Consumer complaint received 2018-06-10
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company
State: NV
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
Our home was flooded in XX/XX/XXXX, and deemed a category 3 damage - meaning it involved human waste material. The mitigation and insurance payment process was fast efficient and yielded total payment for reconstruction ( after the mitigation and environmental clearance assessment were paid directly ) of {$48000.00}. There is a subsequent payment enroute for {$31000.00}, because we had a hand made custom backsplash in our kitchen. 

Freedom Mortgage has been holding {$48000.00} of our money - and not releasing it - since XX/XX/XXXX, per our insurance company. Freedom Mortgage ' subcontracting firm ( XXXX  ) website has reflected this information. It took me researching to track down the email address for the CEO, XXXX XXXX, and sending him an email on Tues XX/XX/XXXX followed by leaving him a voicemail on the morning of XX/XX/XXXX ( extenstion XXXX as of that date, which has been changed to XXXX XXXX and XXXX is no longer available by phone index as of Fri XX/XX/XXXX ) to get any response at all. 

This is creating a financial hardship for us, because in order to keep our home reconstruction going, we have had to order supplies out of pocket, exceeding {$10000.00} - including toilet replacement, as we had no functional toilets at one point. 

I have pointed out to everyone possible that this actually a life and death situation, as my husband has XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX  XXXX, and the exposure to dust has created an explosion of XXXX   in both of his XXXX since XX/XX/XXXX. We have XXXX  and XXXX XXXX scan ( XXXX XXXX XXXX ) test results to show this. He was stabilized and removed from his XXXX XXXX in XX/XX/XXXX, and now we have had to seek out second opinions out of state to understand what the XXXX  XXXX is that living in this home in this state has created. This furthers our financial hardship with the travel to and from the XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ) in UT, lost income with his inability to work as a primary care practitioner which also means paying someone to cover his patients while away. In fact, he has been scheduled for 3 XXXX which have been deemed " XXXX  '' by the XXXX, because his medical team is extremely concerned about how quickly and continuously the spread has occurred in his XXXX. 

We have enough XXXX with my husband 's health that we do not need this additional XXXX XXXX XXXX  and financial damage. It is flat out theft that Freedom Mortgage is holding this money right now, because all documentation has been provided to them multiple times - a topic I will come back to. 

The initial documentation was sent to, whom I thought was XXXX mortgage ' insurance loss management team. The reason I say XXXX is that I never received a goodbye letter from them, nor a hello / welcome letter from Freedom Mortgage. The only time I had spoken with, what I know now is a different mortgage company, is twice since XX/XX/XXXX, I have received a letter saying that the mortgage payment was late and when I called, was told it was going to hit my credit, unless I paid it immediately. The reason seemed understandable : the account number had changed, and so the money went to the wrong account. HOWEVER, it is noteworthy that, not only had I paid XXXX for XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX, but I have also paid Freedom Mortgage for XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX. Further financial hardship to be on a single income since XX/XX/XXXX, and be paying multiple mortgage payments. 

This begs the additional question of : where are our excess mortgage payments, that are recorded with outputs from our XXXX XXXX account on XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX? 

We have had to put many things on credit cards, had to liquidate a 401K - something which will involve a large penalty - because of this flood, just to stay afloat and keep bills paid ( including double mortgage payments ) as well as order supplies out-of-pocket to keep the house reconstruction on a path of some kind of progress, such as flooring and kitchen cabinets. 

The lack of kitchen has resulted in eating out a lot, which has the effect of making my husband have the additional effect of XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX. These are well documented for his medical team 's knowledge, and another key reason for their concern of his life vs death. 

It has actually been our insurance company, XXXX, who have done research and explained that our loan servicing was sold to Freedom Mortgage with them being advised on XX/XX/XXXX. Why were we not informed? A woman from Freedom Mortgage named XXXX XXXX provided me with the documentation they were sent from XXXX, which includes a goodbye letter template and a welcome letter template. There are a number of issues with this : 1. We did not receive any of these documents. It is one thing to print it, and another thing altogether to send it. Should you think I am making that up, I will point to SVP of Customer Service, XXXX XXXX, committing to me on Fri XX/XX/XXXX that funds in the amount of $ XXXX across 2 checks were being overnighted for Saturday delivery and provided the tracking number with XXXX of # XXXX XXXX XXXX. The label was printed, but when I called XXXX today to get the reason why it had not been delivered, nor the website updated, XXXX pointed out to me that the label was printed, but nothing was actually sent or picked up : evidence that Freedom Mortgage doesn't have a perfect record of things they print actually being sent - and again, that was from their SVP of Customer Service 2. There is a letter included that mentions a relationship with XXXX XXXX, XXXX. We do not, nor have we ever had a relationship with XXXX XXXX, XXXX. So what, on earth, is this paperwork? 

3. Why did the insurance company, and purchasing loan company get notified, but not the homeowner? Neither the goodbye nor the hello / welcome letter 4. Why, when I asked XXXX to provide me with the postmarking assuming they allegedly sent this, was I told that they would be unable to send this? 

Following XXXX sending this letter, and after explaining the traumatic experience I have had since XX/XX/XXXX in dealing with the third party subcontracting firm used by Freedom Mortgage to handle insurance losses, a company I have forensically determined to be XXXX. This company is abysmal! Here is a short list of the issues : 1. No regard for the NRS 200.690, which governs the laws for recording phone calls involving a NV state resident 2. Four different people provided four different paths of information. However, none of the information actually turned out to be correct until I was escalated - after waiting 48 hours for a call back - to supervisor XXXX XXXX 3. I was referred to XXXX to download all forms for filing the claim for the funds which the insurance company had paid. However, when I had those completed, I was informed 19 days later that one of the forms was incorrect and needed a different form, because the one online did not include a homeowner signature line on the Conditional Waiver of Lien line 4. The document uploader is unstable and only uploaded some of all documents provided. Furthermore, when faxing through a fax error report came back multiple times with " Unstable fax line error '', which was not allowing all pages to go through. This was mentioned by XXXX as commonly occurring, but no one saw this as an issue 5. Being told I had not provided all documents, despite fax transmission reports to the contrary. This was furthered by a joint conversation with our insurance company, wherein the XXXX rep said only 1 page ( pg # 6 ) of the Adjuster 's Worksheet was sent through, but the insurance adjuster, XXXX, confirmed that he had a record of 22 pages  having been sent successfully. It was not just me. 

6. No ability to call anyone at XXXX, and phone calls come in as " Unknown ''. 

7. Supervisor XXXX XXXX lied saying she left me a voicemail on XX/XX/XXXX letting me know the issues, but this was never done. I know this was never done, because I have not had the ability to receive voicemails for many months : I disabled that function, because I dislike voicemail, so it is technically impossible to have happened. However, XXXX documented in their system that she left said voicemail 8. No ability to email or escalate issues to anyone with less than 48 hours as an alleged turnaround time. That SLA has been met twice since XX/XX/XXXX 9. All documents have now been sent through using document uploader on XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX, and then faxed through on XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX. I spent the time with XXXX XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX and awaited her to receive and review each and every document to ENSURE that every page had been successfully provided. She said they had and even said she was going to ask " management '' to expedite the issuance of the check and overnight the check. She could not guarantee it, but she would ask. 
And then I see on XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX that not all documents have been submitted in the portal. 

10. No communication of the status of anything, and we are now at 32 days that Freedom Mortgage has been collecting interest on the money which is rightly ours AND delaying reconstruction of a life and death living situation For clarity and reiteration, this is only a subset of the list. 

The total time I have spent on this since the initial submission of all documents through the uploader - each showing " Successfully uploaded! '' as the response, I have been logging my time. I was at 82.75 hours before beginning this complaint. When you consider the value of that time as lost income, because I could not focus that on billable hours, that is {$28000.00} in lost income. My husband is the lead practitioner in our primary care practice, and we have lost billables since XX/XX/XXXX, because this has taken so long, as well as additional expenses for paying someone to have patients seen by someone else. And lastly, we have had to incur the financial hardship of additional interest, output of additional funds and additional healthcare costs because we have had to go out of state to have XXXX treated for the XXXX XXXX he has experienced because of dust exposure.

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 explanation