Consumer complaint received 2023-05-10
Company: UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION
State: FL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Home equity loan or line of credit (HELOC)
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
I've had a XXXX  loan drawn out for a long time with USAA Federal Savings Bank. Throughout that time, operators have told me that the only way to change my principle payments was through a paper form that I have to mail to USAA. I started with a separate principle payment of {$8000.00} per month as interest rates XXXX and in the last XXXX months, I raised that amount to {$15000.00} in an aggressive payoff plan with interest rates rising higher each month as the incompetent Chairman of the Federal Reserve punishes loan holders like me, while having absolutely no effect on the rising inflation rates in XXXX. USAA has attempted to block any smooth attempt to change my principle payment amount ( interest payments were to be taken out of my primary checking account separately from any specified principle payment amounts, per USAA 's form ). I asked on several occasions how the last payment would be processed if the automatic principle amount were higher than the actual HELOC balance. Every operator has stated that the actual principle payment specified on the HELOC automatic payment from would be deducted from my checking account and then any overage from the automatic payment would be refunded to me after the fact. Not wanting a large over payment, on the final automatic payment, I adjusted the automatic principle payment from {$15000.00} to {$9900.00}, just over what I estimated the balance to be on the final payment. Just yesterday the XXXX total balance was {$9800.00} indeed just less than the guessed new principle automatic payment amount of {$9900.00}, which should have been an overpayment of just {$59.00}. This morning, since my experience with USAA in the XXXX department has demonstrated that they are incompetent, I opened my USAA App to check on the final payment. Just as I expected, USAA had changed my requested automatic principle payment on my last payment so I my full balance was not paid off as I had submitted in my form. My final interest payment was deducted from my USAA checking account, as expected. I then noticed that the {$9900.00} payment that I submitted was not made as requested, but that USAA had deducted only {$9600.00}, leaving my outstanding XXXX  balance at {$45.00}. Recognizing that this corrupt practice was designed to get XXXX more month of interest payments from USAA XXXX holders, I called USAA and spoke to XXXX in the XXXX department. After a few minutes of speaking with XXXX, it was apparent that he was being intentionally obtuse and obstructing my attempts to find out what was going on by pretending to not know what I was talking about. At first, he claimed that my automatic payment amount was still {$15000.00} and I had to ask him again what my last form said. He finally conceded that I had indeed sent in a new form and it was indeed reset to {$9900.00} of principle only automatic payments. I then asked for a supervisor. XXXX, in the XXXX resolutions team, did the same thing. She acted very confused as to what I was trying to say and repeated every question that I asked of her, pretending to not understand the basics of automatic payments and a final XXXX  payoff. Finally, she admitted that " the system '' made an error and took the interest from the principle payment instead of directly from my checking account and promised to correct the payment to {$9900.00}. When I asked what the final payment would be- whether the payment would be my final XXXX  balance or the full automatic payment amount of {$9900.00}, XXXX again pretended to be confused. This is the XXXX  department at USAA. This is what they do every single day at work and both XXXX and XXXX pretended to be confused with simple questions about XXXX automatic payments. It is apparent that USAA has programmed the last automatic payment on XXXX  loans to do just what it did today. The program at USAA is designed to make sure to leave a balance for at least XXXX more moth. By not allowing members like myself to pay off the full amount and rolling a small amount over to XXXX additional month, USAA is able to extort XXXX more month of interest from all of USAA 's XXXX XXXX holders. Certainly, USAA has many many XXXX  loan holders and with the ever-increasing interest rates, this becomes a substantial revenue line item at the end of the year, defrauding USAA XXXX XXXX XXXX of more money in a low character scheme to make money off of the members. USAA is corrupt. They are using members money for frivolous, non-investment ventures, like the most recent add campaign, in which XXXX superstar ( and as such, extremely wealthy ) XXXX XXXX was paid millions of dollars of USAA members money for a XXXX XXXX television ad series, where USAA could have easily used it's own military members and drawn from the class of Americans that USAA originally sought to serve. Instead, USAA went after the low-character XXXX fan XXXX it is undisputed that the XXXX allows XXXX and low-character behavior to run ramped in their organization and they actually promote this every year they are on TV ). So USAA is running this scam to extort interest from it's own members while frivolously spending members money with no apparent limits. All this while XXXX Banks collapse, one-by-one, due to the exact same practices. XXXX 's money in those banks was being used for funding of political extremist groups like XXXX, with no discernible return even suggested. Spending exorbitant amounts of members money on XXXX XXXX when much more reasonable options were available is direct evidence of the poor decision making and corruption of the current board of directors at USAA. Federal oversight will look at these reports if USAA is ever on the brink of collapse and the current board will be liable for their actions. Based upon USAA 's actions, I knew to look for corruption on my last XXXX  payment. And this is exactly what I found.

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