I have been dealing with Citibank for years now, with continual problems, runarounds, excuses and just plain lies. When you try to get the truth out of them on the phone after they have continually screwed up your account in every conceivable way, it is criminal, and for someone to come on here and try to defend them is even more ridiculous. Obviously their mortgage is not with Citibank.
By the way, I pay my mortgage three months in advance to protect myself from them trying in some way to foreclose on my property. It has shot up tremendously in the past 5 years and is worth 4 times or more than what I owe them, and they would love to take it back any way they can.
I think that is where most people's problems come in. One of my problems was that they allowed someone who was not on my mortgage, and who had nothing to do with any type of ownership of my home, to go in and change my personal information and where my billing statements were sent.
So I did not receive them for three months before I started paying three months in advance, which I do now. They then allowed this person to change my mortgage payments to the repayment program, which raised my payments to a ridiculous amount. All this time I was at another address and out of town. When I came back into town, wondering what was going on with my payments, I found that I had given CitiMortgage the address I was at but never received more than a statement or two from them, then nothing.
I went to Miami for a wedding, came back, and there was a letter in my mail telling me I had not been keeping my agreement. I called them and said, "What agreement?" The repayment plan to catch up on my mortgage. I said I never talked to anyone about this or agreed to this, and that they shouldn't be talking to anyone else about my mortgage either.
They said they were given authorization to change this, and I said, "Not by me." So they checked their records and notes and discovered they had allowed my account to be changed by someone who had nothing to do with my mortgage, just anyone off the street.
By then it was 3 months behind, so I borrowed money. I told them they had better restore my account to the way it was. They agreed and also sent a letter to the credit bureaus to repair my credit.
After many, many calls and talks with supervisors who told me "we will take care of it," only to have it remain the same, and numerous calls later, being transferred all over the country and disconnected, it was finally straightened out.
All the time they were threatening to take my house from me. For the past three years I received no escrow check at the end of the year, until this year, when I got $884.00 back. Then a lady said it was just about the same amount I got back last year. I said, "Lady, I never got a check last year or the year before." She said it was cashed. I said, "Not by me, nor did you send me one." They checked and informed me I did not receive a check because it basically balanced out.
Sure. So they sent my checks over the last few years to God only knows where, and they cashed them. This year I sent my check back, as they raised my payment after sending me $884.00 back and saying they needed more. I said, "Why? I overpaid $884.00 last year, and you are telling me you are sending that back and raising my payment because I'm not paying enough." So I said I wanted to send an additional $1,500.00 to escrow to lower my payment.
They said I could not do that, and I argued for a good hour, asking for a supervisor. Finally I got one who said sure, I could do that, told me how much I would be paying and where to send the check. Then I got a letter saying it was not enough to lower the payment to the amount the supervisor said it would be, and that my payment would be higher. It sounds like the blind leading the blind down there. As I said, I pay my payments three months ahead. When I send my payments in, I write on the coupon in the correct blanks for extra payments and spell it out next to each month.
I also enclose a handwritten note explaining how much the check is for and which months' payments it is for, so even a child could understand it. Still, they will sometimes credit one month to the payment and two to the principal, or two months to payments and one to principal, or apparently whatever they feel like doing with my money, other than what they are instructed to do with it.
Either they are extremely stupid down there or just plain not competent. When I talk to them on the phone, their favorite thing to do is deny responsibility or shift the blame to you. I was told today, "It is your responsibility to make sure we don't make mistakes on your account, that's why we send you statements."
I said, "You have to be kidding. How many people did that note and coupon go through, and a printed statement made and sent to me, and it is still wrong?" Not once, not twice, but more than 3 times now in the last six months.
Tonight I asked who regulates your bank, who holds you accountable for mistakes. I was told, "I can't tell you that, so I'll just get you a supervisor." I said no, I want to know who I can talk to that regulates you. I have already talked to plenty of your supervisors and do not want to talk to them. They said that is who I was going to talk to and promptly hung up on me. In the past year there have been so many mistakes made on my account that you would think they were on purpose, since they all benefited CitiMortgage.
Money-wise, none were in my favor. I do believe the proper terms are crooks, flim-flam or just plain shakedown. Think about it: all of us are having problems with them, and from the looks of things it all seems to favor CitiMortgage. I had about 3 other mortgage companies before this miserable excuse for one bought my mortgage and never had any problems like this before. Nothing! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. We just need the people in our government to get off their backsides and investigate them. I am going to send my senator and congressman letters and copies of paperwork, along with any federal government bank-regulating agencies I can. I am also looking into the legalities of suing them for allowing someone access to my mortgage account.
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