Consumer complaint received 2022-08-29
Company: Caliber Home Loans, Inc.
State: FL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
Hello, I am a Caliber Home Loans client. This is a description of the timeline that has led up to the automated system discrepancy within Caliber Home Loans mortgage company, that has resulted in false late payment delinquency and false impacts to me and my wifes credit score. Although I had been fighting to get this issue resolved since XXXX of XXXX with Caliber directly, I only became aware by a caliber agent in XX/XX/XXXX that the reason the issues began occurring was because I used my banks Bill Pay method to deposit money into escrow, same as I do when I submit my mortgage payment. As per caliber, funds going directly to escrow should be done off of their site. Again, something I was not made aware of until XX/XX/XXXX. You can follow along with the description below in payment/amount detail by using the attached excel spreadsheet providing a full break down of my entire payment history with Caliber since the purchase of my home. 

Our home purchase through caliber was finalized on XX/XX/XXXX with the first mortgage payment due on the XXXX of XX/XX/XXXX. By the time XX/XX/XXXX came around, we decided to obtain our property insurance through a different company. Unfortunately this was completed fairly close to the deadline resulting in Caliber both paying the new Insurance company premium ( XXXX  XXXX XXXX ) and the premium for the existing insurance company we had at the time ( XXXX XXXX XXXX = {$2200.00} ). This is the period where the issues began occurring. I became aware of the double payment and began working to get refunded the amount to return to escrow. Unbeknownst to me during this same period, Caliber had received a notice that my property tax was due in XXXX and paid it out to avoid any delinquency with the state, as per their mortgage security guidelines. However, the title company that I used during the purchase back in XX/XX/XXXX also paid my property tax, as they were supposed to. This left my escrow account over {$7000.00} short in funds. Since I was under the assumption that my taxes would be handled through my mortgage company escrow, and this being the first time I purchased a home, I was unaware that the title company was supposed to pay out the taxes at the end of the first year. Supposedly this occurred because of how close I purchased my home in contrast to the period that the annual taxes were due. 

I became aware of the double tax payment when I attempted to return the funds for the insurance company premium ( {$2200.00} ). When I called Caliber to ensure the funds were applied to escrow directly, I was notified that my mortgage payment had gone up from {$2200.00} to {$2700.00}. This in turn caused {$550.00} to be removed from my insurance premium refund and got applied to the difference in the new mortgage amount. As soon as I became aware of this, I immediately deposited the difference of {$550.00} into my caliber account to ensure that my new monthly mortgage payment was fulfilled in its full balance and continued to be on time. Knowing that my monthly mortgage amount could not be reduced back down to normal range until my escrow was close to its original amount, I started my efforts to get one of the double tax payments refunded to return to escrow. While this was occurring I had been continuing to make calls on a weekly basis to caliber to ensure everything was getting allocated correctly. Unfortunately however Calibers workflow limits their customer service agents to be able to make any adjustments or corrections. This resulted in notes or request being made by them to resolve the misplacements of payments, to no success. 

In XXXX, once I was able to get the tax funds returned, I deposited {$5000.00} to my caliber account in order for it to go directly into escrow. At this point I had returned a total of {$7200.00} in order to replenish my escrow account specifically. Once I was able to call caliber and get an agent to allocate the funds to escrow, I placed a request to get my monthly mortgage amount re-evaluated to return my mortgage payment back to its normal range. I continued to pay the elevated amount of {$2700.00} up until the XX/XX/XXXX payment was due, always on time without missing any payments. By this point I was made aware that my new monthly mortgage amount was set to {$2400.00}. When this re-evaluation occurred, the automated system determined that there was an overage in my escrow and refunded me {$730.00}. I figured this was a mistake but decided to hold these fund until the discrepancies in my account were correct to avoid further funds being misplaced. 

What I was not aware of was that in the background, the automated systems within caliber had been allocating the funds I was submitting to where it felt it should belong. When I was placing the request with the agents to allocate the fund into escrow, it in turn pulled it back from my monthly mortgage payment, or so the automated system thought since thats where it chose to allocate the funds out of. This is the point that I had realized and was notified by an agent that the automated system had been allocating fund incorrectly since back in XX/XX/XXXX that my mortgage payment jumped up. Since the customer service agents can not make corrections, more notes and/or request were placed to make the correction to no success. 

By the time XXXX of XXXX came around, I began noticing from the caliber portal that my XXXX payment had not been acknowledged and was showing as late. When I looked deeper into the history on the portal, I was able to see that since XXXX, Calibers automated systems had been taking my payments as late since it thought I was always a month behind. However, I have never missed a payment nor been late up in my entire history with caliber since purchasing my home. I was finally able to get in contact with a manager, who stated he was going to get with the department that can make the corrections while I waited on the phone. After almost an hour on hold, he returned to notify me that the other department only acknowledged what the automated system was stating, and that I in fact had to deposit more money to be caught up correctly. After I briefly described to him that it wasnt true, he agreed and mentioned he would get back to me after working with them further, but had to drop because of the amount of time he had kept me on the phone. Before he hung up I mentioned to him that I would not mind returning the overage amount from escrow, but refused to refund the amount they were requesting because I knew that amount would only fulfill what their automated systems thought was correct. This in fact would not help resolve the damage they had already created on my credit score by failing to get these items resolved since the end of XXXX. 

Due to the process within Caliber to get items resolved, the only folks who took the time to thoroughly look at all my payments and cross reference the dates are the customer service agents. All of which agreed with me that there definitely was an issue. However, as usual, all they could do is put a note or request, which always resulted in a mistake occurring because of the automated system discrepancies. Multiple attempts to get the same manager involved, or get in contact with another manager was never successful. As per the customer service agents, a manager was never available and their rules state they can not keep me on hold for more than five minutes, and agents could not just dump me into a queue for managers. This issue needs to be remediated retroactively so that my incorrect delinquency can be corrected and reported back to the credit bureau. Its not fair that these items that were out of my control has in turn caused me to bear the consequences when in fact I have made every effort to get my escrow resolved and have never failed at making my payments, even when the amount shot up over {$600.00} from where it should have been when the issue first began. I hired a lawyer to help get this resolved, in which they fought with caliber for months to try and get it fixed. At the end, Caliber refused to acknowledge the mistake and have continued to harass me with collection calls even though I continue to make my mortgage payment on time and in the full correct amount.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation