Consumer complaint received 2024-09-17
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — Escrow, taxes, or insurance
Company: TRUIST FINANCIAL CORPORATION (NM)

I have an existing mortgage with Truist ( account # XXXX ). 
My homeowners insurance was set to expire on the XXXX of XXXX, earlier this year. Back in early XXXX I got the letter of policy renewal from my insurance company, XXXX. Despite not ever having a claim in the 11+ years I've owned this home, they wanted to double my rate up to {$4000.00}. I immediately refused, and contacted both Truist and XXXX to inform them that I would absolutely not be renewing the policy, and that I'd find another source of insurance. XXXX and Truist both were told under no uncertain terms that a renewal was not authorized. 
Regardless, about a week later on XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX put in to be paid from my escrow account in the amount of {$4000.00} and Truist sent them those funds, again this being in spite of by informing both companies that this was absolutely not authorized to happen. 
Over the course of the next few weeks I was able to get the renewal with XXXX canceled, and my insurance agent was able to secure a new replacement policy with XXXX. On XX/XX/XXXX my new XXXX policy was in place at a cost of {$1700.00}. And by the XXXX of XXXX the {$4000.00} dollars had been fully returned to Truist and back into my escrow account. 
Given that the previous year 's homeowners policy was {$2000.00}, and with no other major changes in charges coming out of my escrow account, my monthly mortgage payment should have gone down slightly. However, my XXXX statement indicated that the payment due for XX/XX/XXXX had increased from {$2100.00} to {$2700.00}, an increase of nearly {$700.00}! 
Throughout the month of XXXX and through to the midpoint of XXXX, I made call after call after call after call. I spoke to well over a dozen people at Truist. Despite my doing all of the work to concel the {$4000.00} renewal with XXXX and replacing it with a {$1700.00} policy with XXXX, Truist didn't mark the {$4000.00} as canceled, no they listed it as an " additional pollicy/wind ''. They also confused my primary homeowners insurance as being an insurance policy as the policy for our guest house. The guest house has a policy on it that expires in XXXX, but somehow, they confused it with the main homeowners policy that expires in XXXX. 
As such, I was assessed an additional charge of over {$2600.00} as a bank-placed insurance policy for having no insurance at all. This went along with an imaginary " additional insurance/wind of {$4000.00}, AND they also included my XXXX policy for {$1700.00}. That is why my monthly payment increased by {$680.00}. 
I completely understand that someone could input the wrong figures into the system and that it could spit out the wrong payment amount. However, there is absolutely no excuse for my having to contact Truist a couple dozen times over the course of the summer to get this sorted out. There is no excuse for my calling Truist during normal business hours, ask for a supervisor, and then wait 30 minutes and have the person who answered my call not be able to get a supervisor on the line ( this happened in early XXXX during one of my many calls to Truist ). There is also no excuse for the behaviour of the man ( I didn't catch his name when I called about being given a bank-placed insurance charge of over {$2600.00} for homeowners insurance, but he had a northern style accident, as if he were from someplace like Minnesota or XXXX ) who upon my explaining that I did in fact have insurance that Truist paid it out of my escrow account, received a XXXX  page for it, had specifically confirmed they had it, AND had it updated upon my login to the online banking site, actually had the audacity to tell me that the CFPB mandated Truist sending that letter to me and having a policy of forcing Truist to send those disclosures. I told him that he should actually read the laws he was spouting off to me and update his understanding, because bank-placed insurance ( and the disclosures that go with it ) are for accounts that don't have mandated insurance policies in place. I told him my account is fully insured, has never lapsed, and Truist has acknowledged this, but falsely sent me the bill for $ XXXX. 
Despite all this, he again, very condescendingly I might add, completely ignored what I said and then repeated that CFPB mandated Truist sending me that bill. When I told him he was basically out of his mind, wasn't listening, and was being a condescending XXXX who needed to actually read the laws he was spouting off on, then demanded that I speak to a supervisor, he simply hung up on me. 
I acknowledge that it isn't nice to call someone an XXXX, but by this point I'd had it with with Truist and the months of endless headaches from endless incompetence. 
And it wasn't like this was the end of it! 
This was right around the XXXX of XXXX. I still had to call over and over and over again. In the end I spoke to more than a dozen more people! 
They all acknowledged all of mistakes I've described here. They acknowledged that the {$4000.00} policy renewal should not have ever been paid in the first place, and that it should never have been also clasified on my account as an " additional policy/wind ''. They acknowledged that my XXXX policy for {$1700.00} satisfied my policy requirements and should not have been tied to my guest house policy. And they certainly acknowledged that I should have never have been charged with bank-placed insurance for over {$2600.00}! 
But in the end it was 2 representatives I spoke to, XXXX and XXXX, who listened to my seeming endless tale of incompetence, said they would do something, and then called me back and communicated with me as they shepherded the process along and got my issue fixed and my payment finally corrected on the XXXX of XXXX ( my payment is now corrected to {$2000.00} ). 
Despite my issue being resolved, the incredible incompetence of Truist can not be understated. They screwed up over and over again. They didn't listen over and over and over again. They wasted hours and hours and hours of my life. 
And if they do that to me, then they are doing that to other consumers as well. 
In my opinion they should absolutely be fined, and whatever amount should go to a fund to assist homeowners like me, who don't happen to understand the ins and outs of banking and insurance as well as I do, to advocate against precisely these types of terrible business practices and incompetent abuses of their clients.