Consumer complaint received 2017-03-15
Company: GATEWAY FIRST BANK
State: TX
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account

Complaint:
For the past six years, I have had a mortgage with Gateway Mortgage Group, Loan # XXXX. During my time with them, I have had several negative incidents occur which finally led to my decision to refinance with another company in order to drop them as my mortgage carrier. The refinance was completed this past XXXX and the loan with Gateway was paid off on XX/XX/2017. 

Among the incidents that led to this decision was their general lack of customer service especially when I asked them if there were any options available to help me get my monthly payments back on track due to a change in my employment, which led to me, being paid on a bi-weekly schedule instead of a monthly schedule. Because of this change, I no longer had the ability to make my payments within the XXXX grace period and usually ended up making it a few days after the XXXX of the month, which led to late fees being charged on a monthly basis. Their response to this request for help was that they did not know how to help me and stated that I should just continue making my payments late as long as the full monthly payment amount was paid before the end of the month. When asked about the late fees, they stated that I should not worry about those and that they will be " taken care of '' at the end of the loan. In addition, there were also issues with their escrow department, as they would continually raise my monthly payment each year due to their inability to properly calculate the amount needed for taxes and insurance for that year. 

Even so, I continued with the loan for a few more years until finally this year decided to refinance to a 15-year loan. Despite the on-going issues with customer service and escrow, I decided to give Gateway Mortgage another chance and asked them to handle the refinance for me. In doing so, they ended up costing me about 1 % in loan interest rates as they fully accepted a home appraisal, which was clearly known to them to be incorrect and undervalued. Even though I submitted proof to them that it was wrong, they refused to order a new appraisal so I canceled the loan. 

By this time, I decided that I no longer wanted to have them as my Mortgage lender, so I decided to refinance elsewhere. Toward the end of the refinance process, I contacted Gateway Customer service one last time via email and by phone to request if they could forgo the {$1300.00} in late fees as a sign of good will. Especially considering the fact that loan was going to be paid in full and that, the late fees were not a result of my carelessness but rather my change of employment. They responded by quoting the golden rule and stated that they did have the authority to remove the fees, but that they felt I was not worthy for them to do so. After this initial communication, I tried to plead me case a few more times via email, but all subsequent emails were ignored. 

Once the loan was to be paid off, both the title company and the loan processor handling my refinance informed me that they had received the final payoff notice from Gateway ( see attached ) and that they would be sending additional monies above the stated payoff amount only to cover any possible late fees for XXXX. They stated that if Gateway did not charge any late fees that I would be refunded the overage that was sent. After reviewing Gateway 's calculations, I noticed an error in that they charged {$100000.00} as the payoff and {$130.00} toward extra unknown fees ( see attached ). The payoff amount submitted to the title company and to the lender, by Gateway, stated a payoff amount of {$100000.00} ( which already included fees and interest ). The amount paid by the loan company for the payoff was {$100000.00}, which included the stated payoff amount from Gateway 's statement plus any possible late fees. This leaves {$220.00} unaccounted for, which I believe should be refunded back to me.

Company public response: Company believes it acted appropriately as authorized by contract or law
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation