Consumer complaint received 2017-06-21
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: FL
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Home equity loan or line of credit (HELOC)
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
To Whom It May Concern : Thank you for being a valued Citi customer. This is a statement that is regularly used by the Citi employees. Would you feel like a valued customer if your first application for modification took almost 3 years to process only to be denied? Would you feel like a valued customer if you were in a repayment plan, you received monthly statements notifying you of monthly payments/withdrawals, yet you were never informed the amount being automatically withdrawn was incorrect and suddenly received a foreclosure notice in the mail? Would you feel like a valued customer if you and your counsel were told by a Citi attorney and support specialist that your second application for modification would not take more than 2 weeks because all the paperwork had been received, yet 8 months later no resolution has been achieved? I invite you to look at the history of our loan and ask yourself if you would approve of the way our case has been handled. Please allow me to give you some background information about our case. We fell on hard economic times from XXXX to XXXX due to the nature of my husbands XXXX XXXX XXXX businesses. We applied for a loan modification on our Home Equity Line of Credit in XXXX and after nearly 3 years of countless phone calls, emails, different support specialists and providing documents we were declined modification. A repayment plan was approved in XXXX and monthly payments were automatically withdrawn from our bank account. When the Home Equity Loan reset and the payments increased, we were not aware that the automatic withdrawal payments would not be adjusted/increased. We continued receiving monthly statements from Citi notifying us that payments were being received, but we were never informed that we were in default. After 18 months of making payments ( in a 24-month repayment plan ), we were shocked to receive a notice of foreclosure. We hired an attorney in XXXX XXXX to stop the foreclosure proceedings and have been in the modification process for the past 10 months. We feel that the following list includes systemic issues with the modification and repayment processes in your company : Uploading of documents sent by client- pages are lost or uploaded incorrectly causing multiple requests for documents. It is unbelievable that your electronic mail is limited to receiving only 15 MB at one time in a process which requires extensive paperwork. Constant turnover of personnel- we have had a handful of different support specialists in the past 10  months. Missed appointments of scheduled calls from support specialists- the most recent occurring on XX/XX/XXXX when our scheduled call with the Executive Response Team representative did not materialize after we were informed that he was on vacation. Lack of communication between the support specialist and the underwriting team- this creates a lack of clarity as to what documents are received and what documents are actually needed or required. On various occasions the underwriting team has requested documents and/or letters of explanation regarding information that have been previously provided on multiple occasions. Lack of communication between departments- one department does not know what is going on in the other. We have been given erroneous information on many occasions. ( One support specialist stunned us on XX/XX/XXXX by stating that there was a foreclosure sale date on XX/XX/XXXX which our attorney later disproved. On another occasion, I was told to proceed 5 different ways by 5 different support specialist. ) One of the more egregious offenses has been the lack of interest from the Citi attorney who has systematically ignored communications from our attorney. Since XX/XX/XXXX we have acted in good faith and worked continuously and diligently on our case. Our goal has always been to stay in our home and the long trail of emails, phone calls and documents is evidence of our sustained effort to resolve this matter. We are asking for your assistance in resolving this matter. Now on XX/XX/XXXX XXXX XXXX Citi 's XXXX sends my attorney an email stating " The documents were uploaded to our client a few minutes ago, but please contact HAT ( Homeowners Assistance Program ) at ( XXXX ) XXXX and run through Mortgage Assistance Tool in order to initiate the review process, unfortunately, the submission of the Loss Mitigation Package alone will not initiate the review process. '' After my attorney has been repeatedly submitting documents since XX/XX/XXXX now they say that we have to call the Homeowner 's assistance program to initiate the review process? Then what have they been doing since XX/XX/XXXX? The letter I received inXX/XX/XXXX from Citi said I should have a response within 15 days and now I am told this?? As you can see, they are clearly acting in bad faith. In this whole process when my attorney has called Citibank to ask for a status on the modification they have been advised that it must go through their counsel as the case is being litigated which is what we have done. My application and supporting financial documents have all been sent timely to their counsel on numerous occasions therefore, I am very frustrated to now have their attorney say that the process has not been initiated which is why I am filing this complaint in the hopes that we can get a resolution on this case.

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 non-monetary relief