Financial Institutions and Utility Co's Address Changes: will they ever get it right?

My advice to anyone changing addresses and notifying financial institutions --- DO NOT TAKE FOR GRANTED THAT IT WILL BE TRANSACTED PROPERLY AND WITHIN A RESONABLE TIME. It would be wise to get the word and name of a supervisor over the phone and get them to send you WRITTEN CONFORMATION that the changes are properly made in ALL the computing systems, company-wide. Get on the phone with them and tell them you are not getting off until they agree to send you written notice of the change being made.

My wife and I have had numerous difficulties with several companies that cannot seem to transact a basic address change for a customer. We would fill out the address-change slip provided and I guess it was ignored because we ended up having to phone them before they actually changed it. We discovered one of the reasons for this is that often different parts of the billing process are transacted in different physical locations. ANd - get this - when we paid our bill anyway, it was misapplied to the account (our mortgage co.) as an extra payment because a payment slip was not included, then we were docked a late fee on the next statement for supposedly skipping a month. We fought them on it and they finally corrected the error and very reluctantly took our late fee off the account.

My advice is don't assume they will doit right. A high probability they will do it wrong and if you don't watch it they will make you pay for the mistake.