Arkansas homeowners Kendra and Todd thought they were living the dream when they became homeowners in August of 2010. Now they are living a mortgage servicing nightmare.
In a story that eerily mirrors my battle to overcome lender errors and erroneous credit reporting, Kendra and Todd have not missed a mortgage payment, nor do they have any financial difficulties. And yet their home is on the path to a wrongful foreclosure and their credit rating has been destroyed. They spend their time in an endless round of phone calls and letters in an attempt to prevent their home from being stolen out from under them. They are terrified they will be unable to get their mortgage servicing company, PHH Mortgage, to finally and effectively correct their accounting errors and clean up the credit reporting mess the bank created--before it's too late.
Read Kendra and Todd's story -published below with their permission.
I am a new homeowner as of August 2010. I am not having any kind of financial problems to hinder me from making my monthly mortgage payments. I have been employed by the same company for 8 years and in fact, was just told that I will be receiving a salary increase, small, but an increase never the less. I am married and have 2 children and 2 step-children (4). We live in Little Rock, Arkansas.
During closing, we were told our first payment would be due in August. Our bank sold our mortgage to PHH Mortgage, based in Mt. Laurel, NJ. PHH did not assume the loan and set up our account until sometime near the end of August actually. Our bank has all this documented. All of this was monitored and handled by our bank and loan officer. Once the account was established, our bank sent our first check to them by certified mail. The bank has tracking documents that shows our package was checked into PHH mail room on 9-09 and signed for by one of their employees by the name of LARA.
PHH Mortgage never applied the payment. We receive NO notification and have no idea that anything is amiss, neither does our bank. On 9-17, we make our 2nd (September) mortgage payment. PHH receives it and applies it, however, it is applied to August payment (not Sept). We don't learn this until October when we start receiving notices from PHH that our loan is behind. Immediately, upon receiving the 1st notice, my husband contacts the bank and gets them involved. Our bank representative contacts PHH by phone and faxes them the documentation showing when they sent the check and showing it received, but never applied. She is told that they will review and correct any errors on their end. Several weeks go by and we continue get letters from PHH saying we are in default of our loan. Meantime, on Oct 15, we send our 3rd payment for October, its applied as late payment for September. So on goes this vicious cycle!
Now my husband calls them around the 1st of November and speaks with a customer service representative. Here is where it starts getting scary, because they claim not to have any notes or documents on our account file that had been sent some 3 weeks previous by our bank. My husband gets the documentation from our bank, and this time he faxes it to them himself from his office. He also is told upon them receiving it, they will review and get back to us. NO ONE EVER CALLS and letters continue. Now, for November's payment, my husband calls it into them over the phone. At this point, he was responding to yet another letter and thought it would be best to call in the payment. It is taken, received, and we get a transaction number and have proof on the PHH online website that we called in the transaction. We later find out by reviewing our bank statement that the money is not deducted yet weeks after we made the phone payment. We were even charged a FEE for making the phone payment.
Now, by December, the letters coming now have an attorneys letter head, Sharpiro and Kirsch, and telling us our home is going to be foreclosed on if we don't bring our account up to date. The letter provides a number to call them. We immediately call them and explain how this all stems from a non-applied payment in August and we are NOT in default. We continued to make our monthly payments each month. PHH continues to back apply them to the previous month and show us in default. The attorneys office won't even talk to us. They basically tell us they don't want to hear it and if we have a "legitimate" dispute, we need to contact PHH.
Now in December we continue to call PHH to check on the status of the information we sent in and get generic responses. We make our December payment electronically. This payment was JUST sent back to us on Jan 18th with a letter stating that they will NOT accept anymore payments from us because our account is not up to date and in foreclosure process. With this "note" was NO reference to which payment they were returning or any other information. We actually thought it was our January payment we scheduled to have made from our account. It wasn't even our own check returned! They had apparently processed our check and then sent us a check from their account returning our funds to us.
The scary part is each time we call, we get someone new and there seems to be NO NOTES on our account that this has been disputed for months with calls and faxes, etc. January 10 we get a letter stating we have 30 days to "respond" to the attorneys regarding our loan or they will be foreclosing on our home. ARE YOU KIDDING? The letter reads as if we are a bunch of deadbeats and have continued to ignore their many attempts to reach us by snail mail. Even though we know the attorney has already heard our story, we do contact them AGAIN immediately. I offer to fax them the same documentation, in addition, to send them documentation of every month's payments from our bank statements. They again tell us it won't do any good to send them anything and if we have a "legitimate dispute" to take it up with PHH Mortgage.
At this point, my husband and I are beside ourselves. We have invested countless hours, missed work, to work on this with NO resolution yet. Toward the end of December, we stopped talking to the regular Customer Service reps and immediately ask to speak with a supervisor when we call. We are now on our 3rd "Supervisor" that has promised to review our faxes, that by the way, we had to re-fax to each one of them because its not noted or documented on our account. The supervisor tells us if we have the documentation they will review it and call us back later that day or the following day- they NEVER have called us back. Each time a few days goes by, we are calling back and get a different supervisor. Its liked someone dropped us in the middle of the twighlight zone dealing with this company. Our bank loan officer is also very involved and has been on the phone with PHH many times and as recently as today to with someone in the foreclosure department trying to explain this is a terrible mistake and injustice and PHH is actually at fault. She updated us today that the person she spoke with claims they are "working on it" - but that leaves us NO assurance as this is what we have been told for MONTHS and now our money is being returned to us!
WE ARE TERRIFIED- they are going to try to foreclose and take our home. Its like the left hand has no idea what the right hand his doing over there. We have spent hours and hours the past few days calling attorneys and researching. Several attorneys we talked to said unless we were filing bankruptcy, they couldn't help us.
I don't understand how this can happen. This has also severely impacted my credit. I have printed all 3 credit reports and PHH has reported to all 3 that we have not made payment in the past 4 months and we are $4777 past due. Are you kidding?
I have already filed a complaint with the BBB and FTC. If you google this company, the internet is littered with all kinds of terrible stories about them. The BBB has over 400 complaints on file and they have a C rating. It is despicable that consumers can be treated this way. This has caused us so much stress and it appears to be a long battle in front of us yet. All please pray for us.
Kendra and Todd
Little Rock, Arkansas
In a story that eerily mirrors my battle to overcome lender errors and erroneous credit reporting, Kendra and Todd have not missed a mortgage payment, nor do they have any financial difficulties. And yet their home is on the path to a wrongful foreclosure and their credit rating has been destroyed. They spend their time in an endless round of phone calls and letters in an attempt to prevent their home from being stolen out from under them. They are terrified they will be unable to get their mortgage servicing company, PHH Mortgage, to finally and effectively correct their accounting errors and clean up the credit reporting mess the bank created--before it's too late.
Read Kendra and Todd's story -published below with their permission.
I am a new homeowner as of August 2010. I am not having any kind of financial problems to hinder me from making my monthly mortgage payments. I have been employed by the same company for 8 years and in fact, was just told that I will be receiving a salary increase, small, but an increase never the less. I am married and have 2 children and 2 step-children (4). We live in Little Rock, Arkansas.
During closing, we were told our first payment would be due in August. Our bank sold our mortgage to PHH Mortgage, based in Mt. Laurel, NJ. PHH did not assume the loan and set up our account until sometime near the end of August actually. Our bank has all this documented. All of this was monitored and handled by our bank and loan officer. Once the account was established, our bank sent our first check to them by certified mail. The bank has tracking documents that shows our package was checked into PHH mail room on 9-09 and signed for by one of their employees by the name of LARA.
PHH Mortgage never applied the payment. We receive NO notification and have no idea that anything is amiss, neither does our bank. On 9-17, we make our 2nd (September) mortgage payment. PHH receives it and applies it, however, it is applied to August payment (not Sept). We don't learn this until October when we start receiving notices from PHH that our loan is behind. Immediately, upon receiving the 1st notice, my husband contacts the bank and gets them involved. Our bank representative contacts PHH by phone and faxes them the documentation showing when they sent the check and showing it received, but never applied. She is told that they will review and correct any errors on their end. Several weeks go by and we continue get letters from PHH saying we are in default of our loan. Meantime, on Oct 15, we send our 3rd payment for October, its applied as late payment for September. So on goes this vicious cycle!
Now my husband calls them around the 1st of November and speaks with a customer service representative. Here is where it starts getting scary, because they claim not to have any notes or documents on our account file that had been sent some 3 weeks previous by our bank. My husband gets the documentation from our bank, and this time he faxes it to them himself from his office. He also is told upon them receiving it, they will review and get back to us. NO ONE EVER CALLS and letters continue. Now, for November's payment, my husband calls it into them over the phone. At this point, he was responding to yet another letter and thought it would be best to call in the payment. It is taken, received, and we get a transaction number and have proof on the PHH online website that we called in the transaction. We later find out by reviewing our bank statement that the money is not deducted yet weeks after we made the phone payment. We were even charged a FEE for making the phone payment.
Now, by December, the letters coming now have an attorneys letter head, Sharpiro and Kirsch, and telling us our home is going to be foreclosed on if we don't bring our account up to date. The letter provides a number to call them. We immediately call them and explain how this all stems from a non-applied payment in August and we are NOT in default. We continued to make our monthly payments each month. PHH continues to back apply them to the previous month and show us in default. The attorneys office won't even talk to us. They basically tell us they don't want to hear it and if we have a "legitimate" dispute, we need to contact PHH.
Now in December we continue to call PHH to check on the status of the information we sent in and get generic responses. We make our December payment electronically. This payment was JUST sent back to us on Jan 18th with a letter stating that they will NOT accept anymore payments from us because our account is not up to date and in foreclosure process. With this "note" was NO reference to which payment they were returning or any other information. We actually thought it was our January payment we scheduled to have made from our account. It wasn't even our own check returned! They had apparently processed our check and then sent us a check from their account returning our funds to us.
The scary part is each time we call, we get someone new and there seems to be NO NOTES on our account that this has been disputed for months with calls and faxes, etc. January 10 we get a letter stating we have 30 days to "respond" to the attorneys regarding our loan or they will be foreclosing on our home. ARE YOU KIDDING? The letter reads as if we are a bunch of deadbeats and have continued to ignore their many attempts to reach us by snail mail. Even though we know the attorney has already heard our story, we do contact them AGAIN immediately. I offer to fax them the same documentation, in addition, to send them documentation of every month's payments from our bank statements. They again tell us it won't do any good to send them anything and if we have a "legitimate dispute" to take it up with PHH Mortgage.
At this point, my husband and I are beside ourselves. We have invested countless hours, missed work, to work on this with NO resolution yet. Toward the end of December, we stopped talking to the regular Customer Service reps and immediately ask to speak with a supervisor when we call. We are now on our 3rd "Supervisor" that has promised to review our faxes, that by the way, we had to re-fax to each one of them because its not noted or documented on our account. The supervisor tells us if we have the documentation they will review it and call us back later that day or the following day- they NEVER have called us back. Each time a few days goes by, we are calling back and get a different supervisor. Its liked someone dropped us in the middle of the twighlight zone dealing with this company. Our bank loan officer is also very involved and has been on the phone with PHH many times and as recently as today to with someone in the foreclosure department trying to explain this is a terrible mistake and injustice and PHH is actually at fault. She updated us today that the person she spoke with claims they are "working on it" - but that leaves us NO assurance as this is what we have been told for MONTHS and now our money is being returned to us!
WE ARE TERRIFIED- they are going to try to foreclose and take our home. Its like the left hand has no idea what the right hand his doing over there. We have spent hours and hours the past few days calling attorneys and researching. Several attorneys we talked to said unless we were filing bankruptcy, they couldn't help us.
I don't understand how this can happen. This has also severely impacted my credit. I have printed all 3 credit reports and PHH has reported to all 3 that we have not made payment in the past 4 months and we are $4777 past due. Are you kidding?
I have already filed a complaint with the BBB and FTC. If you google this company, the internet is littered with all kinds of terrible stories about them. The BBB has over 400 complaints on file and they have a C rating. It is despicable that consumers can be treated this way. This has caused us so much stress and it appears to be a long battle in front of us yet. All please pray for us.
Kendra and Todd
Little Rock, Arkansas
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Dear Kendra and Todd,
I am a Forensic Mortgage Document Auditor and have worked in the financial field for some 10 years. I also live here in Little Rock. I am presently working a number of cases with 3 attorneys.
As per your situation I can say that the lender was not the lender and was just a pretender lender and that the loan was securitized.
If you guys would like some help please contact me at oliver@ipa.net.
john
I'm in a similar situation but thankfully not as bad. I have been ahead on my mortgage payments since purchasing the home 8 years ago. I refinanced two years ago and started out a month ahead. I did this as a cushion for me in case of financial difficulties in the future. It gives me an extra month before anything happens with the house and also gives me a mail cushion in case something gets messed up with a payment. I hate being late with any payment and my credit rating shows it.
My loan got sold to TierOne bank in Lincoln, NE. They went under and were sold to Great Western Bank. Great Western Bank doesn't do mortgages so immediately sold my mortgage to Mutual of Omaha Bank.
With TierOne, I had a payment book where I sent a coupon in with each payment. Since I never received anything other than an address to send payment to from Great Western, I continued using these payment coupons so I'm sure I've kept up to date.
The mortgage was sold to Mutual of Omaha Bank. They use Dovenmuehle Mortgage to service their mortgages. I received my first statement from Mutual of Omaha Bank and they show that my next payment is due in less than two weeks! I've ALWAYS been six weeks in advance. I got all the cancelled check images regarding the loan since the refinance from my bank and verified which due date each was for and when it was sent in. I AM still six weeks in advance. I've never missed a payment being six weeks in advance. At worst, when I didn't yet have the new coupon book from TierOne, I ended up sending two payments in quick succession to be caught back up to the six week in advance plan.
I've been promised research and callbacks from Dovenmuehle. I received one callback after a month where they told me they verified I had made 12 payments last year so that showed that their due date is correct. They didn't even look to see when each of those payments was due. I spoke to a manager who promised me a call back within 3 days. It's now been three weeks and I still haven't heard from him. I've been in phone contact with a person at Mutual of Omaha Bank. They say they want to get it resolved but because Great Western Bank has no mortgage department, they don't have anyone to call there about it.
What a joke. Because of some bank's screw-up, I'm out a mortgage payment. Oh, some may say I'm not out a payment because it's been applied to the loan. It's out of my pocket and they didn't credit me the month it was due so I am out the payment.
No one cares.
I'm going to be writing my Senator and Congressman asking that a law be made regarding buying and selling of mortgages. If a bank that owns a mortgage screws up, the person owing the money should have some legal say in who manages the mortgage. It's my money and my credit rating at risk here, not the bank's.
Is there any sort of bank oversight department at the state or federal level to enforce the rights of borrowers?
Matt -Sadly, your story and that of Kendra and Todd's is more common than you think. Each time I read one of these stories here or in email -it serves to remind me of the 10 year battle I faced -that was sparked by my NOT having access to a monthly statement and blindly trusting my bank was applying my payments (and additional monies sent for extra principal payments) accurately. I learned that was far from the case. Rather, all the while I was abiding by my obligation to pay them, and pay them on time, they were quietly destroying my credit (hence: Give me Back My Credit!) and grossly and recklessly mishandling my account without my knowledge!
Once discovered, like you, and Kendra & Todd and countless other victims of predatory mortgage servicing practices, each and every promise to "research" and "correct their errors" were broken-over and over. As many of us, we find ourselves forced to find relief and accountability through lawsuits --not looking to sue -but forced to -in order to correct someone else's errors. see: http://www.givemebackmycredit.com/richardson_my_story.htm
Find the appropriate and experienced consumer attorney to help you protect your home and your rights.
Try searching for an attorney here at National Association of Consumer Advocates in your area: http://www.naca.net
Keep speaking out!
It's often the only way we can deter or stop these abusive practices!
Denise
Dear Denise,
After reading several stories on this website, It still seems as though nothing, and i mean nothing is being done to stop companies like PHH Mortgage, and nothing has been done to help people who were wrongly evicted from their homes in restoring their credit. Phh Mortgage did the exact same thing to me by not recognizing my payments because they had'nt included my taxes in the modification they made for me ( Only because after 9 months of talking to India-i threatened PHH with a C.C email to 60 minutes, Anderson Cooper, Channels 2,4,5,7,9,11,13 , Diane Feinstein, Obama, and Joe Biden. They set me up with a phony modification reported me to the 3 credit bureau's 9 x's. In September 2008 my fico was 801, and i had no debt. Fannie mae sold me the house through a shel company who was really PHH Mortgage and promised me 6.3% fixed and the last day before the close of escrow shoved down my throat 6.7% completely unjust. I know what the banking industries ploys of making loans to folks who had no money or credit to buy anything- in-turn created a demand for housing, pushing the appraisals up 20% for 3 years straight, And is now double and triple dipping on all the foreclosed, and short sales. What the financial industry had done is put our country into a depression. It's the biggest PONZI scheme ever played out. Our history will show more suicides during this time than ever before. I believe the financial institutions should be brought up on several charges of pre-mediated and unjustly leveraging property appraisal's illegally and knowingly. They need to be accountable to this horrific injustice, and put people's credit back to where it was. Also The amount of lobbyists for this industry has to be minimal and have a ceiling to it.
Again this is the worst white collar crime ever.
Andrea...Well put. Your email expresses the view and frustrations that many of us have. Keep speaking up and out for accountability and justice for those who have had their lives torn to shreds --right along with their credit --without cause.
I am a Servicemember and just closed on my new home a couple of days ago. My lender USAA just sold my loan to a company called PHH and I am begining to wonder who these people are and if they are gonna screw me over.
-RIchard
I don't blame you for being concerned in light of recent news you can read here:
http://www.givemebackmycredit.com/blog/2011/03/court-roundup-news-on-several-mortgage-servicing-lawsuits.html
My suggestion would be to keep an eye on your mortgage statements (if you receive one or have access to one) to make sure your payments are applied -and applied accurately!
.Richard, Thank your for your service and many sacrifices you and your family have made as a Serviceman!!.
PHH is really messing us up. We pay our mortgage on time and in June 2010 they applied our payment, but in July 2010 they applied it to June 2010 again. So every month thereafter we were staying one month behind without knowing it. We never received any notices about being behind until they just froze our account and we could no longer make any payments and that was in November 2010. We contacted our attorney and after calling and emailing their attorney with no success. After a month and a half they did get the attorney to respond and they had no idea why our account was locked and told my attorney to just send the payment into them and they would make sure it was applied to the note. Not long after that we received a motion in the mail, they were trying to foreclose. We called our attorney and when they spoke to them she said that the payments were still sitting on her desk and she would drop the motion. These people and the attorney are terrible. We finally got our account unlocked to where we can start making our own payments around April 2011.
Recently my husband lost his job and he was offered a job in Baton Rouge, LA. We are trying to purchase a doublewide to live in over here. We are having problems getting financed because of PHH. We are living in a motel 6 at the moment while we try to fix this situation. We have decided to look into filing a suit or a class action law suit against them. This seems to be our only solution to this situation and recover our good credit status.
Vanessa --This happened to me years ago --with a different mortgage servicer. I had even paid additional principal payments knowing I could save a lot on interest that way. I was never late either --but because I was paying with a coupon booklet and didn't receive monthly statements from my bank, I didn't know that they were mishandling my payments.
Like you --as an example: If I mailed in my Feb 1st payment on Jan. 15th and they received it on the 23rd --they erroneously recorded it as a LATE Jan payment --and this created a domino effect that they could not easily correct. Then they continued to report this negative and erroneous late payts to the credit bureaus. It wasn't until I quite literally made a federal case out of it --that they managed to correct their costly errors. See: http://www.givemebackmycredit.com/richardson_my_story.htm
I don't know if you have disputed the erroneous reporting by PHH to the big three credit bureaus --but be sure to do so --do it in writing and send via certified mail. I'm sure your attorney told you that not only does the bank have a fiduciary duty to account for your payments properly --and report to the cra's accurately ---but the cra's also have a duty under the FCRA to investigate your disputed, and correct any inaccuracies found. The problem is --they often don't follow that procedure. Instead -they often seem to take the word of the creditor reporting the info over that of the consumer. And that is a violation of the FCRA ---and your rights.
Keep us posted on how this goes.
Denise
If you need to find info on how to obtain your credit reports or dispute in writing see:
http://www.givemebackmycredit.com/richardson_howto_dispute.htm