Walter Palomino says he pays his son’s college tuition on time every month. But imagine his surprise when a recent payment never made it to the college.
Palomino is like many parents who use online banking to pay all of their bills. And in the case of the tuition payment, he said he uses his computer to authorize Chase Bank to send a check each month to Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, where his son, Giovanni, just wrapped up his third year.
“I don’t make the check. I don’t sign the check. I don’t mail the check,” Palomino said. “It’s all done through Chase.”
Palomino said he received a billing statement earlier this year and discovered his December payment was never collected by the college.
Still, someone had signed the check. But he said he never found out who cashed it.
“I didn’t know where I was going to find $2,000 that was taken from me like nothing,” Palomino said.
Palomino asked Chase Bank to investigate. He said months went by with no new information or reimbursement.
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“Every time that I talked to them, they told me it’d take 30 days, 60 days, 90 days,” Palomino said.
Palomino later contacted NBC 5 Responds.
A spokesperson for Chase said it normally takes 90 days to research a check. And they said a different bank had processed the original cashed check.
“It was processed by PNC Bank,” said a Chase spokesperson. “We used the normal check-cleaning processes to request more information from the processing bank.”
Palomino later received a reimbursement of $2,045. PNC Bank reimbursed the amount to his account, according to the Chase spokesperson.
PNC Bank declined to offer a statement.
However, Palomino said he has already put the reimbursement to use.
“I paid my son’s tuition for this year so I’m done,” Palomino said. “I just have to prepare for the next one.”
A spokesperson for Illinois Wesleyan University said the campus cooperated with Palomino by allowing his student to enroll for the next semester and by not charging any interest or late fees for the unpaid tuition while Palomino worked to resolve the matter with his financial institution.
