgoing calls that day. Their "security" measures over the phone aren't that great, and *maybe* someone could get into my account, and even set up automatic billing with my checking account. However that would be one the strangest cases of fraud ever. More likely, I suspect that someone else called about their account, and she somehow made the change to mine. But I didn't really want to suggest that to her. I've tried to be calm and polite about this.
I'm glad payments have been turned off, but I'm annoyed that this somehow happened in the first place. This will potentially be a problem should I ever want automatic billing turned on in the future. I also don't appreciate her implication that I did call them, and I just "forgot." This could have been a real issue if I didn't have the money in my checking account, or it had used money that was meant for something else and I didn't notice soon enough. Also, if I'm right about someone else calling about their own account, then I hope they discover that automatic payments have not been turned on before they get penalized for a late payment.
If I don't hear anything back, I'm just going to drop it and hope that nothing else happens... Unfortunately these are two loans that I'll probably be making payments on for a while.
ETA: I just got an email from a third person who says "Please provide your cell phone number and work number so I can check the phone logs that day to verify you did not call or no one called from
those phone numbers. I have checked against the number on your account (home I assume) and that number does not appear on that day. We take all situations like this very seriously but until I can be sure that you are not the one who called there is little I can do." Ugh! Why not just take me at my word that I did NOT call you?
YES! And while I was typing the above, I get the following response: "It appears to me that this had to be an operator error where they must have pulled up the wrong account if you did not call to change anything. I don't know what else would explain this situation. I will speak to the rep today to see if they can recall anything regarding the possible mistake." Finally, we're getting somewhere.