Consumer complaint received 2019-10-15
Company: Flagstar Bank, N.A.
State: MN
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
On Friday, XX/XX/2019 I received a letter from the bank ( Flagstar Bank - XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX, MI XXXX ) that services my home mortgage. The letter stated that they received a request to update the mailing address for the mortgage loan account. The address is completely unknown and unrelated to me or my wife - who is also on record as the account owner. 

Per the advice within the letter, I attempted to contact the bank to notify them at XXXX if I did not request this change. However, the bank does not accept calls after hours. Furthermore, the bank was closed on Monday, XX/XX/XXXX in observance of XX/XX/XXXX. This delayed my ability to notify them of potential fraud on my account. 

On Tuesday, XX/XX/XXXX, I was able to locate a phone number ( XXXX ) for the bank 's " Mortgage Fraud Investigation Unit ''. However, this phone number is voice mail only, with no option to speak to a live representative. 

I proceeded to call customer service at XXXX. The agent who answered informed me that the request they received was initiated by the United States Postal Service. However, she told me she was unable to send to me a copy of the exact request that they received. 

She then escalated my issue to a manager on duty. She again claimed that she was unable to send to me the request they received from USPS. Furthermore, she declined to send me a copy of the notes she had taken during our call, in order for me to confirm that she properly captured my concerns. 

Below is an itemization of my concerns : 1. This could be a potential attempt from criminals to impersonate me and/or acquire personal information that could be used for unlawful activity. 
2. The bank 's inaccessibility and unwillingness to take immediate action to investigate only gives potential criminals additional time to conduct malicious activity. 
3. During my call to customer service and when escalated to management, at no point were extra measures taken to verify my identity. For all they knew, I could have been the criminal! 
4. During my call to customer service and when escalated to management, at no point did they offer to correct the erroneous information on record in their system. I had to specifically ask them to do this. 
5. During my call to customer service and when escalated to management, at no point they they provide to me instructions on how to further protect myself in the event of a malicious attack ( i.e. change passwords, alert credit bureaus, etc ). Furthermore, I was told that they are unable to attach a special alert to my account in order to heighten scrutiny on account activity XXXX including login attempts ) during a time of a potential breach. 
6. Both the customer service agent and the manager advised me to contact the USPS to try to investigate. At no point did they offer to assist, despite the possibility that the error was internal and clerical in nature. Furthermore, by not promptly providing the necessary information to utilize in an investigation with the USPS, I was limited in my ability to take action. 
7. I had requested to the manager to have someone from their fraud investigation department to contact me. No such contact occurred. On top of not being available outside business hours, the inability to speak live with an internal security specialist and the lack of prompt action after a report of a potential compromise of customer data is unconscionable! Criminals certainly don't take days off and the longer an investigation takes, the more potential for damage to be done! 
8. Clearly this organization has extremely poor internal procedures for how to handle potential breaches of customer data and provide guidance to customers on what actions to take, along with assurances that customer data is safe. How can I ensure that I am protected?

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