Consumer complaint received 2020-09-28
Company: Dovenmuehle Mortgage, Inc.
State: WA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Closing on a mortgage

Complaint:
My wife and I refinanced our Mortgage, and this refinance closed on XX/XX/XXXX. Our previous mortgage was being serviced through Dovenmuehle. We refinanced through XXXX XXXX XXXX   and our new loan is now being serviced again through XXXX XXXXDovenmuehle. Now 59 days  after the closing of our refinance, we continue to wait for the reimbursement of our escrow account from Dovenmuehle with a balance of {$3400.00}. My understanding is that there is a period of 20 to 30 days in which a loan servicer is required to reimburse any excess escrow balances or any remaining escrow balances after a loan has closed. I have now communicated with Dovenmuehle about this on several occasions. I spoke with them early after the closing of the refinance and was told that the escrow reimbursement would be automatically sent. After not receiving this reimbursement after over a month from refinance closing, I again contacted them on XX/XX/XXXX. At that time, I was told that it had not been sent because they had not received a request for release. The representative told me at that time that they would submit the request and that the reimbursement would be sent within 3 to 5 days. XX/XX/XXXX, I again logged into my account to see that the escrow balance remains at {$3400.00}. I contacted Dovenmuehle for the third time and was told by the representative that her supervisor had informed her that it had not been released because there was a problem with the research department. They stated that they had messaged that department and will need to await response from that department. They recommended that I call back on Friday XX/XX/XXXX to again check on the status of my reimbursement. At that point it would have been nearly 2 months since the close of our refinance and there is no guarantee that the issue will have been resolved by that time. I asked to speak with the supervisor or someone from the research department and I was told that this is not a possibility. I called back that same day and asked to speak with a supervisor ; they forwarded me to a supervisor when I asked for details of the previous conversation so that I could file an accurate report with the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. At that time, the supervisor said that she was not certain why this had happened but said that she would forward this case to the " acceleration department ''. We were told that we would have our money within a week. Today is a week. We have not received our money and have not heard any updates. My wife and I are in need of this money. It seems that Dovenmeuhle does not have any urgency or concern about this despite seemingly practicing against the law and despite our need for this significant amount of money that they are holding. When borrowers don't pay their loan on time they pay excess fees, continue to pay interest, and are sent to collections. When Dovenmeuhle doesn't return money that they owe to borrowers, they continue to earn interest on this money, likely have customers forget about or give up on this money, and have no consequences for these actions.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation