Consumer complaint received 2023-03-10
Company: SIMMONS FIRST NATIONAL CORPORATION
State: TN
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
On XX/XX/23 I attempted to adjust existing automatic, recurring ACH payments from my checking account to my mortgage lender ( Simmons Bank ). I described to my loan officer at Simmons ( XXXX XXXX ) what I needed to do : Normally, I pay the mortgage payment amount then I add an additional principal payment to round everything up to {$400.00}. Because my mortgage payment amount changes slightly every year, I would need to stop the old ACH transfers and create a new one with the corrected amounts for each payment. I wanted two payments to come out of my checking account on the first of every month. One payment would cover the regular mortgage amount due ( {$360.00} ), and the other payment would be an additional principal payment ( {$39.00} ). I signed the paperwork ( see attached ) and was assured it was ready to go. However when the time came for the transfer, the old amount ( from the ACH transfers I set up last year ) was taken out. When I contacted XXXX at Simmons, she explained that it was because we were too late setting up the automatic payment for XXXX, but it would be correct in XXXX. 

Fast-forward to XXXX, and instead of taking out the correct amount, Simmons bank only took out {$39.00} ( i.e. the extra principal payment, but not the actual mortgage payment amount due ). So I contacted XXXX to fix this. XXXX was out, but someone named XXXX answered the phone for her. XXXX said that when the l made the ACH adjustment, they applied the last payment to XXXX instead of XXXX, and that's why they only tranferred out the extra principal payment. For some reason their system thought I had already paid the XXXX balance, but had not paid the XXXX balance, which makes no sense to me. She said she would look into it and call me back. When she called back, she explained that she had fixed the issue with the ACH and it would be working correctly next month, but we would need to do a one-time over the phone payment to get the current payment fixed. So on XX/XX/23 I did the one-time over the phone payment. She said to wait a day or so for it to post. When I checked my XXXX  XXXX XXXX checking account the next day, Simmons Bank had drafted my account twice. Both draft payments were for the same amount ( {$360.00} ). This caused me to get a " low balance alert '' from XXXX XXXX XXXX. 

As soon as I was aware of the error, I called XXXX for assistance. She didn't seem to understand what exactly had happened with the ACH transfer -- having no idea what's going on seems to be a common theme when contacting anyone from Simmons ; it seems like they hire people who have no idea how to run a bank. She tried to explain that something about them adjusting my ACH had " pushed back the due date '' causing it to run the next day even though I had already made the payment. XXXX said that I would need to either " dispute the charge with XXXX  XXXX XXXX '' or wait on Simmons Bank to mail me a physical cashiers check after 10 business days! 

This is wholly wrong and unethical, in my opinion. Why would I need to dispute the charge with MY bank when I'm literally on the phone with the Simmons Bank who made the error? Why would I need to wait 10 business days for a cashier check to be mailed to me when I'm literally on the phone with Simmons Bank and since they're a bank they should be able to reverse or cancel the transfer or at least perform a different transfer to put the money BACK INTO MY ACCOUNT THAT THEY TOOK OUT IN ERROR. 

If I stole money from someone, I wouldn't get a 10 day grace period to mail them a check for the amount that I stole. I would get jail time for theft. And this is exactly what Simmons is doing : Illegally taking money and weaponizing their incompetence to hold onto other people 's money as long as possible. Why would they be unable to transfer money directly back to my bank? Money that they took in error in the first place? They're a bank too for crying out loud! This is ridiculous. 

To make matters worse, on the same day I was trying to get the ACH transfers fixed with XXXX, I received veiled harassment from another member of Simmons Bank named XXXX XXXX who is a " Collection Specialist '' with the Consumer Default Servicing dept who contacted me over phone and email asking about when I'm going to make my mortgage payment, as if I haven't been trying this whole time to get my payments straightened out! At Simmons Bank, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. I think this is another part of their weaponized incompetence : mess up people 's mortgage payments so they can default/foreclose on them. 

See the attached documents for more info. Thanks

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation