My wife and I refinanced our house in 2006 through Countrywide Mortgage. The Person in charge of our refinance began the entire process by asking me how much we thought we could pay a month. I told her we were looking to pay about $1500 a month. She promised she could do the mortgage for us and stay below that. She did too, by about $30.00.
The week after Christmas of 2007 I opened my mortgage statement and discovered that Countrywide was raising my payment by an additional $350 to $ 400 a month. I thought this was odd because we had a 30 year fixed rate. I called to question this and was told that our taxes had been raised. I disputed this as we had been reassessed the January before, but the woman continued to insist that our taxes had gone up.in addition to that she explained to me that Countrywide was adding an additional fee to create a "buffer" zone should out taxes increase again. I put her on hold and called our tax office and confirmed that our taxes had not changed. The man at the Tax office agreed to a conference call and I put her back on the phone and he told her the same. She asked me to wait while she "investigated" the matter further. I went through several more people before it was finally explained that there had been an "error" and my escrow account had been shorted every month since the refinance, so they were trying to recover that money as well as the shortage for the coming year. I questioned how it could be that the loan originator could have made this mistake when she had the same tax info as we did. Then it dawned on me that by shorting the escrow account Countrywide had gotten the loan because it came in at the amount I said I could pay a month. I questioned the woman about this and she got a little nervous. When I told her I would not pay a penny more than the escrow shortage it turned out that it was $87.00 a month. When I questioned why they were trying to charge me an additional $400 a month she had no answer.
On January 10th of 2008 I called Countrywide to question why the interest rate on my HELOC had not gone down when everyone else I knew had seen theirs go down. The Man on the phone told me that it was due to go down in February, I said fine. He asked if their was anything else he could do for me and I asked if it was possible to change the due date on my HELOC to match my Mortgage due date (Heloc was due on the 20th, Mortgage on the 1st). He told me that it could not be done and I said ok and the call ended. Two days later I received a letter dated January 3rd telling me that my HELOC was suspended because I was delinquent. When I called I discovered that my payment had posted on the 21st of December and because it was a day late they had canceled my HELOC. I told them this was a posting error, they still insist it was not and will not reinstate it. I think its interesting that this posting "non-error" happened on or around the day I had that first call about them raising my mortgage.
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