Consumer complaint received 2022-02-25
Company: TRUIST FINANCIAL CORPORATION
State: WA
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Mortgage debt
Issue: Attempts to collect debt not owed
Sub-issue: Debt was paid

Complaint:
" Suntrust now Truist '' ( Bank ) is our mortgage provider for the property we own at XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. Our mortgage is a fix rate mortgage with no escrow. In 2021, due to miscommunication between our insurance agency and the bank, there was a misinformation about our insurance coverage ( They claimed we don't have an insurance despite we had coverage without a gap ). We pay our mortgage automatically from our personal bank account every month regularly. 

The bank opened up an escrow account without our consent and knowledge, and started demanding additional payments, around XX/XX/2021, for additional insurance coverage they claimed they provided. 

The mortgage statements provide a phone number and a web address for customer service, but no mailing address for the customer service. We could not reach anyone using the phone number provided in the mortgage statement from XXXX TO XXXX, XXXX. When the number is called, the automatic answering machine only stated that there was a transition of the mortgage between companies and we should continue making payments and no credit reporting would be done during the transition. The mortgage statements ( including the website ) do not provide any mailing address for the customer service for us to communicate any other way. 

Finally, we were able to reach the customer service in XXXX, XXXX and proved the fact that we had insurance and no escrow was needed. 

The bank admitted and canceled the escrow. However, we realized that the bank reported the incident as unpaid mortgage to the credit agencies and also started a foreclosure proceeding and put notations on the property, which irritated our tenant and we lost a tenant because of that The letter we received from the bank ( lender ) on XX/XX/2021 stated the bank canceled the escrow and also they retracted their reporting the credit agencies on XX/XX/2021. 

However, we checked our report on XXXX and it appears that they did not retract their reporting. Our credit score was above 750 in early XXXX. After their false reporting to the credit agencies, our XXXXredit score dropped to low 600s. We were planning to buy a property by the end of XXXX, but we could not purchase because of it. 

We sued the bank in XXXX XXXX ( WA ) and won for only a portion of the damages. 
We are planning to file law suits in many other counties, until this bank responds to our concerns fairly. 

We made additional {$2700.00} payment in XXXX so that they would stop reporting our loan as a default ( They demanded this ; otherwise they would keep reporting as a default ). After the bank admitted their mistake, they paid back only {$1800.00}. The bank writes back with many different explanations and accounting tricks to justify, but at the end, they overcharged us in addition to their false credit reporting. 

PLEASE SEE ATTACHED EXHIBITS : Exhibit # 1 : Proof of Insurance Exhibit # 2 : Our payments Exhibit # 3 : Letter received on XX/XX/2021 Exhibit # 4 Credit Reporting on XXXX

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