Consumer complaint received 2015-12-31
Company: Ocwen Financial Corporation
State: AZ
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional adjustable mortgage (ARM)
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account

Complaint:
Until a few weeks ago, my primary residential mortgage loan was serviced by Ocwen. For approximately two years prior to refinancing in XXXX 2015, I had undertaking a plan to make a serious " dent '' in my mortgage loan balance. So, for two years, I made a series of " curtailment '' payments at various intervals, reducing my principal balance from approximately 112 % of my home value to about 75 %. One would think a loan servicer would welcome such a plan. Quite the contrary ; each curtailment payment was met with confusion, resulting in emails, letters and telephone calls exceeding XXXX communication exchanges. 
For example, each month I made my required minimum payment plus " a little extra '' ( e.g., if the minimum was {$1800.00} I would pay {$2300.00} on the XXXX of each month ). Then, each month, sometime around XXXX-month ( coinciding with my bi-monthly pay-checks from my employer ) I would make an " extra payment '' using BofA on-line billpay, labelling each payment as a " curtailment. '' For example, during 2015 these XXXX-month payments were usually {$4800.00} and typically paid on the XXXX of each month. Without fail, Ocwen would treat these XXXX-month payments as advances against the next month 's required payment. I would call and each time the telephone representative assured me that they had " fixed '' the problem and all of my XXXX-month payments would be logged in as curtailments in the future. The next month would come, with statements trickling in about two weeks after my check was cashed ( even the online portal was 7-10 days behind posting payments ) and, lo and behold, I would discover that Ocwen had failed to post the XXXX- month curtailment correctly, yet again - oy vay. That is, my XXXX-month payment was treated as a payment against the following two months ' required payments, thus making my XXXXmonth payment post as a payment held in trust for three months hence. In other words, Ocwen held these funds " in trust '' but did not reduce my principal balance. Thus, I would write an email via their online system and make telephone calls until the situation was corrected, the interest charges changed, and the XXXX corrected to the amount computed by my handy XXXX spreadsheet ( thank goodness for XXXX ). 
You might think, " well, that 's the way it goes. '' Well, here is how it went : Ocwen received my bill-pay, did not take note of the memo ( or the email or the historical record of requests asking that all XXXX-month payments be treated as curtailments ), entered the amount wrong and set me on a course of making countless emails and phone calls, wasting at least XXXX hours of my time over the past two years. But, that is not even the whole story. To add insult, the loan servicing department would often charge my account with a {$5.00} " transcript fee '' as though I had called to request a transcript for my benefit. In turn, I then had to write more letters, emails and make more telephone calls to get these transcript fees removed, explaining each time that any transcripts " pulled '' were not by my request but by their own posting errors and that I should not be required to pay {$5.00} to right their wrongs. Eventually they 'd give in, but not without my having sweated it out each month. 

The only image I could fathom with respect to the people on the other end of these emails and phone calls was the XXXX XXXX - the XXXX XXXX outsourced version of course, but XXXX XXXX nonetheless. 

As a tax advisor to banks and mortgage loan servicers across the country, I can appreciate the massive investment in technology that is required to service a residential mortgage loan portfolio - it is not easy. And that is why Ocwen should stop. If someone as informed on accounting and law as myself has this much trouble dealing with them, I can not imagine what the average person must experience. They simply do not have the infrastructure.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation