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So I took this phone call from a customer yesterday. I maybe didn’t handle it as well as I could have, but he started yelling at me from almost the beginning of the call. This is the conversation as best as I can remember it.
SC: Why isn’t my mortgage balance lower than it is? It was down to $7000 at one point, so why is it $11,000 now?
Me: It was never as low as $7000. I don’t know where you’re getting that from. Also, you’ve had many late payments for which you were charged late fees, which makes it more difficult to bring down the balance. You’ve even been close to foreclosure a couple of times.
SC: I’ve never been late! And I’ve certainly never been close to foreclosure! [I looked later. We sent pre-foreclosure letters at least twice, with the most recent in 2015.]
Me: Maybe I'm mis-remembering. I don't have your loan file in front of me.
SC: I want to see the records of my payment history.
Me: We might not have it all, since your loan has been renewed twice when it ballooned, and we don’t always keep the old loan information if it’s been paid off more than 6 years.
SC: Well, in my work, we have to keep everything 15 years!
Me: We don’t.
SC: Well, we do.
Me: We don’t, but I’ll try to find what I can and make a copy for you.
SC: What if you don’t have it? Who do I go to to get it?
Me:
Nobody. If we don’t have it, it’s been destroyed. It doesn’t exist. But I’ll see what I can find and I’ll make a copy for you if we have it.
Around this time, he hung up. I went and found his old loan file, which surprisingly did have the payment history back to when he and his wife bought the house in 2006. In addition to almost constant late charges, they didn’t have insurance on the house after the first year, so we’ve advanced on the loan almost every year for force-placed insurance premiums.
SC called our main branch and talked to the Senior Lender. After she got off the phone with him, she called me. I kind of apologized, saying that I could have handled it better, but that all the information I gave him was correct. I also told her about the force-placed insurance premiums (the last one was in May). I said I was mailing SC a copy of the full loan history, so he could see exactly what his balance was over the full course of the loan.
She didn’t seem too upset with me, for which I’m relieved. She said she would call SC back. I hadn't heard anything back, so I thought everything went ok. But I heard through our branch manager that she was on the phone with him for over an hour, and he was still very upset. She asked for his loan files so that she could figure out what documents to mail to him (copies of collection letters and force-placed insurance letters, I assume).
Some more background:
I recall that SC came to the area looking for work. Jobs weren’t as plentiful as he’d been told, so he and his wife moved back to Florida to live with with his parents. He didn’t give us a forwarding address then, nor when he moved again. Payments were sporadic, and that was the first time we sent a pre-foreclosure letter. For a short time, they rented out the house to cover the loan payments. They still weren’t able to get insurance.
Eventually, they moved back into the house. He got a job as an electrician; she started working in the hospital cafeteria. They continued to have frequent late payments until about a year ago, when she came in and made a year’s worth of payments (with their tax refund, as I recall). So they’re paid up until March, but there’s a huge chunk of interest sitting there because they haven’t been making any payments. Their next 4 payments will go entirely to interest because of that.
He’s made the claim before that the loan was down to $7000 at some point. He never says when. But if they’d made their payments on time and had bought their own homeowners insurance, their loan balance would be under $7000 now.
Cause and effect, do you understand it?
SC: Why isn’t my mortgage balance lower than it is? It was down to $7000 at one point, so why is it $11,000 now?
Me: It was never as low as $7000. I don’t know where you’re getting that from. Also, you’ve had many late payments for which you were charged late fees, which makes it more difficult to bring down the balance. You’ve even been close to foreclosure a couple of times.
SC: I’ve never been late! And I’ve certainly never been close to foreclosure! [I looked later. We sent pre-foreclosure letters at least twice, with the most recent in 2015.]
Me: Maybe I'm mis-remembering. I don't have your loan file in front of me.
SC: I want to see the records of my payment history.
Me: We might not have it all, since your loan has been renewed twice when it ballooned, and we don’t always keep the old loan information if it’s been paid off more than 6 years.
SC: Well, in my work, we have to keep everything 15 years!
Me: We don’t.
SC: Well, we do.
Me: We don’t, but I’ll try to find what I can and make a copy for you.
SC: What if you don’t have it? Who do I go to to get it?
Me:
Nobody. If we don’t have it, it’s been destroyed. It doesn’t exist. But I’ll see what I can find and I’ll make a copy for you if we have it.Around this time, he hung up. I went and found his old loan file, which surprisingly did have the payment history back to when he and his wife bought the house in 2006. In addition to almost constant late charges, they didn’t have insurance on the house after the first year, so we’ve advanced on the loan almost every year for force-placed insurance premiums.
SC called our main branch and talked to the Senior Lender. After she got off the phone with him, she called me. I kind of apologized, saying that I could have handled it better, but that all the information I gave him was correct. I also told her about the force-placed insurance premiums (the last one was in May). I said I was mailing SC a copy of the full loan history, so he could see exactly what his balance was over the full course of the loan.
She didn’t seem too upset with me, for which I’m relieved. She said she would call SC back. I hadn't heard anything back, so I thought everything went ok. But I heard through our branch manager that she was on the phone with him for over an hour, and he was still very upset. She asked for his loan files so that she could figure out what documents to mail to him (copies of collection letters and force-placed insurance letters, I assume).
Some more background:
I recall that SC came to the area looking for work. Jobs weren’t as plentiful as he’d been told, so he and his wife moved back to Florida to live with with his parents. He didn’t give us a forwarding address then, nor when he moved again. Payments were sporadic, and that was the first time we sent a pre-foreclosure letter. For a short time, they rented out the house to cover the loan payments. They still weren’t able to get insurance.
Eventually, they moved back into the house. He got a job as an electrician; she started working in the hospital cafeteria. They continued to have frequent late payments until about a year ago, when she came in and made a year’s worth of payments (with their tax refund, as I recall). So they’re paid up until March, but there’s a huge chunk of interest sitting there because they haven’t been making any payments. Their next 4 payments will go entirely to interest because of that.
He’s made the claim before that the loan was down to $7000 at some point. He never says when. But if they’d made their payments on time and had bought their own homeowners insurance, their loan balance would be under $7000 now.
Cause and effect, do you understand it?
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