Consumer complaint received 2018-04-08
Product: Mortgage — FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: American Financial Resources, Inc. (TX)

This began in XX/XX/XXXX. My monthly payment has changed so many times I can't keep up. American Financial Resources and/or XXXX XXXX has not calculated my escrow correctly from the beginning of the mortgage process in XX/XX/XXXX. They tried to do a correction in XX/XX/XXXX and pulled about {$500.00} additional out of my account without notice! I stopped auto " pull '' from my account and set it to auto " push '' for the same amount of my previous payments. I tried to contact someone to find out what happened but the phone numbers they provide give the customer the run around in an effort to make you give up and just pay what they say to pay!!! The next month the push started and they did not get what they wanted and then the threatening phone calls started and well as the collection service letters!! 

When I finally got in touch with someone, which is extremely difficult with this company, they stated that they had mailed me a statement in XX/XX/XXXX, but I never received the notice and after about 6 weeks of calling and trying to figure this out, a representative told me that it was mailed out to my former address ( an address I hadn't lived at for 2 1/2 years )! I find it suspicious that they can mail me a debt collection notice to my current address, but sent this change notice to a previous address. 

In an effort to pay down the escrow deficit, I made 3 additional payments to be applied to the escrow account. They applied it to the principle and sent collection notices to me for unpaid mortgage payments for the next 3+ months. It took nearly 6 months of calling weekly if not more to get this straightened out and I never talked to the same person twice! I couldn't get answers and the reps that I spoke to had only partial information from previous calls. I had to go through the whole series of events with each representative. 

We finally ironed out the issue and they reversed the additional payments and applied them correctly to the escrow, fixing the problem, but they did keep the late fees that were NOT my fault!! Everything has been fine for about 6 months. But now they are saying that my payment is going down ... .how is this possible when I just received the tax appraisal for XXXX and my homes value has gone up and so has my property tax rate?? Again, I did not receive any notice prior to my normal monthly statement. 

Normally, one wouldn't complain about a payment going down, but I know that this company does not know how to manage escrow accounts and they will blame me for any mistakes they have made and months of threats and phone call run-arounds are just ahead. Not to mention the late fees they will charge my account and NOT retract after they acknowledge a mistake was made. 

I understand that payments will change slightly when property tax rates change and home 's appraised values change. What I have experience was a $ XXXX/month change with very little tax and appraised value changing. This has been ridiculous! I believe they tried to take advantage of a single woman. 

And now I am back to trying to contact someone about this recent change using their web site contact numbers. Good luck with that. Here we go again!! This is an unacceptable business practices! As a XXXX XXXX XXXX how can I promote lenders that are doing this to their customers? 

American Financial Resources, who will not talk with their customers, needs to insure correct calculations are made AND reevaluate their communication processes with their account holders. 
Not being able to talk to anyone who cares within that organization is frustrating. They redirect you to XXXX XXXX which is filled with misinformed and unprofessional representatives that place any concern squarely on the customer.