Consumer complaint received 2024-02-22 00:00:00
Product: Mortgage — Home equity loan or line of credit (HELOC)
Issue: Trouble during payment process — Trying to communicate with the company to fix an issue while managing or servicing your loan
Company: NEW YORK COMMUNITY BANCORP INC
State: WA

Complaint narrative:
I opened a HELOC account at Flagstar Mortgage ( all done electronically/remotely ) and the first time I tried to access the money ( XX/XX/XXXX ) I had all sorts of trouble. I spoke to probably 11 or 12 different people all of whom could not tell me HOW to do it. These people were in both the mortgage and online banking customer support depts. These people neither understood HOW to do it nor could they tell me WHY it wasn't working. Each time I spoke with someone in one of these departments, they continually wanted to transfer me to the other department, claiming I would get answers there. After several days and many, many hours on the phone, they said they had it fixed but they still had to manually move my money around for me ( forcing me to jump through all sorts of ridiculous 'hoops ' ) in order to get it. I even had to talk to their online tech support in order to electronically transfer more than XXXX a week from my account ... in the meantime, I had contractors calling me for their money. As I said, they said they had it resolved so that next time, it would work. Little did I know. 

Well, the NEXT TIME occurred yesterday, XX/XX/XXXX. Again I needed the money and this time it was for an emergency plumbing issue. I went online to transfer my money but couldn't because their website was down. So the next morning I checked and couldn't figure out HOW to get at my money. ( I work in IT so computer illiteracy is not my problem ). There was simply no mechanism for getting at my loan money. I called the Loan dept and spoke to two different people ( 2 different phone calls ), getting answers such as " you just transfer it '' or " I don't know exactly how it's done ''. In between the two phone calls, I tried transferring the money per their instructions but that only resulted in me transferring money out of an account that wanted to then charge me a fee. So now I had ANOTHER problem. I had only transferred {$10.00} because I really didn't trust their advice, but I still incurred a fee.

They told me to call the Bank
ing Customer Support to get my answers. But there were 29 people ahead of me! 

After a long hold, during which I got angrier and angrier, a very nice person answered and after I explained my situation, she wanted to transfer me to the loan dept to get help. I hit the roof. I was back in the XXXX cycle where they just wanted to transfer me to the other department who doesn't know anything either. But this rep stayed with me yet was unable to help because she either didn't have the access rights to do so or she couldn't determine how to fix things. She had to speak to several different people while I was on hold and these people, including her supervisor neither had the knowledge or the computer access to fix things, although they tried. They told me they could waive the fee from the {$10.00} transfer but weren't sure how to fix it, and once again, they didn't have the computer access rights to do so. 

Finally they told me they would look into things and call me back by XXXX XXXX ET ( I live in Washington State so it was XXXX XXXX my time ). No one ever called. 

I still don't have my money for my emergency plumbing issues. I have no hot water and no money to fix the issue because these people have no idea what's going on. AGAIN.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation