Consumer complaint received 2017-05-31
Company: PHH Mortgage Services Corporation
State: CO
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
In XX/XX/XXXX I purchased my home with PHH/XXXX XXXX with my father as a cosigner due to the high value of real estate in my area. All payments were made on time and at or greater than minimum requirements through XX/XX/XXXX at which point in time I refinanced my loan and once again chose PHH as my loan provider. This was done to take advantage of greatly reduced interest rates that became available and once again my father cosigned on the loan. <P/>The area I live in is in the mountains of Colorado and as such there is no door to door mail service because of the large amounts of snow we receive. As a result all postal service is conducted through PO Boxes only. During the paperwork process for the refinance both my father and myself were told to use the property address ( no mail service available at the property address ) as both the physical and mailing addresses to " simplify the approval process ''. We were informed that after the loan has closed the address would once again be updated to the correct PO Box on file ( the same address used in the first loan ). We followed as we were told and signed all documents using only the physical address. <P/>From XX/XX/XXXX through the middle of XX/XX/XXXX payments were once again completed on time and at or above minimum requirements. On or about the middle of XX/XX/XXXX PHH Mortgage decided to impose their own insurance onto the account. I do not know why this was done as the property was fully insured at the time, and that insurance was not part of the mortgage payment ( it was made independently of any mortgage transaction ). However PHH sent mailings to the physical address of the property ( in theory as these mailings could not possibly be received due to lack of mail service ) to inform me of their insurance intentions. <P/>Insurance was added to the account, mailings were supposedly sent to the physical address informing me of this increase in monthly mortgage cost, but they were sent to an address that can not and never has been capable of receiving physical mail. <P/>In XX/XX/XXXX I logged into the PHH Mortgage website at XXXX to look at the payoff amount for the loan. I was dumbfounded when I looked at the information about late payments, late fees, and credit hits the site informed me about. This resulted in an immediate call to PHH and during these initial calls I immediately paid the past due amount to the agent on the phone. This same agent apologized for the errors that caused insurance to be added to the account, and stated that she would work with a supervisor to discredit the late fees and remove any credit fees caused by this scenario. However they needed to wait for the past due amount to apply to the account before they could eliminate the late fees and address credit reporting. <P/>None of the things this agent stated actually came to fruition. The late fees remain on the account. The negative credit reporting remains intact. In subsequent calls to PHH I have since been informed that my conversation with this agent was misconstrued. No late fees would be eliminated and all credit reporting would remain as is. However the company did in fact retroactively remove the incorrectly applied insurance premiums. <P/>Long story short, had the insurance not been added to the account there never would have been any late fee applied as I consistently paid on time and in amounts greater then the newly recalculated amount due ( after insurance double payment was removed ). <P/>My father has taken up with a lawyer as while he has never made a mortgage payment to PHH mortgage his credit was negatively effected by this scenario. This is my attempt to eliminate this legal action prior to its commencement and make all parties whole.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation