Consumer complaint received 2017-04-07
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company
State: FL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional fixed mortgage
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account

Complaint:
I am a customer of Freedom Mortgage and I have been since I took out a loan in XX/XX/XXXX to purchase my condo. Since then I have always paid my monthly mortgage payment which includes property tax escrow, on time. However, Freedom Mortgage and its affiliates as holder and servicer of my mortgage, in turn, did not pay my property taxes on time in XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX and miscalculated the escrow amounts. 
By not paying the property taxes for over two years Freedom Mortgage incurred over {$3800.00} in late fees and penalties and fines. During the time when they did not pay I sent my payments on time to them and their servicer. I was the one who alerted them to the problem in XX/XX/XXXX and they admitted fault and paid the bill. Nearly a year later in XX/XX/XXXX, they assessed me over {$3800.00} in penalties essentially claiming that I am responsible for their failure to manage my property tax escrow. They started taking this money without asking by giving me a monthly escrow overage charge of {$880.00} and overdrew my bank account in the process. They are attempting to collect the fines and overage charge that resulted from the errors made by them, their mismanagement of my property tax escrow funds and general ignorance. I paid them on time but they did not do their job as agreed. They did not pay my taxes. 

I have contacted Freedom Mortgage in writing by email and at least 20 times since XX/XX/XXXX providing full supporting documentation showing that I have paid and the mistakes made on their part. I also found a string of other errors they made while administering the escrow account. The issue is their grossly negligent miss management of the escrow account on my mortgage and the extortionist manner in which they are now taking money from me which is not theirs. 

Their response is to ignore me and insist that I have to pay for the property tax and escrow mistake made by them as the holder and servicer of my loan. Sometimes they blame their subcontractors for this mistake, sometimes not, they have stopped returning my calls, they continue to call me with autodialed calls by agents who ignore that a case is open and ignore the facts and they have not given any formal response to my written request after more than 30 days. Furthermore, they threaten to report me to the credit bureaus if I do not pay them the fines resulting from their mistakes. 

Please keep in mind that they are the ones who should be managing my property tax escrow yet they did NOT pay my property taxes on time for two years even though I sent the money on time each month. 
Additionally, the people who work there do not understand what the difference is between principal, interest and escrow. These people and company are a menace and someone needs to threaten them back because they treat their customers like garbage.

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