Consumer complaint received 2017-05-31
Product: Payday loan, title loan, or personal loan — Installment loan
Issue: Charged fees or interest you didn't expect — 
Company: Home Loan Center, Inc. (VA)

-- Obtained {$7000.00} loan through Lending Tree/XXXX XXXX for XXXX work inXX/XX/XXXX ... XXXX referred us for loan and coordinated it. <P/>-- Loan specified 0 % interest, $ XXXX monthly payments due on XXXX of each month for 24 months -- We have made the {$290.00} payment every month from XX/XX/XXXX-XX/XX/XXXX via our XXXX XXXX online bill pay -- It came to our attention in XX/XX/XXXX that Lending Tree was citing a late payment inXX/XX/XXXX and late fees. We had no idea why and called Lending Tree, found out  that they received the payment of {$290.00} one day late on XX/XX/XXXX. ( We are not sure what happened to cause the late receipt since we specify payment delivery on the due date in our online bill pay ... .we can see that the payment was withdrawn from our checking account onXX/XX/XXXX but, for whatever reason, Lending Tree did not receive it untilXX/XX/XXXX. ) During that phone call, we were told that they would grant us a one time waiver for that late payment and a refund of the penalty fees ( {$37.00} ). We reset our online bill pay for automatic payments to arrive on the XXXX of month ( a day prior to due date so there would hopefully be no chance of future late payments. ) -- We continued to pay our {$290.00} payments every month thereafter, always on time ( or ahead of time ) -- We do not receive paper statements and we do n't check our online account status since we are not making additional purchases on the account and all our payments are arriving on time. So we were not aware of any issue until we noticed a XXXX XXXX notification that we owe {$310.00} to Lending Tree this month ( not sure why we got a XXXX XXXX notification by email this time and not other times, or maybe we had no specific reason to check those notifications if we were getting them ... .we knew payments were made each month and arriving on time so we assumed there was no reason to check into our account further. ) -- We contacted Lending Tree Customer Service on XX/XX/XXXX ( they make it almost impossible to reach a live person ... .you have to work through their menu options futilely and press 0 continuously, get disconnected, then try again, etc ). When we finally got through, we spoke to 3 different customer service representatives ... each time we went through our whole saga, we were met with an explanation that made no sense to us and a roadblock. So we kept asking for our query to be elevated to the next manager. The last two managers we spoke  with were XXXX, then XXXX. XXXX said that she was the end of the line and we could n't elevate our case any further. -- We learned that even though we only made one late payment ( one day late ) and the penalties were waived and the late payment was excused, that late payment caused the next payment to have a different minimum amount due. Mind you, every other payment we have made has been on time and for the installment loan amount of {$290.00}, yet we have now incurred {$130.00} in late fees, even though Lending Tree supposedly waived penalties from our one late payment. Their reasoning seems to be that the XXXX late payment caused our XXXX payment to go up by {$5.00} due to fees that for some reason were n't waived and it was n't explained to us that they would n't be waived as party of the whole late payment fee waiver ... .so we owed {$290.00} in XXXX and we paid {$290.00}. Since we did n't pay the new amount, we incurred more late fees and the same thing continued to happen every month thereafter. To the best of my understanding, part of the rationale for this happening is that we called onXX/XX/XXXX about the XXXX late payment and ourXX/XX/XXXX payment had already been made for the wrong amount by that time and was not the new minimum payment due. While it completely mystifies me how we can be told by customer service that repercussions from a late payment have been waived and yet there is still a new minimum payment amount caused by the late payment that is n't waived, both XXXX and XXXX were completely dug in that this was completely justifiable. And because they only allow for one waiver of late fees, their hands are now tied. They insist that all charges are legitimate and if our next payment is n't the minimum due of {$310.00} ( since they divide all late fees over 24 months ), we will incur yet another {$37.00} late fee. <P/>-- OnXX/XX/XXXX we sent an email to XXXX XXXX, CEO, Lending Tree ... although customer service refused to give me the CEO 's name or email address or mailing address or phone number, I managed to find an email address online and am hoping it 's right since the email has not been returned. Emails were sent to XXXX and XXXX. We have not yet gotten a response ( but it has not yet been 24 hours since the letter was sent ). I will also forward the letter to the complaint address provided by customer service : XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, OH XXXX ( since Lending Tree is in XXXX, I do n't have much faith that this Ohio address is someplace that will actually take any more positive action on our behalf ). And, based on our interaction with customer service so far, I do n't have much hope that anything further will be addressed. <P/>-- We feel completely robbed by Lending Tree. It appears that they use whatever means necessary to extract funds from customers in order for their 0 % loans to be profitable. The whole experience feels extremely shady, distasteful and hopefully illegal.