Consumer complaint received 2019-06-20
Company: CARRINGTON MORTGAGE SERVICES, LLC
State: CA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
I apologize in advance for this long complaint. 

Our loan was bought out from XXXX  XXXX XXXX by Carrington Mortgage and unfortunately it has not been pleasant. My first experience with them was when creating an account I chose paperless billing as I had with XXXX XXXX XXXX because our mortgage payment is automatically sent by our bank every month. One day I logged in to check something and I saw that the payment amount was higher which was alarming because I never received a notice in the mail and I had been paying the amount that was known to me to be the current payment amount for a few months after the payment amount had been changed. I immediately made a payment for the difference for that month and called and was told by customer service that a new escrow analysis had been processed and because I had signed up for paperless billing the escrow analysis is not sent by mail. I was worried about a negative reporting on our credit and she said because the difference was not a large amount they just continued to process the payment. I am grateful for that but if I had not logged in to my account my payment would have been short for months and I do understand that it is my fault for not logging into my account and seeing the update earlier. XXXX XXXX XXXX did my escrow analysis at the beginning of every calendar year which was what I was used to and they sent a paper notice in the mail advising me of the change despite having paperless billing. So needless to say I am back wasting paper because I do not want to miss out on important changes to my mortgage like I did before. So even though I missed the change that made a bad impression on me but what could I do because this is now my new mortgage company. 

So this past month I received another escrow analysis for XX/XX/XXXX to XX/XX/XXXX and my payment was again increasing. When reviewing my homeowners insurance policy I noticed that the amount on my escrow analysis was {$740.00} and the policy amount was {$720.00}. I did make a change on my policy that dropped the payment to {$720.00} before the policy renewal was due. So I called to see why the escrow analysis was not reflecting the correct amount. The first person I spoke with was a lady in the escrow department and she did not see that the policy amount had been changed so she called the insurance department and we had a conference call. The second person I spoke with on the conference call was a gentleman who was not friendly at all and he told me that Carrington paid the insurance policy 45 days in advance of the XX/XX/XXXX due date for {$740.00} even though they received the amended declaration showing the new amount of {$720.00} in XXXX before the due date. He then proceeded to tell me that I needed to make a payment back to them to refund the {$27.00} that was overpaid because the escrow analysis will show what they paid as being the correct amount because that was what was paid even though they had the amended declaration showing the adjusted amount. The lady disconnected the call with the insurance department and told me she was a little confused because he did not explain himself well but once the refund of {$27.00} is mailed to wait 15 days and then call in and they can do another escrow analysis because the increase in my insurance payment is what caused my mortgage payment to go up. I asked her wouldnt the insurance company send Carrington a refund for the overpayment since they were the ones who made the payment. She said no that they would send the check to me which I thought was a little different but I didnt question her. So she said I could pay the overpayment amount myself at that time but if I paid over the phone or online there would be a fee for the payment so it would be better to mail it in. I told her I would call my insurance company to see if a refund check was mailed and asked her what the address was for the check to be mailed to. She gave me an address is XXXX, Ca. 

I then called XXXX, my insurance company, and spoke with a lady and she said she would send a note to the accounting department with the updated address because it showed they sent the refund check to Carrington in XXXX. She said the refund check would not be mailed to me because Carrington made the payment, which is what I thought. She said to call back on Friday as it was Wednesday, to see if the check was mailed out. 

I did not have the time to call back until the following Tuesday but before I called XXXX, I called Carrington again because I still was not understanding the reasoning during my initial call the previous Wednesday. So I explained my concerns to the lady that I spoke with, which was now the 3rd person I had talked to, about what I noticed on my escrow analysis. I also told her that Carrington has been nothing but a hassle since they bought our loan. There is an escrow cushion of over {$400.00} built into my escrow payment and with XXXX XXXX XXXX I could ask for the cushion to be removed and just to include the exact amount in my escrow payment that would cover the bills being paid out of my escrow account. She said that she was sorry but the escrow cushion is required and then proceeded to tell me as well that I needed to make the payment for {$27.00} and that if they reran my escrow analysis now my payment would go up again because the escrow account would be short which made no sense at all. If my insurance payment was actually cheaper then my payment should go down and if they reran the escrow analysis at that moment with the {$740.00} amount that is currently on the escrow analysis the payment would be the same because there are no changes to the account but I didnt question her. She then said I could pay over the phone and I told her I was advised that I was told I would have to pay a fee and she said that there are ways around that because a supervisor could waive the fee because of what was going on. I told her that I was never told that by the first two people I spoke with and that I was told if I mailed it in that I needed to wait 15 days and then call to have the escrow analysis reran. She said she did not that I should not wait 15 days because I need to have the escrow analysis reran as soon as possible so my payment amount can be adjusted. I told her I would call the insurance company to check on the status of the check. 

I then called XXXX and explained that I was checking to see if the refund check was mailed to Carrington. She then said that they did not send a check to the address I gave them in XXXX because the accounting department said the refund check was sent to an address in XXXX XXXX, Texas and was cashed on XX/XX/XXXX. At this point I was pretty upset because I could see that I was getting the run around from Carrington. I  got the complete address of where it was mailed to and the reference number and called Carrington again. 

So the 4th person I spoke with was XXXX. I explained to him that my escrow analysis had the incorrect amount for my homeowners insurance and that I was instructed to send in the difference before my escrow analysis could be rerun but Carrington had actually received the refund amount and cashed it 6 months ago. So I asked why was the incorrect amount being shown on my escrow analysis and the correct amount for my insurance not being reflected on my account. He looked over the account and confirmed the refund was applied to my account in XXXX. He then said it was put back in my escrow account so that money was included when doing my escrow analysis so my escrow analysis was correct. I told him I can understand that the money refunded was included in my escrow analysis but the amount of my insurance being used to come up with the escrow amount was still incorrect. He did not understand what I was saying and again told me what he had just stated about the refund money. I asked him to pull up my escrow analysis so we could look at it together. When he pulled it up I asked him to look at the amounts listed for the next cycle of payments for XXXX that they totaled up and used to get the amount needed for escrow. He then understood what I was saying and said he needed to put me on hold and he was going to call the insurance department. After a few minutes he came back on the line and said that he reached someone and she could see that the refund was received and they had the amended declaration but she did not know why the correct amount was not updated and he asked me to hold again to see what she could do. When he came back on the line he said she was able to make the change and I needed to wait 24 hours because it doesnt update immediately on the escrow side and so to call back on Thursday then I could get a new escrow analysis done. I asked if she explained why the refund that was received 6 months prior was never applied to reflect my correct insurance amount. He said she said she did not know. 

So I am hoping when I call in again tomorrow and talk to the 5th person about this that I can get a new escrow analysis and this saga will be over but I am filing this complaint because Carrington Mortgage obviously has some serious issues with their company that need to be resolved. My issue would never have been an issue if they would have updated my account properly 6 months ago. They have no issue cashing checks promptly and raising mortgage payments and adding exorbitant cushions for possible increases but when calling for help to rightly lower a payment no one understands what you are talking about and you have to jump through hoops to get it done. They dont even have the correct address for payments apparently since the check sent to Texas was cashed even though it didnt get sent to the XXXX address. Every person I spoke with was very adamant about making sure the refund was sent to Carrington before they could do anything even though they had an updated declaration and they had the money the whole time. Why could they not see that, especially the insurance department? Why did I have to find out from the insurance company and then call and make them see that the payment was applied? Why do I have to take time out of my day to call over and over again to have them do their job correctly? When I started reading reviews online about Carrington everyone who has had their loan bought out by them is very unhappy with how they handle their business. 

I truly hope my husband will look into refinancing so we can dissolve all ties with Carrington and get a company that deals with their customers honestly and knows how to do their job properly. With all of the bad things in the media some years ago about XXXX  XXXX XXXX I never had issues like I have had in this short time with Carrington.  Carringtons message when you call says they are a debt collector and that is truly what they are and they treat their customers accordingly.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation