Consumer complaint received 2023-02-13
Product: Mortgage — VA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: CARRINGTON MORTGAGE SERVICES, LLC (IL)

In XXXX 2022 Carrington withdrew nearly {$500.00} over my payment amount. I never received any notice that my mortgage payment had increased by nearly {$500.00}. 
The loan is a VA loan and I had all of the paperwork for the exemption prior to them receiving the loan. My payment was {$820.00} but in XXXX I was charged {$1200.00} after they did an escrow analysis, which caused my account to be over drawn because I did not authorize that amount, and no one informed me that my payments were raising. This cost me a lot of money in overdraft fees. 
This was a mistake anyone who paid any attention to detail or had common sense would have caught or questioned why someone's payment would go from {$820.00} to {$1200.00}. 
I started calling the company in XXXX trying to get my mortgage payments back to normal ( dozens of hours on the phone, literally days worth ). Before XXXX I was paying {$820.00}, in XXXX I was charged {$1200.00}. When I called customer service to find out why they informed me that my escrow had a shortage due to taxes being paid. They were not supposed to make any tax payments for me, I had just bought the house 6 months prior and the previous owners owed taxes that could not be paid at the time because they were not figured out yet. I was going to pay them when I received the proper tax amount. 
I explained to them that I am tax exempt, and all of that paperwork had already been filed with the other mortgage company they had purchased the loan off of, and that is why I was paying {$820.00}. That made since to them and they would get it fixed immediately. I told them that I was not going to continue to pay the {$1200.00} but would continue with my original payment of {$820.00} and that I wanted any overages from my regular payments amount that was paid in XXXX ( {$1200.00} minus {$820.00} ) to be applied to my next payment. They said that would be no problem. So, I tried repeatedly to make the payments online, but their system would not accept them. So, I called in to make the payment. I went through the process of explaining all of this to them and they understood that I would have a credit of around {$470.00} so if I made a payment of {$350.00}, that would put me about where I needed be for the month of XXXX. They assured me that it would all be straightened out. But as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months, my escrow not corrected, and months later I am being told that they can not apply the overpayment to the next my XXXX payment. That I must now pay thousands more than I agreed to because someone didn't figure out that I was tax exempt, because they couldn't be bothered to call me to ask a simple question but would rather not do their job properly and put me through 6 months of torment. Every month I would called in to make a payment and get told that I can not make my {$820.00} payment but must make the full payment amount. I dont even remember the amount because it has been so ridiculous. 
I finally was able to speak with a manager who informed me to contact an office about the situation and that they would investigate it and correct it. 
XXXX should have been {$820.00} it was {$1200.00} and overage of {$470.00}. 
XXXX payment should have been {$820.00}, I paid {$350.00} toward that because I had the overage from XXXX of {$470.00} which brought that payment to {$820.00} XXXX I paid {$820.00}, which is what the payment is supposed to be. 
In XXXX I was not able to get anyone to accept my payment. They flat out refused payments. Multiple attempts were made, and hours of my time wasted trying to make payments. 
Also, during this process Carrington will not apply the funds to the account but were letting them sit in an unapplied funds account and was charging me late fees because of this, and has been erroneously reporting to the credit bureaus that I am not making payments! This is outrageous since I have spent countless hours TRYING to make the payments. They have also charged me late payment penalties. 
The only reason this happened was because they cut 3 checks for taxes which paid a year and a half taxes, THEN did an escrow analysis, took months to figure out that they messed up, and would not correct me past billing to reflect a {$820.00} payment. So every month I was " falling behind ''. 
So, if they never messed up and paid taxes they were not supposed to, applied my payments towards my mortgage when I made them, and corrected the amounts for the months that they were trying to fix this, none of this would have happened and I would be current with my mortgage. But instead they have refused to correct their mistakes, remove the late fees then do a proper escrow analysis and ruin my credit in the process.