Provident Funding Fraud and Scam! Santa Rosa, California

I just had the same thing happen to me today.  I've been online researching to see if this is a common occurrence as I suspect, or, as you aptly suggest, a scam.  I had one other late payment back in late 2010 and went so far as to contact the CEO to lodge my complaint.  Of course, I'm sure he never so much as saw it, but no surprise I got no satisfaction, as Mick would say.  Now here it is July 2012 and voila! another incident.  This time though, as with you, they took 2 payments from me.  After receiving a robo-call, I called back whereupon they told me that they would put a stop payment on my check and that if I wanted to avoid the online or pay-by-phone payment fees (since they don't offer a free payment through their site which is unreal in this day and age) I should start a bill pay with my bank, which I did.  They also told me the stop payment would take 24 hours!  24 hours?!?!  Worried that the check had in fact got lost in the mail, I made an electronic bill pay with a 'pay by' of 3 days after (this was a Friday and I made it for the following Monday).

 But low and behold, Provident quickly snatched it out of my account immediately WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY processing the alleged missing check that somehow mysteriously appeared the same day.  I am now overdrawn in my checking account and bouncing all the bills I had set up to be paid.  I called Provident but they have NO CUSTOMER SERVICE on the weekends!!!  WHAT?!?!  I sent an email through their site and told them I expect a refund first thing Monday.  IF I do not get one, I WILL take legal action.  I do not for a second believe that my payment took TWELVE DAYS to get from NJ to CA.  Normally it takes about 2 days SO I refrain from mailing it until the 9th of the month.  I found a few other similar complaints online where payments were mailed (in one case the same day as mine, the 9th) and the customer was told on a few occasions it was late and was charged a late fee.

 I am fairly convinced that this is a scam whereby they randomly hold payments until they are late in order to collect "x" amount of late fees over the course of each loan.  Some of us might get hit more times than others.  I also read that when asked for the post marked envelopes by the aggrieved customers, Provident outright refused to produce them.  Again, if they fail to cooperate, I will file suit - class action - and those who want to hop on board can do so.  I highly recommend that any of you out there do the same if ever confronted with this type of situation.  P.S. like you, I NEVER make late payments - to anyone!