Consumer complaint received 2021-08-25
Company: TRUIST FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: TX
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
In XX/XX/2021 my mortgage was sold to Truist Bank ( Suntrust ). This bank heavily encourages all mortgage holders to use their online payment services. Calling to talk with someone about payment is difficult - typical wait times are XXXX minutes with no option to get a callback. While waiting more messages are given that " you could avoid this waiting by using online services. Sign up now! '' The central issue is that signing up for Truist bank online services requires a person to sign the online user agreement. The agreement must be done to simply pay a mortgage payment each month. This agreement is XXXX pages of legalese most of which has nothing to do with paying a mortgage. Agreeing to the user agreement eliminates all user rights while preserving and extending the rights of the bank in its relationship with you. Among the rights you give away are your rights to jury trial and any other legal means of dispute resolution except mediation. It states that a bank employee may give incorrect information to you, but the user agreement prevails always and you have no recourse to address the conflicting statements made by a bank employee. It is a one size fits all document for every conceivable type of user of the bank 's services. Via nested document links you are also agreeing to the Truist bank " Online Privacy Practices '' document wherein it states that Truist will collect and use every piece of your private data it can access. Agreeing to the user agreement implies agreement to the online privacy practices. Their so-called privacy practices should be renamed the Purposeful Purloinment and Piracy of Personal Data. 
The circuitous url route to get to that info seems to be intentionally hiding the personal data piracy practices document. Even attempting to copy portions of their pdf document results in a backwards representation of information, clearly indicating obfuscatory intent : as copied from the Privacy doc : noitamrofni cilbup-non rehtO sdrowssaP semanresU srebmun tnuoccA rebmun enohpeleT liamE sserddA rebmuN ytiruceS laicoS emaN The above sentence reversed : " Name, Social Security Number, Address, Email, Telephone Number, Account numbers, Usernames, Passwords, Other non-public information. 

The entire list of what they will try to collect and how they go about it is outrageous, appalling, cunningly hidden, malicious, predatory and devious! 
There is an opt out process, but it is an illusion since it only applies to a " browser and computer '' combination. Using a different browser on the same computer or a different computer requires going through the opt out process yet again, ad infinitum as a person uses different computing or access methodologies. This can be obviated by having the opt out be tied to the user login process, but clearly Suntrust wants to make it difficult so that users will forget to do it or so that users will think that doing it once is okay forever. The document even says " When you visit a Suntrust website or otherwise interact with us online ... ''. What does THAT mean, " or otherwise interact with us online ''? More legal obfuscation to make the document apply to whatever online interaction may be used now or in the future, without having to inform the users. 
The entire Truist doctrine is to get EVERYONE online where they have to relinquish all their rights in order to do online banking or to do something as simple as sending a mortgage payment each month. Pernicious, predatory, perfidious practices designed to be difficult to read and understand so that users will simply acquiesce to the terms without truly understanding how egregiously they have abridged their right to deal with the bank in the event of any disagreement. This practice is not restricted to banks, but as presented on the Suntrust ( now Truist ) website it is the most appalling example of how businesses seek to confuse, overwhelm and seduce users into using their online services and signing away all their rights through obfuscation, legalese and structurally dense prose with redirects to more URLs to get to the salient information a user SHOULD see before agreeing to the debacle of an agreement that is being presented to them with an innocuous check box near the " Register as a User '' button. Not agreeing and having a user login is not allowed. Accordingly, I will be sending checks in the mail. I will never agree to such a one-sided agreement and no one else would either if they understood in simple language what was happening by agreeing. 
Please stop banks and businesses from doing this. It is manipulative, evil, devious, and wrong. Require more candid, easily understood language and stop the data capture for profit practices that are in no way a service to customers. These are processes with a corrupt intention.

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