Consumer complaint received 2020-11-13
Company: BANK OF AMERICA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: IL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
My mortgage is with Bank of America but escrow was not set up on my account and I have always paid my own taxes and insurance. XXXX County has two property tax installments, one due in XXXX and one due in XXXX. In XXXX XXXX County sent out a notice that due to Coronavirus taxpayers could postpone the initial payment with no penalty or interest until XXXX and pay both installments in XXXX. I opted to pay in XXXX. In XXXX Bank of America saw that the first installment was not paid and paid my entire property tax for me to the county plus a penalty for late payment. The bank also set up an escrow account and increased my payment from {$5300.00} per month to over {$8000.00} per month. I called and was told that they were unaware the county had a waiver in place for the property tax payment and if I would pay the entire tax amount at once, they would eliminate the debt and delete the escrow account. I have called the bank more than a dozen times, talked with supervisors and this is still not resolved. I paid the entire amount of the taxes, which the bank erringly credited to the principal of the loan instead of to the taxes. I called again to get this corrected, and after many days they reversed the payment and it was in " unapplied funds ''. Finally this was applied to the taxes, but they said they wills till not delete the escrow account because there was an outstanding {$240.00} for the penalty. No penalty was required of the County because of the waiver. I sent all of this documentation to the bank. Now they were holding my account hostage over this penalty, so I just paid that also on XX/XX/XXXX. That is now sitting in unapplied funds and they still are unable to move it to eliminate the penalty and delete the escrow account. I have not made my XX/XX/XXXX house payment because the amount includes the escrow which they said they would delete, and they told me to wait until this is resolved and said it would not be considered late until after XX/XX/XXXX. Today I was told that I must make the full payment, even if they are unable to move the funds and delete the escrow account, or the account would be considered late. In addition the bank took two payments for XX/XX/XXXX, one on XXXX and another on XXXX. They were supposed to reverse this second payment and tried for over a month but could not get the payment reversed. They told me not to pay my XXXX payment and they would apply this second XXXX payment to XXXX. They did not do this and instead took another {$8000.00} out of my checking account which was not there. That went in as insufficient funds because I did not have the money in my account and I was told that it would be taken care of. I have repeatedly been told that this was a bank error, not my fault and I would not need to make additional payments, yet now I am being threatened with not deleting the escrow after I have paid the full amount of taxes and the penalty and they have been unable to resolve this issue. On calling I have been kept on hold over 2 hours for repeated instances. Everyone seems to be genuinely trying to help, but just can't fix the system. I have been with this bank for over 14 years and have never had a late mortgage payment or any other. My credit score is excellent, and I do not want this ruined over Bank of America 's errors. This is the worst banking experience I have ever had.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief