Consumer complaint received 2019-11-06
Company: SUNTRUST BANKS, INC.
State: OH
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Their investigation did not fix an error on your report

Complaint:
We are writing to kindly request that you dispute the delinquency of payment for SunTrust mortgage. 
The account in question was identified as delinquent on XX/XX/2019and reported by SunTrust to the credit bureaus. In discussion with SunTrust, the delinquency occurred due to a simple transposition error of the XXXX payment. The check was made for the amount of {$310000.00} instead of {$3200.00}. 
We are appealing this delinquency under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulation 1024.39 Early intervention requirements for certain borrowers. Specifically, we are disputing the lender/servicer SunTrust did not make a Good Faith Effort to contact the borrowers. The regulation is attached as addendum A and the specific language copied here.

" Good faith efforts. Good faith efforts to establish live contact consist of reasonable steps, under the circumstances, to reach a borrower and may include telephoning the borrower on more than one occasion or sending written or electronic communication encouraging the borrower to establish live contact with the servicer. The length of a borrower 's delinquency, as well as a borrower 's failure to respond to a servicer 's repeated attempts at communication pursuant to 1024.39 ( a ), are relevant circumstances to consider. For example, whereas good faith efforts to establish live contact with regard to a borrower with two consecutive missed payments might require a telephone call, good faith efforts to establish live contact with regard to an unresponsive borrower with six or more consecutive missed payments might require no more than including a sentence requesting that the borrower contact the servicer with regard to the delinquencies in the periodic statement or in an electronic communication. Comment 39 ( a ) -6 discusses the relationship between live contact and the loss mitigation procedures set forth in 1024.41. ''  SunTrust indicated they tried to contact the borrower, via snail mail and robocall to her cell number above. SunTrust indicated they made no attempts to contact the co-borrower, as they did not have his residence address or his cell phone. However, SunTrust regularly contacts the co-borrower to confirm payment receipts via emails/electronic communications. These can be provided. The first indication of delinquent payment was on XX/XX/2019 when co-borrower was notified of delinquent activity on one of his accounts through XXXX. 
There is no documentation indicating that SunTrust attempted communication with the borrowers despite availability of email. Importantly, upon learning of the error and the late payment, the borrower rectified the missed payments and paid the penalties in full. Her rapid response is indicative of how seriously she has taken this matter. 
The request for review and removal of the delinquency notice from our records is based on inability of SunTrust to communicate the error in the XXXX payment. Given the exemplary record of payment on this loan to date by borrower as well as the exceptional credit history of co-borrower, this appears to be a typo/transposition followed by break in communication with the borrowers.

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