Due to losing my job back in 1999, we lost our home. We had a home equity loan through CitiFinancial Mortgage, and we contacted them, explaining what was happening and telling them that we would continue paying our loan with them because we thought that was the right thing to do. So we continued making good on our payments. Our loan would have been finished in 2007 if we had continued making the regular payments. Last year we started to make extra payments so we could pay off our loan sooner.
We made our final payment a month ago (or so we thought), according to our statement. We just received a bill for 3 cents from CitiFinancial and thought it was funny, so we called them up and asked, "Do we really have to pay 3 cents?" We were told, "That is the principal amount, and in fact you still owe $1400.00 for other fees." "What fees?" I asked. "Well, we started foreclosure proceedings back in 2003, and those are for the legal fees." We never received any information telling us about those fees, and they never appeared on our statements.
I asked them why we weren't notified or sent a letter explaining the charges, and why they weren't appearing on our statements. They couldn't or wouldn't answer my question, only saying that we still owe that amount.
Only after I told them I was going to contact my lawyer and the Federal Trade Commission did they say we could dispute these charges and would be sent a statement within 10 days. What a load of nonsense. How can they charge us and not explain why? Why charge us anything? We continued paying them, and they received what was owed to them. I also have a sneaky feeling that when our home was turned over to the bank (the original mortgage company), they were paid off by the sale of the house because they had a lien on the house. I need to find out if, in fact, they received anything from the sale and continued collecting our payments. Does anyone know how I can find this out?
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