Consumer complaint received 2021-05-19
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company
State: MD
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: VA mortgage
Issue: Closing on a mortgage

Complaint:
I am refinancing a property in New Mexico with a VA IRRRL. From the beginning, the executive loan officer, XXXX XXXX, NMLS # XXXX, was hard to reach when needed and often required multiple follow ups ( trying to have phone conversation was virtually impossible ). I conveyed to XXXX multiple times in XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX all remaining closing costs that would not be covered by lender credits would be paid by us at closing ( " cash to close '' ). After I pointed out some initial errors with the loan documents, I was contacted to schedule closing in XXXX and we set up a date. XXXX XXXX was assigned as my customer advocate prior to closing and her intro email stated " My name is XXXX XXXX, and Ill be your Customer Advocate and primary point of contact moving forward. Im committed to providing you with excellent service and seeing that your loan gets scheduled to close as quickly as possible. '' However, my experience with the customer advocacy group was the complete opposite. We postponed closing a few times throughout XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX ( including today XX/XX/XXXX, which is why I am finally filing this complaint ) because Freedom Mortgage would keep issuing incorrect closing documents. I think every time they had the closing costs rolling into the loan despite me requesting every time to fix it for the next scheduled closing date. At least once the loan payoff amount was incorrect and nobody could explain where the figure came from ( i.e., did not match the current lender 's payoff quote ). Then today they quoted us a high amount for the cash to close because inexplicably the approved loan amount decreased and underwriting wanted us to make up that difference. Nobody could provide an explanation of how the cash to close figure was generated until after we postponed closing again, but it appears their research determined it was a mistake for the loan approval amount to be decreased. Our customer advocate and their supervisor, XXXX XXXX, have been quiet since early XXXX when we failed to close because Freedom Mortgage cancelled closing due to a property tax payment made by the current lender ( I can understand this is probably standard practice, but placed in the context of one problem after another it was infuriating ). The customer experience with Freedom Mortgage has been terrible, and this company has not been fully transparent and/or competent throughout the process. I can't prove this company has done anything illegal ( purposefully ), but I think some of their actions border unethical behavior, and certainly they've proven to be incompetent. Had I not been diligent on a separate loan ( which this one also had multiple closing date postponements ) they would have taken advantage of a veteran ( purposefully or stupidly, I'm not sure, by dropping out some of the lender credits that were promised ). Finally two employees do deserve recognition for trying to do the right thing. XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX, should be commended for trying to be helpful throughout this process ( XXXX has been especially helpful ).

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