Consumer complaint received 2015-05-06
Company: SUNTRUST BANKS, INC.
State: NJ
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional adjustable mortgage (ARM)
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account

Complaint:
This is my XXXX attempt to rectify my mortgage situation with SunTrust. ( Please refer to Case number : XXXX and Case number : XXXX ) I am beginning to think they deliberately want to foreclose on my house. My last complaint was addressed by someone from Suntrust who said that if I could provide proof that my payments were not returned because of an error on MY bank 's end, they would revisit the situation. I have provided proof AGAIN and still I have received nothing. In fact, I have discovered that my electronic payments were in fact returned by SunTrust because at the time we made them, we were in loss mitigation and apparently, they hold payments. This was not communicated to us -- rather we were told by several people that we had not made the payment or that it was something our bank had done. This is very shady -- who " holds '' payments? Now, I have taken us out of loss mitigation because it is going nowwhere and asked for the payments they have been holding be applied to our account and I receive a check for {$270.00} that ca n't be applied to my account. Never have I come across a situation where someone is trying to make their payments and their institution keeps denying or sending them back -- and when we call, noone seems to know what is going on. No wonder the lending industry is in a mess. I am attaching several documents -- these show that we made our mortgage payments in XXXX and XXXX of XXXX and that our bank ( XXXX XXXX ) sent us correspondence that the payments had been returned because of an invalid account number. ( Please note that the account number and address these payments were sent had not changed on our end -- same as we had been sending and the same as on our statements ). This is where we found out that our payments were mysteriously being held and not applied to our account, but none of the numerous people at SunTrust that we spoke to back then would inform us of this. Also attached is the letter we sent in XXXX XXXX requesting information under Section 6 of RESPA as to why our payments were returned and we included proof from our bank that the payments had been returned by SunTrust. We included a money order for the mortgage payment ( now 30 days behind due to the incredibly confusing and deceiving practices ). Again, in XXXX our paper check was returned -- when we called, this is when we were finally told that our payments were being held and unless they were for the full amount, would not be applied. But, after I filed a complaint through CFPB, I miraculously received an email that this had been in error and would I please call my home preservation officer to make payment immediately over the phone. Ha!!! How ironic -- when all this was going on with the previous returned payments and I wanted to make a payment over the phone, I was told this was not possible. The last document attached is correspondence I just received yesterday with a check for who knows what -- I removed our loan from loss mitigation and this check is for some small amount that can not be applied to our loan. 
I am sure this must sound very confusing and convoluted to you and that is because IT IS!!! We are educated people with XXXX and we are thoroughly bamboozled! We do n't know what we owe, what we 've paid, what is late or what has really been applied. It is a nightmare. SunTrust has racked up thousands in late fees since XXXX and ruined our credit that we have worked so hard to improve ... and all because they returned ( but, wo n't admit they did ) our mortgage payment in XXXX, XXXX. Up until then, we had NEVER missed a mortgage payment and have had our loan since XX/XX/XXXX.

Company public response: Company chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation