Consumer complaint received 2019-03-16
Company: WESTERN UNION COMPANY, THE
State: WA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Other type of mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
I went into my mortgage account to see when my next payment was due. I've been using XXXX for years, and decided to get rid of them because they have made payment on the wrong day several times. 

What I saw really startled me. I've been giving them money every two weeks, but they have only been making one payment each month! This is NOT what they were supposed to do! There is no reason for me to use a service called " equity accelerator program '' if they are doing nothing to accelerate my equity! 

Completely fraudulent! Please help! 

____________Long Version I know this is long, but it is shocking. Please share this story, it is important that people know what corporate America can get away with. 

In XXXX I refinanced my home loans with XXXX XXXX. At their urging, I enrolled in the accelerated equity program to pay my loan down more quickly. The equity accelerator program was so entrenched with XXXX that I believed they were a part of the company. 

In XXXX I called XXXX to see if I could move to a payment of every week instead of every two weeks. They then told me that the accelerator program was with a separate company which they were no longer using. I got the phone number, made my arrangements over the phone, and went on with life. 

Last week XXXX had a computer problem, delaying all payments by about 4 days. Of course they did not tell me. I had, on my own, made an additional interest payment to both loans. A week later, my payment went through, but ( as has happened before ) I thought it was a payment from the loan accelerator company, XXXX, and that they screwed up and made it a week early. I called an canceled, since I already had one bad experience with them under my belt. of course, this was the XXXX error, but the point is that it prompted me to cancel. 

Today, I see about half a month 's mortgage come into my account from XXXX. It made no sense. They made a payment a week ago, so they should not have money. Their job is to take my money and pay XXXX. I had been told that the individual consumer can not do this for some weird law that prohibits making " half '' payments to a mortgage, because they will be presumed to be partial payments with no other money coming, rather than part of 2 payments to make up the mortgage you are paying. I always wondered why you couldn't prepay a month and take it from there, but both companies told me I could not. But a payment accelerator company could. 

Well I did some digging, and saw that instead of paying my mortgage twice each month they were saving my payments to make a SINGLE PAYMENT EACH MONTH. That's right, they were charging a fee, taking my money every two weeks, but NOT ACCELERATING MY MORTGAGE! 

I found an article from XXXX stating that the Consumer Protection Agency sued them and fined them in XXXX for this very thing. They only had to reimburse customers for the fees ( which I never received ), but were let off from paying the equity which they did not pay down. They also paid a fine. 

I've called both my lender, XXXX, and them, XXXX, dozens of times since then and nobody said a thing. Nobody sent a dime. I had zero idea that this happened. And today I found out that they never stopped doing it. 

I am now way behind where I would have been had my mortgage been paid in the manner it was supposed to be paid. If corporations are people, this one should be in prison.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation