Consumer complaint received 2022-04-06
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports — Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem — Their investigation did not fix an error on your report
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company (FL)

Freedom Mortgage incorrectly force placed flood insurance on my home and in the process depleted my escrow account. 
This prompted an increase in my monthly payment. I disputed the error to Freedom and they have since removed the insurance and refunded my escrow account the amount they took for the force placed insurance. 
After Freedom determined they would refund us and correct the escrow account, we were told by the phone payment system and by a Freedom representative that the minimum payment was {$3500.00} for XXXX 2022, which is what the payment was before they increased it with the escrow error. 
Because their automated system and an employee told us that we could make that payment because they were in the process of correcting the escrow account, we made that payment in XX/XX/2022 long before it was 30 days late. 
Until now we have never had a 30 day late payment on any bill including our mortgages and our credit was impeccable. 
With no correspondences, notices or phone calls, Freedom took our {$3500.00} payment, put it in an account and didn't tell us they didn't apply it to our payment. 

Freedom didnt tell us that we were about to get hit with a 30 day late because they had decided to not honor our payment because their record showed that the payment was {$140.00} more based on the force placed insurance. 

When the XXXX statement came, my wife noticed the money sitting in some weird account and not applied to our mortgage and we immediately called to find out what was going on. 
A freedom rep informed me that the automated line and the freedom employee may have been mistaken about the {$3500.00} payment and informed us to pay the extra {$140.00} immediately and Freedom would refund it once the correction is reflected in the escrow account. She told us that Freedom had not reported it to the credit bureaus and we were safe because we paid the extra {$140.00} with her on the phone.

Just as she stated, Freedom did refund the {$140.00} within a few days but they did report a 0 day late on our credit reports and dropped our scores from the high XXXX 's to XXXX. 

Remember, this all started from an error that they have since admitted and corrected. 
We tried to give them a chance to correct the error on our credit report but they refused. 

Our payment history and long standing accounts speak for themselves. Had Freedom 's system and employee given us the right information we would have certainly paid the extra {$140.00} and waited for a refund just like we did when they finally told us to do so. 
Consumers should be able to rely on information that they get from creditors as accurate, reliable and truthful. 
All of my numbers are rounded for simplicity but very close to actual. 

We believe that Freedom had a duty to notify us when they decided not to apply our payment especially since they instructed us.

At least, Freedom should prove that it is a fair business practice to have a minimum payment on their phone system ( which we use to make our payment ) and then refuse to apply that minimum payment once made. 
How is this a fair practice to customers that have a track record of paying their bills? 


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