Consumer complaint received 2018-08-13
Company: Home Point Financial Corporation
State: PA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Other type of mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
I received an escrow statement towards the end of XXXX dated XXXX XXXX which incorrectly states a shortage of {$2000.00}. This statement has me incorrectly scheduled to pay additional taxes in the amounts of {$2200.00}, {$500.00}, and {$460.00}. These additional scheduled tax payments belong to my two neighbors and somehow got put on my account The amounts of {$500.00} and {$460.00} totaling {$960.00} were actually paid to my neighbor 's accounts back in XXXX of this year Due to the inaccurate escrow analysis my mortgage payment increased from {$1300.00} to {$1700.00} ( + $ XXXX/month ), which is {$5000.00} more than I should pay over the next 12 months  A week later I received another escrow analysis dated XX/XX/XXXX ( why was I just getting this now? ) which showed I had a surplus and  even had a refund check for {$470.00} This analysis had the correct school tax scheduled but still had the incorrect county taxes scheduled I called Home Point 2 times on XX/XX/XXXX to figure this out totaling 101 minutes of talk time It was explained to me that the analysis dated XX/XX/XXXX was correct and the analysis dated XX/XX/XXXX was incorrect and should not have been sent to me with a refund check and I was advised to send the refund check back to Home Point so that money could be added to my escrow account due to the shortage It was explained to me that whatever taxes scheduled must have been requested by the County/School and must be paid The representative told me that she did not have a way to show me the actual information about how/why these amounts were requested and explained that I needed to either pay the full amount of the shortage or it would be added to my mortgage payment over the next 12 months The representative told me that I needed to contact the County/School to address why they increased my taxes so drastically After a couple weeks of going back and forth with the County/School, it was discovered that the additional scheduled taxes were paid to my neighbor 's accounts and the County/School never requested those amounts from Home Point. Neither of my neighbors use Home Point for their mortgage company I requested a refund from the County in the amount of {$960.00} but their representative explained that it was Home Point 's mistake and therefore Home Point was responsible for the refund I contacted Home Point in XXXX and forwarded them all the proper documentation showing my actual tax amounts and what had been paid to my neighbors accounts and requested a refund and to have a new escrow analysis completed to reflect the correct amount in my escrow account and a correct mortgage payment I essentially did all of the leg work that Home Point should have done to determine what taxes I should actually be paying and where the additional paid taxes were sent incorrectly Home Point told me again that the refund was not their responsibility and that if the county wasn't refunding me then I should actually go to my neighbors and ask both of them for money. I told them that was NEVER going to happen and Home Point needed to correct this mistake I was assured by reps of Home Point that it would be taken care of before the end of XXXX to reflect a correct mortgage payment for XXXX and to follow up weekly if I don't hear anything Of course I don't hear anything and I continue to follow up until it gets to the point where I'm furious because they haven't done anything and request to speak with a supervisor The supervisor assures me that their team is working on this and it will be corrected by the first week of XXXX I explained to the supervisor that I wasn't going to pay my mortgage until everything was corrected because I shouldn't have to pay an incorrect amount and she agreed It wasn't corrected and I was assessed a late fee for nonpayment in XXXX, which ultimately was reversed I expressed my concern with the supervisor that if this doesn't get taken care of by the end of the month, Home Point would report me to the credit bureaus for a delinquent account. The supervisor again assured me that it would be corrected and if for some reason it wasn't, she would make sure nothing was reported to the credit bureau In XXXX Home Point made national news because they had incorrectly reported thousands of accounts delinquent to the credit agencies, even though those accounts weren't delinquent ( just another thing to prove their negligence ) After the whole month of XXXX passing and still nothing corrected, after multiple calls, I missed another mortgage payment ( due to them not having a correct payment amount ) As of XXXX it was reported to the credit bureaus that my account is Delinquent which dropped my credit score 111 points I have all the email correspondences between me, the county, and the school and I also have all of the call history between myself, Home Point, the county,  and the school with dates/times/amount of time. Home point has demonstrated gross negligence with handling my account, wasted huge amounts of my time, caused me to lose sleep, lose productivity during work hours ( dealing with their calls ), caused huge amounts of stress, and now they have caused my credit to take an enormous negative hit. 

Their representatives were so incompetent when looking at my account that they couldn't understand that it didn't make sense for me to have all of these additional tax payments and they just kept feeding me the same boxed response over and over ; " if those amounts are scheduled, then those amounts must be requested for a reason, and therefore must be paid. '' I had to speak with multiple representatives every time I called and explain the same thing over and over to them and even at one point asked " do you pay 3 separate tax bills to your county and 2 separate tax bills to your school district? '' The representative said " well, no sir I don't '' and I asked, don't you see a problem with this then? And of course I just kept getting the same bottled response as before.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation