Consumer complaint received 2017-11-20
Company: Dovenmuehle Mortgage, Inc.
State: CA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
XXXX XXXX XXXX employs accounting and money management processes that are designed to confuse their customers and allow them to collect late fees because of their own bad record keeping and antiquated systems. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I emailed Douvenmuehle an inquiry about a {$1500.00} partial payment for XX/XX/XXXX payment that cleared my checking account on XX/XX/XXXX. Because I am paid twice a month I have to split my {$2300.00} payments to survive. However, the payment was nowhere reflected on my account through the online portal they grant access to and even after making the rest of the payment for XX/XX/XXXX my account still showed outstanding I received notices that I was late, even though I had made payments in excess of the minimum. 

Only after I called into the customer service center ( waiting on hold for at least 15 minutes ) and writing to the loan company I did my refinance through did I finally have a manager call me. Then 20 days later received a response to my email with a message that completely contradicted what the manager had told me and followed up in a letter. 

It turns out that when early payments are submitted, they create a " suspense '' account that the money is extracted from your account and placed into ( that I was unable to see and never informed of until I called and inquired ), and the only way money would be extracted from the " suspense '' account was for the customer to call in and ask to have the payment taken out and applied. But without being informed it was there or even seeing it reflected on my account how is a customer supposed to even know the account is there. And why are taking money from an account without authorization to do so. 

The servicer claims they have the inability ( it seems more like an unwillingness ) to allow consumers to make multiple payments on their loan within the same month. This has been shown to reduce compounded interest and expedite payoff, but also is just good service because the payments are large and need to be broken up. 

The issue came up again in XX/XX/XXXX when my XX/XX/XXXX payments were n't applied, even after the manager said he added a note to my account. This time, if I had not identified it and called to complain they could have jeopardized my homeowner 's insurance policy. Since the insurance payment is factored into the escrow, not having sufficient funds could impact payment going out. 

Then when payments are applied they are n't even on the actual dates they 're received. in one case in was weeks past the date it cleared my account. 

Not only do they have the potential to ruin your credit, they end up stressing you out over something that should be granting you reassurance. I 've asked if some other lender, even the lender for my other property, could just buy the loan from this company because I hate this experience. It 's been a horrific experience that I have never dealt with in over 3 decades of paying creditors.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation