Consumer complaint received 2020-11-01
Product: Mortgage — FHA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: Statebridge Company (GA)

I have just finished the pre-licensing course through for obtaining my XXXX license. This situation will not require much interpretation. It is basically direct, verbatim, failure to abide by Regulation X of the Dodd Frank Act, more specifically section 6. I did not receive a notice of delinquency ( the delinquency is inaccurate and I will provide absolutely overwhelming evidence that it is - legally I should have still received a notice within 36 days ), a notice of receipt of inquiry and I did not receive anything showing that there was even an attempt to gather information to investigate my claim. If you're able to get a hold of them ( you're the CFPB - I think you will be able to get their attention ) they are absolutely unqualified to be operating in a mortgage servicing capacity. They know nothing about the Regulations, at one point I had a gentleman refuse to give me his last name - I ended up getting his last name from a email he sent to my wife weeks later - and he told me that the reason for the 60-89 day late marks on my credit " was because it was an accumulation of the months that I was a few days late, and that all of those instances added up to 60+ days late ''. They never showed my initial payment to them, my loan was sold to them I believe 23 days after consummation and the first payment was due XXXX. I have evidence of attempts to get this resolved on multiple occasions and have received nothing but rolled eyes and shrugged shoulders. Please contact me anytime at XXXX. The following is the last communication that I had with XXXX XXXX XXXX the contact at Statebridge via email ( wait times on the phone have reached 150 minutes + ) please excuse my tone in this email, I have never been a party to something so imbecilic. : ( Sent from me XXXX XXXX XXXX - XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX ) " XXXX , to be honest I never thought I would hear from Statebridge again, and I certainly did not expect to hear from you specifically. The reason I say that is considering you were the first person I had an actual conversation with when I first discovered this fiasco and it didn't go well because it did not seem as if you had an understanding of the concept. 



I also see now that you are able to contact my wife, although each time she attempted to contact your company, they insisted she was not authorized to discuss the account because she was " not on the loan ''. 



It has taken nearly a year for Statebridge to correct that discrepancy, which is just one of many. 



It appears that any communication is thwarted and discouraged, evidenced by your refusal to even provide me with your last name on a previous call ( although I see its reflected in your email signature below ). 



After our initial call it took many days of getting no response from your company before I decided to contact the original lender. After that, over a week ( received a call early morning XXXX ) to get the call from XXXX - did not get a last name- who assured me that communication would never be an issue with him and that he was in the process of going through my file with great detail and would " call you after my lunch break or at the latest mid afternoon ''. That was our last correspondence as of the time this email is sent - almost three weeks. Then only my wife gets an email from you - with the same false information as when we first spoke on the phone, around a month after our initial call. 



I am in the process of refinancing my home mortgage and have discovered that Statebridge is erroneously reporting my payment history as being late to the credit bureaus. This is a violation of my consumer rights under countless laws and regulations, specifically Regulation V, and Im hopeful we can resolve so that I will not have to submit a complaint to the CFPB. As a direct result of what I can only determine as intentional malice ( evidence by such statements you made on our call such as Statebridge is combining any late days over the course of the months Ive paid and reporting them as 30 days late ). 



According to your email and our conversation over the phone the 60-89 day late on my credit somehow correlates to the 16 day grace period for late charges. I have obtained evidence from the original lender that sold the loan to Statebridge that my initial payment was received on XX/XX/XXXX and according to the lender, immediately forwarded to your company to start the onboarding. 



It seems your onboarding / servicing process leaves much to be desired. And, thats fine except that the remedy you have for it is to falsely report to credit bureaus the lateness is on the part of the consumer. 



The first due date of the statement is XXXX, on your statement it shows that you did not receive the check whatsoever. Again, we have evidence from bank account statements, pay history from the originating lender, check stub and the recent statement from that lender that payment was sent to you on XX/XX/XXXX. 
The second due date was XXXX which not only did we get charged for the XXXX payment, but you also told my wife over the phone ( which contradicts what you later told her in XXXX that you couldn't speak with her because she was not on the loan ) that you did not have the check from the XXXX payment. 
After my wife insisted that the check was sent and deposited ( please see attached bank statements, a copy of the canceled check cashed XXXX, and confirmation from the direct lender that consummated the mortgage ) you told her to just pay the XXXX payment again with the XXXX Payment and that if you came across the lost check you would credit the amount to the next payment. 

Upon discovering this information that your company is losing checks after cashing them and not keeping track in your records, that WE HAD NO CHOICE but to pay the fee to pay online, because even though there was a " convenience fee '' we decided to consider it an " insurance fee ''. Insurance that our payment would be received, recorded and we could move on - if only we knew that the lost check in XXXX was foreshadowing for what was in store for us. 

The next due date would have been XXXX. We assumed that our additional payment in XXXX would have been credited to the XXXX amount not so. It was not credited at all. Our bank statements showed 3 payments coming out, and only 3 payments have been due. 


Next we have the XXXX due date where XXXX had gone online to pay the bill that way, only to find out ... the website is having technical issues and would not allow her to pay. After calling and calling and calling we attempted emailing ( see attached evidence ), however even those attempts received no response. 
At first I was frustrated with XXXX saying that she needs to stay on hold and put effort into getting into contact, but later I found out that not only was there an insane wait time, but when I called the hold time INCREASED! For example, I was determined to get a hold of someone to pay our bill so I set my phone to speaker as I worked. At first it said the wait time was 7 minutes, NOT BAD! A few minutes later ... the automated voice said a 38 minute wait time ... ... I was shocked to hear that the wait time was increasing. In my determination to get the issue resolved, I pressed on " I can wait 38 minutes I suppose, hopefully nothing comes up and I don't need to drive anywhere. I'm not fabricating this next part, not 5 minutes later the automated voice came on again, this time with a wait time OF 117 MINUTES!!!! The first thing I did after hearing this was apologize to my wife for doubting her good faith effort to get this done. 

For XXXX due date, by some miracle my wife was able to get on the phone with someone at your company. When she spoke to them, she spoke with outrage about what had transpired. To that, your company told my wife that they would not speak with her because she is not on the loan. They did tell her to go online and try again to pay, and it did work that time. 
The XXXX payment was paid past the grace period but not 30 days late. 
The payments since have all been within the grace period and WELL WITHIN the 30 days needed to report a late on one 's credit.

NOT ONE OF OUR payments has been 30 days late reporting it as such is falsely reporting to the credit bureaus. Your statement is so erroneous, full of invalid late charges its not clear if you ever correctly applied the check you found from XXXX. 



XXXX, when I spoke to you on the phone I had to wait for over 50 minutes to speak to a person. When I called you and decided I was going to record how long it took me to get a hold of someone, if I was even going to be able to do so, I did because that is when I found out that it has been reported on my credit report as a 60-89 day late. 



When I spoke to you on the phone, you told me I had to send you documents to prove that your company is incorrect. 



I have paid your company {$400.00} according to the totals on your statement. {$84.00} of that went to principle. {$280.00} went to interest. Thats According to your statement you just sent me. 



Based on my calculations of the same statements the charges add up to {$440.00}. Those are the same charges that are itemized that your statement is totaling {$400.00} including the one waived late fee, the 7 " late fees '' the 11 monthly payments and somehow 12 {$5.00} " convenience fees '' that we were bullied into paying because of your company losing our other payments. Yet based on the calculations of the statement, my bank account is adding up to {$450.00} taken out from your company. 



Does Statebridge just charge whatever they want? 



Does your company treat all consumers like this? This is affecting my credit score by approximately 62 POINTS according to my loan officer and is the difference between my family being able to refinance our home. It is also the difference between me getting employed as a Mortgage Loan Officer I take the test in less than two weeks. 



Statebridge has compromised my financial integrity and has caused us to already go through hardships when all we have done is what we legally agreed to, or put our best effort possible to do so. It is now more difficult than ever for me to gain employment in my new career, humiliating when someone does see my credit, like when it was pulled to refinance my home. It is keeping me from getting certain licensing. Lastly it is now IMPOSSIBLE to improve my quality of life by refinancing into a better, more equitable mortgage by refinancing. See attached credit score with the What-If Simulator showing how my score would improve if I did not have the utterly false late delinquency on my financial record. 



What are YOU going to do to fix this? HOW is Statebridge going to make it right for me and my family? I need resolution now. 



Additionally I think that you are giving the Mortgage Company, XXXX XXXX XXXX, a bad image and potentially tainting their name - unbeknownst to them -, if you treat all of the borrowers that they get your company to service this way. Who do you think they are going to correlate the experience they receive from you with? 



My guess is the person or entity they purchased the product from, and I doubt they would go back to the person that sold them this mess of what should be a professional agreement. 



I have almost never had to have this tone in my life, I can count how many times I have had to be this aggressive on one hand. The only other time I have had to was in actual legitimate fear for losing my life, and when my family has been immensely wronged. I have been silent for weeks upon weeks hoping and praying that the individuals in your company and individuals that represent your company would have the integrity to do right by me and my family. I have waited to no avail. In our phone call - the first time I ( a consumer and once potential customer ) had ever spoken to anyone working for or representing your company, specifically you XXXX, I was greatly disrespected and have never been talked down to in such a manner in my entire life. I feel like what is at stake here is not just the headache of an inconvenience, but the future of my young family 's livelihood and future. ''