There is no scum on this earth lower than the scum of loan and insurance companies.
I have spent dozens of hours on the phone with my mortgage company. Why because a year ago they offered a forbearance plan since my partner was out of work due to the pandemic conditions. Since then every agent we have talked to at this company (oh and it's a big one, the "4th Biggest Mortgage loan servicer (not a real word) in the country" as they proudly proclaim on their website) has told us completely different and contradictory information.
Their incompetence is breathtaking. Coming off of forbearance we were told that the first payment had to be via check over the phone, that our automatic payment would not go through and we'd have to reset it up after making the payment. Okay fine. So we did that on the first, no problem.
Except the next day their system (without us resetting up automatic payments) withdraw the payment a second time. 1600 dollars twice in 3 days. I know some of you are thinking "Wesley you have a house you rich sonofabitch." First off no, shut up. I'm what you call lower poor middle class. To get a 2 bedroom apartment in the city I live in would cost about the same or more. Buying a house made the most sense economically for the situation I was in. It's not a great house, it's new and I'm pretty far outside of the city I work just to afford a place to live at all. That's not to mention that no place for rent allows big dogs.
So now they've taking the payment via check and there's a pending charge for a second payment that was not authorized. We call of course. We were told the payment was going to be canceled. It was not cancelled as promised and a number of my other bills hit the account at the same time. Of course they couldn't just electronically put the money back into my bank account, they had to send a paper check for...reasons?
There was enough money to cover my bills let me assure you. What there wasn't was an extra 1600 dollars to cover the incompetency of a mortgage company which has now illegally taken money out of my bank account. I have now 14 overdraft fees of 30 dollars each (which my bank didn't bother to notify me off because...well banks are another issue). How did this happen? Apparently the check we were told at the time we had to pay to restart payments was put directly towards our principle and not as a regular payment. This some how triggered the system to think that there wasn't enough money to cover their fees. Their system charged us another 30 dollar fee to make this 1600 dollar payment which then set off the chain reaction of overdraws.
At this point the gross incompetency of this company has cost me 420 dollars in fees and overdrafts. Money which of course the mortgage company claims they aren't responsible for because they don't control overdraft fees. The bank says it's all automated and the company had the information to make a withdraw for payment so their system just ran automatically.
It doesn't matter that these multi-million dollars companies are at fault for this fuck up, I'm the one who pays.
It doesn't matter that we did exactly what we were told to by the mortgage company, because oh yeah we didn't really have to call in and do the check then, that agent was just wrong.
Which is the defining theme of this company, "Oh the last agent was wrong this is how it should have worked" is something I've heard a lot. I don't care how it should of worked, this is how it happened.
They are supposedly going to "investigate this situation", even that was like pulling teeth. We talk to one agent who will tell us "We need these documents, but they can only be faxed, mailed, or uploaded through your account portal, there is no email option." Of course you log onto the portal and there's no place to upload documents for the company to see. So you call back and suddenly the next agent gives an email address you can send the documents too.
This is the same company who for 4 years I've been paying and from my payments the home insurance fees are paid out to the insurance companies. In May we switched insurance companies to get a better bundled deal on car and home. You know, like responsible adults trying to save money so we can ...pay off other bills. We informed the mortgage company, no problem. A month later these morons tried to claim we needed to provide proof of insurance for the past 4 years or they were going to charge us several thousand dollars in back fees for their own home insurance plan. Never mind they had been paying my previous insurance company for 4 years, suddenly because we switched insurance providers they had "no proof" that we had home insurance. We argued they should see the payments they were making. They saw that but said that wasn't proof enough. Apparently a loan company is happy to just pay money to whomever without proof they need to pay money to that person?
Of course after we got the paper work together when we called to send it in the next agent saw the verification that we had been covered for home insurance for the previous four years without us sending them a single document.
I wish I could say that my problems were unique but I looked online and this is a constant pattern with this company to all their customers. I didn't choose this loan agency. The original lenders sold my mortgage to this company about 6 months after I moved in. This is a fairly standard practice from my understanding but of course the consumer has no say in which incompetent company buys your mortgage you just get notified in the mail and you change who you pay each month. Someone clever is going to say "Well refinance your home with another company of your choosing." I wish I could, I know the company I'd start with, they've talked to me about it several times but each time they've checked I'm not eligible. Why? Because according to the Great Scam...erm State of Texas you have to pay off X% of the original loan amount before you get to do that on your own. Which of course 4 years isn't long enough to do and will be even longer now thanks to the pandemic and having to take the forbearance option to not lose my home. (Oh we're going to talk more about the assholes of Texas later in this week trust me.)
This is the kind of shit that is preventing my generations (Millennials, I know I can hear your jeers Boomers, come on hate me some more) from participating in the so called economy. I keep hearing news reports and articles wondering why people in their 30s don't buy houses, why we aren't spending money.
The reason? Is even when one of us can afford the down payment through government assistance the system is designed to frustrate, confuse and economically hamstring us to point that it's impossible to get through a month without being lied to and conned. I got lucky in that my student loan debt was low and I got that paid off years ago. I know others aren't lucky, but it seems no matter what you do, you're going to be in debt and the owners of that debt are going to bleed you dry at every chance they get, and the protection for consumers?
Please, Congress used those documents to roll up some more tax breaks and loop holes for the rich and smoked that shit.
Stay hydrated, remain angry.