Consumer complaint received 2022-04-30
Company: FIFTH THIRD FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: NH
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
My mortgage provider in 5/3 Third. The bank refuses to communicate any payment issues due to changes on the bank side in a timely manner. I think it is deliberate to drive payers into a situation where they end up with a late payment for a negligible variance amount allowing the bank to slam the payee credit score with a late payment reporting. 

I made my normal bill payment for XXXX to the bank over paying the mortgage amount. ( Mortgage payment XXXX, my bill payment sent XXXX ) I had not received an escrow adjustment notification in the mail alerting me that the payment would be changing in XXXX. For the life of my mortgage with 5/3 i have had routine issues with their website typically forcing me to call in a reset a couple of time a year and it is why I do XXXX XXXX from XXXX XXXX and not through the 5/3 account system. 

When I logged in at the end of XXXX to download my documents for my tax preparation I noticed that I had an unapplied credit for XXXX. I messaged with customer service and looked at the only account alerts which included the password resets. Looking through the documents i found the escrow annual escrow review with the new payment amount of XXXX. This resulted in a variance of XXXX. I made the variance payment online but the customer service rep informed me the XXXX payment would still count as late because the payment would not credit until the next business day XXXX. 

For the entire month of XXXX XXXX did not leave me a phone message, did not put an alert on my account, did not indicate there was a payment discrepancy on my account. Now they will stick a notice on my credit report of " not more than 2 payments behind '' which is a lie in itself because they will be including the XX/XX/XXXX payment in that credit reporting to do absolute maximum damage. 

They have also held the mortgage payment of XXXX unapplied allowing interest to accrue on the principle that could have been paid. My escrow is currently in credit balance. This late payment variance is for the increase in escrow to be applied to an escrow account that is not currently in the negative. 

5/3 will claim they tried to call but their call attempts come from unknown numbers that are dead air when you answer. You literally have to keep a dead line open for 45-60 seconds before someone actually picks up. I think this is a shady way to ensure the customer they are trying to reach disconnects because they think it is a robocall. I went through this with them the last time they pulled this stunt. They claim they do not leave messages on voice mail for customers. Regular US Mail is usually delayed for me because I am working outside the US, again I had this discussion with them. If I do not get a voicemail message or email or have the information showing in the accounts I will not get it in a timely manner that allows me to respond. I would expect they would at a minimum keep up the online account with alerts and notifications if they actually wanted to ensure the customer was aware of changes to their account or payment issues.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation