Consumer complaint received 2018-04-12
Product: Mortgage — FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company (WA)

Hello, I have a 30 year fixed rate FHA loan that was initiated in XX/XX/XXXX at 3.75 %. The loan is held by Freedom Mortgage and they have tried repeatedly to get me to refinance to a higher interest loan. The next year I bought another property to live in and started renting out the home with the FHA mortgage. Often the renters are late in paying, and in XX/XX/XXXX I had helped my son and his family move to their new duty station at XXXX XXXX. Between the two I was very late sending in the XX/XX/XXXXpayment. It was sent by my regular bank on XX/XX/XXXX and should have been received by XX/XX/XXXX. I have used this service since XX/XX/XXXXwith no issues, I thought. My regular payment is now {$1400.00} after an increase in taxes and insurance costs. I sent in {$1500.00} to cover the {$56.00} late fee I owed by that time. 
In XX/XX/XXXX I started receiving notices that I was over 30 days delinquent on the account. I called Freedom Mortgage to find out if they had just applied the check or had credited the check to another account by mistake. They couldn't tell me where it was and I contacted my bank to find out what their system said. It hadn't been cashed as of XX/XX/XXXX. I called Freedom Mortgage, told them I was stopping payment on the check and would pay for XX/XX/XXXXand XX/XX/XXXX as soon as my bank had the last check back in my account. On XX/XX/XXXX I scheduled payment through Freedom Mortgage 's system for the next day for {$3000.00} to cover XX/XX/XXXX late fee and the XX/XX/XXXX payment with a little extra principle thrown in. Freedom Mortgage has a note on their bills that states payments made after the XX/XX/XXXX have late fees of {$56.00} added to the bill. They applied the {$1500.00} from the stopped check on XX/XX/XXXX, miraculously finding it after I told them I was blocking it. They pulled {$1600.00} back out on XX/XX/XXXX then put {$160.00} in again ... except their system doesn't tell me where the {$160.00} went, and they charged me a late fee for XXXX. 
Now I have a {$20.00} fee for the stop payment that Freedom Mortgage representatives told me would not be assessed, {$160.00} I have no idea where it went, and two months of late fees pulled out of the payment made on XX/XX/XXXX. I have looked back at my bank 's records for how long they're taking to credit my payments and it looks like it averages a week, sometimes longer. Freedom Mortgage shows that almost all of the extra money I have sent has been used for " late '' fees even for those months where I can show they received their money before the XX/XX/XXXX. It seems to be a pattern where they hold on to the checks that extra bit of time so they can charge a late fee. The XXXX payment has been made ( through Freedom Mortgage 's payment system ) and I have {$110.00} for late fees charged to it ( I sent in {$1600.00} for the extra principle ), in addition to the {$110.00} charged to the XX/XX/XXXX/XX/XX/XXXX payments. For some reason they broke up the extra principle into a {$160.00} payment and a {$49.00} payment, maybe to confuse the theft of {$160.00} in XX/XX/XXXX.