Consumer complaint received 2022-01-21
Company: PNC Bank N.A.
State: NY
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Home equity loan or line of credit (HELOC)
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage

Complaint:
In XXXX, 2020, I contacted my mortgage lenders who hold loans on my home in XXXX XXXX XXXX. I live in the property and have rental units. During the first six months of Covid, my rents ranged from {$0.00} a month to $ XXXX, down from a range of XXXX - XXXX a month. 

PNC holds my second mortgage, a line of credit that they had frozen to withdrawals many years before. My other mortgage is held by another company. Of the debt on my property, PNC holds less than XXXX of the total and the other company owns more than XXXX. So the mortgage is already relatively small. 

My other lender immediately offered me a six month forbearance and added a giant tax bill to the forbearance. A short time later they extended the forbearance period to 18 months. 

PNC offered two months forbearance. Two. That is not a typo. 

After the two months were up, I began applying for a modification of the loan, as I still had almost no rents and did not know what the next year or two held. No one did. Obviously this situation was not specific to me but to everyone in the entire world. 

I paid the mortgage literally every month of the pandemic except the first two. I just couldn't pay the entire balance, but I sent a payment every single month as funds allowed. I paid as much as I could pay while my work hours were cut 75 %, I had little or no rents, was going through a XXXX, remote schooling my kids and solely responsible for their financial needs. 

The modification process was endless. Because I work a lot of part time freelance jobs, I did not have paystubs and they kept asking for documents I didn't have. By the time I got them more documents or supplied yet another letter that explained why I didn't have them, they had closed the application again, saying I was past the deadline to turn in documents. I was told my documents were complete, then told they were not, then the application would be shut down while I was trying to redo it, and by that time my work situation or freelance employment would have changed, or my unemployment ended, and all my previous documents would not longer count. I had many calls and letters with PNC and cried on the phone but could get nowhere. They told me that because this loan was not covered by the CARES act, they did not have to give me any more forbearance or do anything for me. 

I applied several times for modification and finally this fall told them I would just take a deferral and not modify the loan as I could not waste any more time applying and was worried about my rapidly dropping credit score. Because I had paid every month but not the full amount, all my monthly payments were not even counting as on-time payments and PNC was reporting missed payments, totally destroying my credit score. 

Rather than giving me the deferral as my other lender had done and moving forward, I received words a few weeks later that I would have to start the application process all over again just to get a deferral. They reported me as late and my credit score dropped again, causing me to lose a refinance for my other debt. 

I have been trying to get this company to provide a reasonable common sense solution for almost two years and I can't spend any more time trying to do applications that they never accept. I have XXXX masters degrees and have been a XXXXl XXXX and a XXXX XXXX, but somehow was never able to complete this application to their satisfaction before the time ran out and the closed it. I asked for a deferral to get a fresh start and they won't do it without another application. In the meantime, their reporting destroyed my credit score. All that my other lenders did for me, including my primary mortgage lender giving me 18 months and an automatic deferral, no questions asked, this bank would not do as a secondary mortgage holder for a much smaller total.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation