Apologies in advance for the long post:
I am about at my wits end with my mortgage company. In April of this year, my mortgage was transferred to a new company. I was informed of this by mail in mid-March, with instructions to send all payments starting with the April one to the new company and new address - no mention of a new account number. I did as instructed and paid through my bank’s billpay system as usual, but on May 1st I got a notice that my payment was delinquent. I checked with my bank and the payment was processed on 4/8. I contacted the company and was instructed to send them a copy of my bank statement showing the debit, which I immediately did. To this day they have not credited my account for that payment. Through multiple phone calls for the past two plus months (including bumping up to supervisor level), we have found that the issue is that the first payment was mis-directed and applied to a different account number. I did not get a new account number until after the first payment was sent. They have figured this out, acknowledged that I have paid and they have “found” the payment - yet it is still not reflected in my account. As a result, because the first payment was (in their books) “missed” they have applied each subsequent payment as if it is a month late. In the meantime, I’m receiving mortgage payment assistance notices and mortgage modification notices from the mortgage company due to my “failure to meet obligations”. Last call I made in late June, they assured me that the payment would show up in my account by July 1st. Nope…not there.
I have recently filed a complaint with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and the Better Business Bureau. Has anyone dealt with this? Do I need to hire a lawyer? I really don’t want to have to pay a lawyer to deal with an error that is not my fault! But I need to get this taken care of before my credit is affected (yes - I have discussed this with them and they said that they can’t help if it is reported to credit bureaus as late because it is past the 60 day grace period given when a mortgage is transferred to a new lender. This is lunacy.)
Find the email or phone number of the customer service office of the bank and contact them. Tell them, politely, that if the situation is not rectified and any dings to your credit removed, you will contact the media. Then, pick your favorite TV news consumer helper person and contact them. This is the stuff those people love to handle.
Good luck.
Complain on any social media they have.
Write to the CEO directly and really anyone who is in a senior capacity. cc: them all.
Contact your state’s attorney general and theirs if in a different state. cc: any contacts you have at the mortgage company.
At this point, you need to get very noisy. I agree you shouldn’t have to shell out money to get this fixed. At some point, a lawyer may be needed but I’d save that as a last resort.
They’ve acknowledged the problem. Sounds like somebody higher up needs to light a fire under someone’s butt to actually fix it.
Keep a very detailed diary of your communications with the company. Date, time started and ended, phone number called, who you spoke with (insist on getting their last name!), what you talked about, what was promised. All suggestions above are good ones. Make noise before they dent your credit big time!
Crap like this makes my blood boil. Good luck, and hope you prevail soon!!!
Speaking of credit, part of your ultimate resolution of this issue should be getting something in writing from the mortgage company that you made your payments on time. You can then use this to resolve any possible dings to your credit. Also, print out records of your timely payments if you haven’t done so already.
Your post caused horrific flashbacks. We went thru this a number of years ago when our mortgage was sold to a really skanky (for lack of a better word) organization. Similar situation to yours. Somehow payments would never get there on time, they were misapplied, statements were late…
I’ll second the advice to document, document, document. Send any and all subsequent payments by registered/return receipt mail. We eventually got an ombudsman involved. I don’t recall who or how we connected (prior to internet). You might want to give this organization a try…
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/cfpb-ombudsmans-office-a-resource-available-to-you/
Some companies actually respond better to social media these days. Tweet them if you can, and call out their behavior.
Be sure you have everything in email or some other format. In addition to CFPB which I believe is pretty toothless these days, you might want to investigate federal banking regulatory agencies to see if there any you can complain to that have authority in this area.
Ugh. I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with this. The lender needs to be put out of business. Contact your state senators and representative. You could start with your state legislators but I would go directly to the federal level since they have more pull. Good luck.
One other thing you might try is suing them locally in small claims court for theft. Here’s a case involving WF over a similar amount of money. The plaintiff won, and when WF didn’t pay, the plaintiff initiated foreclosure proceedings against a WF branch (he was going to sell it via foreclosure auction, lol).
All very good suggestions. I will look for them on Twitter and go the social media route (can’t believe that I didn’t think of that one in my own.) Up til now I’ve been doing my complaining via phone (I have documented these calls) but I will send further correspondence via certified mail. It’s a mortgage servicing company, not a bank. I’ve never heard of them, but they have plenty of complaints on the BBB site.
The amount of time I have spent on this is ridiculous.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-happens-if-my-mortgage-is-sold-to-a-new-owner-or-the-servicer-changes.html has some information on what to do if your mortgage servicing is sold.
If you have impound/escrow accounts for property taxes, be sure those are accounted for correctly and property tax bills are paid correctly (errors with impound/escrow accounts are among the most common complaints with mortgage servicers).
What incompetent mortgage servicer is this?
I was thinking this might be the case. Your actual mortgage is probably securitized and may have been sold and resold several times, or it may still be owned by the original issuer (unlikely). All you can do is deal with the servicer.
Get back with the CFPB and tell them what is happening. It may be able to escalate your case.
Thanks, @ucbalumnus. The NOLO site is helpful. The company is LoanCareLLC. They have paid my recent property taxes, so that’s good. And they have been crediting subsequent payments. But because that first payment is MIA, each payment after that April one is being treated as if it is one month late. Grrrrrrr.
https://www.fnf.com/pages/service-link.aspx indicates that LoanCare is part of ServiceLink, which is part of Fidelity National Financial (mainly known as a title insurance company).
You can also contact the credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) and see if there’s something you can do to preempt the late payment or provide an explanation that can be posted in your credit file.
Thanks for this @ucbalumnus ! I will be sending a detailed complaint and CCing all of the officials at these places. I really appreciate your help!
UPDATE (if you are interested 
) -
I took ALL of the advice and we went all in with complaints: Filed complaints with BBB and CFPB (this was a success in my book - they both resulted in quickly getting responses from the company). Tweeted to get their attention (although they technically responded, it was a boilerplate response saying that they wanted to help and to get in touch with their customer relations department - the same response that was to every complaint I saw on Twitter. Not wasting my time there anymore.) We also sent a three page letter penned by a lawyer friend, detailing the issues along with a timeline of all communication with the company and telling what they legally must do to resolve the issue. These were sent certified mail to the president of LoanCare LLC with copies to CEO of ServiceLink, the President/CEO of the parent company (NewRez LLC) and the VP of Customer Experience there.
Well, that got some attention! Within short order we did get responses and they have since updated our account to bring it all up to date. That said - in the letter to us, they told us that they had properly applied the April, June and July payments. SO…where is May (which was never the issue)? DH called the phone number on the letter to address this - where it said if we had any questions to contact them - and found that that extension was not in service. You can’t make this stuff up.
Again - thanks to everyone. Lesson learned: the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Wow, unbelievable. We also had a shaky transition to a new mortgage company a few months ago, but the problem was resolved pretty quickly. Now, however, I am dealing with Social Security issues for my son, and THAT is a nightmare. 
Isn’t bureaucracy fun, @MaineLonghorn