Consumer complaint received 2023-09-22
Company: BMO HARRIS BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
State: OR
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process
Sub-issue: Loan sold or transferred to another company

Complaint:
BMO Bank has acquired the accounts and banking business of Bank of the West. 
At the time of the acquisition announcement, I had 3 accounts with Bank of the west : Checking, RV Installment Loan and Home Mortgage. This acquisition has not been transparent to me as a consumer and has had a material impact on my finances, credit and time required by me to manage the transition of my accounts. In addition, new policies and practices by BMO have made it more difficult to do business with them. This is unfair to me as a consumer to be impacted by this acquisition without choice or compensation for my time and expense. Further, there has been no formal process to file complaints other then calling customer service. 
Specifically : 1. The transfer of the servicing of my home mortgage impacted my credit score by reporting a new mortgage in the amount of my outstanding principle to all three credit bureaus which inaccurately doubled the amount of my indebtedness and dropped my credit score at a time when I was considering applying for new credit. This would have changed my approval prospects and affected my qualifying interest rate, increasing my cost of finance charges. I was offered a letter of explanation which could be submitted to a new creditor, which I confirmed request and have never received to this day. 
2. During the first month ( XXXX ) of servicing my RV installment loan, double payments were made to my loan. This situation was created because the autopayment from Bank of the West was transferred with the loan and during setting up BMO digital banking I had no visibility into existing Bank of the West autopayments, so I established a new one as part of my digital banking transition. When I contacted customer service to sort out the double payment and requested, they cancel the Bank of the West autopayment since they provided no means to manage it myself, I was informed I would have to write a letter to BMO requesting it to be canceled. They would not accept my verbal instructions over the phone although with my prior relationship with Bank of the west they would have honored my verbal request. I asked to speak to a supervisor and had to wait 25 minutes to speak to what seemed to be their bank policy manager ( I'm sorry, I don't have the individual 's name or full title ). This person was firm on their policy and refused to do anything to correct the situation other than me having to write a letter. When asked about the policy change between banks and why the old Bank of the West policy wasn't honored, I was simply told that this was their policy with no expectations or alternatives. 
3. Consumer Complaints - the only process offered to file a consumer complaint was verbal and offered no case number for follow-up or guarantee that I would be contacted or responded too. Further, In all of the notification letters I have received, there is no information offered on how to file complaints other than calling their customer service numbers. I'm left with the impression BMO doesn't care about the impact their policies on consumers- too big to care and seemly not accountable to consumer protection policies. 
I feel this acquisition has not treated me fairly and I am being victimized as a consumer for the benefit of BMO 's acquisition of Bank of the West. I believe banks should compensate consumers for their time and inconvenience caused by these bank purchases. Consumers should receive a dividend as part of the transaction to compensate us for the time and financial impact of these transactions. As a consumer, I'm treated as if my time isn't worth anything and I'm being used freely to benefit their profit.

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 non-monetary relief