Consumer complaint received 2019-03-19
Company: SUNTRUST BANKS, INC.
State: FL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
Root cause of the this complaint - Suntrust refuses payments in full, they send back payments made in full and then they call full payments partial payments and then charge late fees on the very payment they send back. Moreover, their branch locations don't have a clue on how to process payments, their online system is cumbersome and awkward and their mortgage reps are too busy trying to read from a script and being all legalistic versus helping the consumer. No other financial institution or services/goods company deals with payments like this. I'm sure my story is not the only one. 

My situation : XX/XX/XXXX payment was missed and over looked by myself and my wife due to the holiday season and didn't realize we forgot to pay in XXXX. I admit, my error. However, We submitted a payment on XX/XX/XXXX. We still haven't realized that the XXXX payment was missed until my wife called me about a notice we received stating if we did not catch up by XX/XX/XXXX, we could go into foreclosure status or something. 

Ouch, ok so we decided to make two payments in XXXX to get caught up. We made a complete payment on XX/XX/XXXX and another complete payment on XX/XX/XXXX. Now from XX/XX/XXXX to XX/XX/XXXX is 90 days or 3 house payments. My XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX payments constituted 3 months of payments. Right? 

WRONG! not according to Suntrust. Why? THEY SENT MY XXXX payment back to me, unbeknown to me. WHO DOES THAT? 

Wait, it gets better. So not only did they send it back, now they tack on late fees to the XXXX payment. Now I get a phone call after XXXX at night from their collections department reading these long descriptive legal sayings like I'm being put in jail. Reading me might rights type of thing. So I asked why your calling me this late and my account is caught up. Oh " no sir '', we didn't accept your payment received in XXXX and we are currently holding your two payments in XXXX and you are now 3 months late on your mortgage and subject to foreclosure on XX/XX/XXXX if you don't " PAY IN FULL '' the balance due. This is when I found out they actually cut a check and sent my payment back to me from XXXX. 

So, I'm out of town working and have to call my wife and she finds the check in a pile of JUNK mail that we received with promotional offers and such. Have to deposit the check the next day ONLY to make the payment again and be charged late fees so that THREE MONTHS payments can be credited all on the SAME DAY. 

Secondary to this is, I go into a SUNTRUST location, that says SUNTRUST on it to make a payment and they don't give me credit coincidentally the day after they charge me a late fee. How convenient is that? Let me give the details. I go into a Suntrust Bank on XX/XX/XXXX and make a payment. They charge me a late fee on XX/XX/XXXX and post my payment from the XXXX on the XXXX. How nice. 

Last thing before I complete this. On XX/XX/XXXX they send out a person to my house disguised as some kind of " property '' inspector to do a collection FIELD call to my house and leave a hand written note with no logo or anything stating for me to call my MORTGAGE provided ASAP. HMMM ... looks like a back-door collection attempt on an account that really isn't late but when you send people 's payments back and refuse to accept them and HOLD payments and don't process them ... I guess in some twisted way I am late. 

What a pathetic financial institution. BTW I have had my original mortgage from XXXX with Suntrust and refinanced this mortgage to a 15 year mortgage in XXXX to cut seven years off my payback. They got the nerve to ask me if I want to " keep my house ''? 

I get mad all over again every time I think about this situation. So now I'm ready for the corporate counsel at Suntrust to sit back and craft a precision worded response to my complaint on how this situation is perfectly normal and how me, the consumer, is an XXXX.

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