I paid off a loan last month. It's a great feeling, especially paying it off 12 years early. But the actual process was annoying.
I had to submit a pay-off request on-line to be received in the post. I open the letter and it states the pay-off quote but also, "This quote is good for five business days. After that time, one day's worth of interest will be added to the final pay-off amount."
Seems reasonable, except for the fact that three business days had already passed by the time I got the quote in the mail. So, two days left to send the final amount. Here's the really annoying part: I couldn't simply pay the amount on-line or over the phone. I had to send the payment by wire or certified check. Either way costs a relatively large fee for such a small transaction.
I thought, "Certified check is a smaller fee, but it will take a few days to get to the lender, thus my quote date will have passed and they might tack on a couple more days worth of interest and I'll have to spend another $12 for a certified check for an amount less than a dollar..."
Just to get it over with, I did the wire -- at a whopping $25 fee. I asked the lady at my bank, "When will this go through?" "Tomorrow," she says. Since my quote was only good to that day, I decided to send the amount with one extra day's worth of interest: 27 cents.
The deed was done and I didn't think anything more of it until a few days ago I got a refund check in the mail from the lender for 27 cents. Wow! The postage was for more than that. The cost to have someone make up that check certainly was more. Why bother?
I almost wanted to destroy the check uncashed just to mess up their accounting to lash back at making me spend $25 on a wire transfer fee when I could have so much more easily just paid off the loan on-line. However, I did deposit the check. It is 27 cents after all. That will get me 75 minutes of parking at the library.
