Consumer complaint received 2024-10-21 00:00:00
Product: Mortgage — VA mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — Payment process
Company: Freedom Mortgage Company
State: AZ

Complaint narrative:
Freedom Mortgage owns my assumed XXXX loan. I have spent dozens of hours dealing with their customer service in different ways to include phone and email. I have made it to some level of American based, supervisor -level Customer Service a couple of those times. Getting there is not easy and takes a long time on hold and three or four phone transfers each time I want to service my loan. 

My main problem is not having access to my online account to see its status, manipulate my loan payment days, its amount and frequency. I have been trying for the last 11 months to figure out why my first payment every month is not applied to my loan in any way until the second payment comes in. Approximately two months ago, I thought I solved this problem with the American supervisor-level customer service, only to find on my monthly statements that its not. 

I overpay my mortgage every month but the first payment is effectively held hostage for two weeks of every month. They are taking my money and not giving me interest or applying it to the loan! The whole point of paying early is to pay off my loan by paying off interest sooner. They call this bi-monthly payments and after talking with their supervisor this time, and being very frustrated and inquisitive, I found out that what Im trying to do is called bi-weekly payments. This information was not obvious on signing up for my loan payment options, and my frustration with this problem should be documented through their customer service experiences in the last year. But most importantly, finding that answer was not forthcoming until I became irate with frustration on the phone with the latest supervisor ( it wasnt her fault, its on the company ). 

In order to change this now, I have to go print a form, sign, and mail it. Before I got to her, they would only snail-mail it to me! Each of these options will delay my changes even further and disadvantages me from everyone else who has an online account, yet again. 

Freedom Mortgage will not give me any level of management or the IT department who is supposed to be the area taking care of whatever documents are in my account that need to be deleted ( from prior owner of my assumed loan ), so that I can have access to my online account. They provide zero ETA, zero solution, zero care and no way to contact IT. What they explain to me as being the problem shouldve been fixed in five minutes and in the first week of my loan ownership. 

Every step of the way with this company, since I made the offer on my house and initiated the assumption of this loan, has been painstaking. 100 days to close, unhelpful and mostly foreign customer service and zero care. I wouldnt have come to make this complaint if they made a decent effort and didnt stonewall me. Its seemingly taking advantage of XXXX loan customers.

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