Consumer complaint received 2020-05-06
Product: Mortgage — FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: CARRINGTON MORTGAGE SERVICES, LLC (FL)

I applied for mortgage forbearance due to COVID-19 under the CARES Act on XX/XX/20. At that time, I tried to cancel my upcoming automatic ACH payments but there was no option to do so, nor instruction on how to do that. I was able to alter the payment date to the XXXX of the month to give the application time to be reviewed. That alteration cancelled the upcoming payment for XX/XX/20 and changed the future date to the XXXX starting on XX/XX/20. I was approved on XX/XX/20 for an intitial 90-day forbearance, with the instructions I didn't need to do anything now. There was no instruction that I had to cancel my ACH payments. That wasn't listed in the approval letter I received, the approval email I received, or anywhere in my account, despite checking the selection stating " Click this box if you have AutoPay set up through Carrington that you would like to cancel. '' On XX/XX/20 Carrington automatically took my payment of {$2200.00}, without my knowledge of doing so. There is no reason for them to have done that, when I was requesting forbearance because I couldn't make my payments, and I had notified them I wanted my automatic payments cancelled. I just realized I was sent an email on XX/XX/XXXX, stating I needed to cancel my automatic payments, with the subject line " UPDATE : Your Request for Assistance ( COVID-19 ) ''. Nothing about what the purpose of the email entails. In the email, the reminder wasn't the first thing entered, it was simply the exact same wording as the first email I received with the following paragraph simply added to the middle- " BE ADVISED : If you have recurring payments, you will need to cancel the recurring payment to avoid having the payment processed. If you are currently enrolled in AutoPay through Carrington, please send your request ( and include your loan number ) via email to : XXXX to request a cancellation. If you have recurring payments set up through a different financial institution, you will need to cancel the automated draft through that financial institution. '' So that information and email address to cancel were seemingly created AFTER I had applied and was approved, without a direct notification of the change. Also keep in mind, had I not altered the automatic payment on the day I applied, they would have taken my XXXX payment BEFORE they notified me I had to cancel the payment on my own, but after they had approved the forbearance. I was also sent an email stating that I would still receive a monthly billing statement in the mail, but I did not have to pay. No mention in that of cancelling an automatic ACH payment in that either. There is also concern that Carrington 's policy is to hold partial payments in a separate account and not applied to the mortgage until the complete balance owed is paid. However, according to their statement, I owed 2 months of payments totaling {$4500.00}. When I asked for the refund, they said they couldn't give it because it was applied to my mortgage and would put it in default. That violates their own policy as stated on my statement. 

I have contacted them and have been told that they have changed their policy, without notification, to disallow refunds on all applied payments to accounts under forbearance, even if mistakenly done so. I was told this was because they couldn't process a refund that would put my account in default. But my account is in forbearance, it can't be in default, and it's already behind one payment, so this one doesn't affect that. On my first phone call I was told that their escalation team was the highest I could go to get a different decision, and that they didn't want to talk to me because that was their policy. I had to call back to get a representative that would send me to a supervisor. 

It's plainly clear that they have taken this course of action to get people to unknowingly make automatic payments, in order to mitigate the amount due in their accounts. The notification to cancel the payments is not given during the application process, in the forefront of any correspondence or information from them, whether it's on an account page on the website, emails, letters sent, or even their own webpage, either on their front page or in the section related to COVID-19. This is a significant part of the money I have to live off of until at least XXXX. It's not an inconsequential amount. Without it, I may have a hard time eating, let alone paying a mortgage.