Consumer complaint received 2024-03-25
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — Escrow, taxes, or insurance
Company: Specialized Loan Servicing Holdings LLC (CA)

We believe our mortgage lender, Specialized Loan Servicing ( SLS ), to be in violation of the terms of our mortgage contract. 
In our decades of owning multiple properties, we have never had a problem of this kind with a lender. 
For reference, we are providing documentation both of our recent payment history ( XXXX ) and the transaction journal for our account, provided to us by SLS ( SLS-transactionlog1 & 2 ). 
Our loan was sold to SLS in XXXX. 
We have always paid our mortgage in full and on time, automatically through XXXX XXXX at our bank. 
For insurance, we maintain an umbrella policy that covers all our properties, both business and residential. This policy has been provided multiple times to SLS. 
Looking at the transaction journal ( SLS-transactionlog1 & 2 ) we can see that SLS has a habit of purchasing Lender Placed Insurance ( LPI ) and holding it in escrow, with little to no notification to us until after they have done so. We can see this pattern beginning in XX/XX/XXXX. This repeats with regularity again in XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX. In each case SLS places LPI, notifies us, we provide documentation, then SLS reverses & clears our account. Again, we pay this mortgage automatically on time, and any late charges posted by SLS were also acknowledged to be in error and reversed. 
In XX/XX/XXXX we were notified once again that SLS had placed LPI on our account. We contacted SLS immediately, and made multiple good faith attempts to again provide SLS with our proof of insurance. They claimed not to have received it until XX/XX/XXXX ( CorrespondeceLog ) In XX/XX/XXXX, we received a letter wherein SLS finally acknowledged We havereceived information to indicate that you had already paid ( insurance ) and the advance ( escrow ) was not needed ( XXXX ) They also sent a check for reverse forced escrow in the amount of {$69.00}. This check has not and will not be cashed, because it was not owed - we did not pay for the LPI or any amount over the regular timely mortgage payments. 
The transaction journal provided by SLS shows that by XX/XX/XXXX all escrow amounts had been reversed, as had the single late charge up to that point. 
Thats where all of this should have ended. 

However, between XX/XX/XXXX XX/XX/XXXX and forward, there are dozens of postings and reversals of the original escrow total ( {$300.00} ) and multiple late charges both posted and reversed. 
To this day SLS is posting late fees on top of late fees, claiming that our account is consistently late despite our consistent, automatic payment. 
We contacted SLS customer service multiple times in XXXX, each time speaking to a different agent who assured us that late charges were in error and would be reversed. 
We have sent multiple letters to SLS, trying to clear our account. In XX/XX/XXXX, SLS sent a response letter ( SLSXXXX ) in which they state that the Lender Placed Insurancewas not in error. This directly contradicts their prior letter from XX/XX/XXXX ( noted above ), and more importantly, the text in our mortgage. 
Our mortgage states : If Borrower fails to maintain ( property insurance ), Lender may obtain insurance coverage ( XXXX ) At no point in time was there a lapse in our insurance coverage, and this fact is acknowledged by SLS. 
SLS is now claiming that we have been consistently late since XX/XX/XXXX due to not having paid the inflated mortgage total that included insurance we did not owe. ALL of the late charges have been posted after they acknowledge receipt of our insurance documents. 
Our latest Mortgage Payment Reminder Notice dated XX/XX/XXXX from SLS shows {$690.00} in late fees. 
It's not a lot of money. But it has been quite a lot of time and effort, and while we have an administrative office with resources to follow up on disputes like this one, we wonder if our account is the only one with this recurring problem and if there are other borrowers with fewer resources who just pay the fees out of frustration. This should not be legal.