Consumer complaint received 2018-11-02
Product: Mortgage — FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: M&T BANK CORPORATION (GA)

On XX/XX/2017. Hurricane Irma came through Georgia and devastated my home and life. I immediately seeked assistance from my mortgage company as advised by my homeowners insurance, family and friends. They said, " We are here to help you '' and we have a " Disaster Assistance Program '' that will assist with deferring payment up to 90 days. After the 90 day period, I would have options ... Option # 1 Pay all back mortgage in full, Option # 2, Set up a payment plan to pay a little more every month until all back mortgage payments have been caught up, Option # 3, Do a Disaster modification reset, where they will basically work the back payments back into my entire loan and reset my mortgage payments to the current interest rate. In XXXX, I called to go over options again and decided to do a Disaster Modification. Before the deadline I also called to verify that everything was still on delay and that this would not affect my credit score. The reasons for these follow-up calls was for me to get clarification and confirmation, because I am a single mother - first time homeowner and I have worked tirelessly to rectify my credit and to keep a perfect credit standing with my mortgage company. I waited for the Modification documents to be sent to me for over a month and when I finally received them I immediately ( within a day ) sent them back via email. I all the while was receiving harassing calls from the collections department, threatening to Foreclose on my home. I also want to mention that I called several times within that month to check the status of modification documents being sent. It seemed as if one hand didn't know what the other hand was doing at M & T Bank. I guess I couldn't expect good communication to me, when they didn't even communicate within their own organization. Once I finally received the documents and sent them back for their review and Underwriting 's approval, that took a while too ( almost another month ). Now, I'm into XXXX and this is when I was told about something like a " Moratorium ''???? They said that it ended and I was not approved for the Disaster Modification, because my part of Georgia wasn't declared affected ... Now What? I was clearly upset and baffled, what do I do now? They told me my options, once again ... Option # 1 you can pay the back payments or Option # 2 apply for a regular Modification and they will send out new paperwork for this type of modification. I then asked to please explain the difference between these modifications ( they seemed to be the same ) Why didn't they send these documents the first time? They said that it just came out that my region of Georgia didn't get declared affected. At this point I did the same once again and returned the requested documents and forms back via email within a day. It took once again 2-3 weeks for me to get an answer. I called weekly just as before and no one could tell me anything, except that it was in underwriting. One day 3 weeks  later I received a package in the mail that stated I was approved and explained my new payments indefinitely. Unbeknownst to me, It also said that in the meantime my credit will now reflect negatively for the past due payments of three months. Meanwhile, during this whole fiasco I made double payments ( 2 ) times and I am only now a month in the rear. I have been clearly taken advantage of ... I kept calling specifying that I do not want my credit to be affected and will M & T report this negatively on my credit. They kept reassuring me that they are not reporting to the credit bureaus and now ALL at once there are 3 months of damaging entries on my credit and my score went down by 300 points. This is unacceptable and this whole experience has truly been a real DISASTER ... Before their proposition, my payments were never late and my credit was great. Everything is reflected in the notes on my M & T account. Now, I am back at square one with my credit being ruined and I feel misguided and taken advantage of by my Mortgage Company.