Countrywide Home Loans provides continued disappointment

Feb. 2, 2006

When our mortgage was sold to Countrywide Home Loans, we were happy to finally have a company that accepted online payments and offered bimonthly mortgage payments. This service would help ensure that our monthly payments were made on-time and would help our financial picture by not being such a huge payment all in one transaction. The contentment lasted only two months, before trouble began.

On December 8th, I enrolled for Countrywide's Payplan26, allowing bimonthly payments of our mortgage. I read all the online information provided. I was allowed to pick what day of the week this payment would occur, again a plus, however, Countrywide chose the date of the first withdrawal payment (Jan. 13th). I was instructed to make my December payment as usual, which was applied on Dec. 16th. I received email confirmation of my accepted enrollment and proceeded to plan my 2006 finances accordingly.

I received no further written or email correspondence from Countrywide regarding my payment plan, however, I was contacted by Countrywide Debt Services three times prior to January 13th stating that I was behind on payments. I conveyed the above information, however, the customer service reps were unable to do anything except note when I would make a payment. They instructed me to contact the customer service department.

Friday, January 13th came and went with no electronic withdrawal from my account. I tried contacting customer service, however, their hours are only Monday thru Friday 8 - 5pm. Due to Monday being a holiday, Countrywide was closed. Only automated service was available, which reflected no payments. Online information did not provide any other info. Tuesday, after a lengthy automated customer service call, I finally reached a customer service rep. She verified that I was indeed enrolled for this plan, but stated that I instructed them to hold the withdrawal. I stated that this was not correct and that I did not want to be charged late fees, since I had originally signed up in December. She noted no other reason as to why it did not go through, so she proceeded to process the payment. In addition, she verified the next withdrawal date would be January 27th.

Friday, January 27th came and went, again with no payment being processed. I repeated my attempt to contact customer service, with the same results as above. Monday, the 30th, I again went thru the lengthy automated system before contacting a real person. I was given the same response as before. That night I received another call from Debt Services wanting a payment. This gentleman instructed me to discuss this with customer service the next day.

February 1st I called the customer service line. I went through all the prompts and waited for a representative for over 45 minutes, then I started just pressing 0 in the hopes of getting transferred to a live person. Instead, I was disconnected. I called again and this time pressed 0 immediately, which gave me a live person who stated that she could not help me. I informed her of my previous hold time and experience and she said "call back and do not respond to the automated system, this will transfer you to a live person immediately". It worked! The rep apologized for my inconvenience and I began to explain my situation. This person couldn't figure out the problem, so she transferred me and I again had to explain everything. I was on the phone for almost 2 hours! At this point my cell phone charge was gone, so I asked them to call me back at work. No one called. Over an hour later, I called them back and spoke with the same rep. By this time I had completely lost my patience and demanded to speak with a supervisor. She took a few minutes to review my file and came back saying that the problem stemmed from not paying an additional payment in December. We reviewed everything and apparently I was supposed to have paid one month in advance to the January 13th withdrawal date.

The only compensation I could get was that the late fees and any negative credit reports would be taken off our account. She offered to keep my enrollment open if I could pay the missing payment, which of course I couldn't, so that was cancelled. She apologized for the "miscommunication", which in my opinion was over one month too late. I now have to redo my budget and other financial planning to compensate for this.

Questions:

if the problem was that easy to see for the supervisor, why couldn't any other reps see it?

why can I not find the 'one month in advance' item in the payplan agreement?

why would they have set the date for January if they knew I had to have additional payments in December?

why couldn't they accept responsibility and apply my payments to January (since they were in January)?

The best part is that during this situation, Countrywide's Insurance department has claimed that I did not give proof of homeowner's insurance, so they purchased it for me. I have called, faxed and mailed proof of insurance repeatedly, as has my insurance company. On the above mentioned February 1st call, Countrywide reps contacted my insurance co. while I was on hold and they apparently cleared everything up. Today, I received another letter and a request for me to reimburse Countrywide for the insurance. I called Countrywide insurance rep Richard, explained the situation and he was very uncooperative. So I called my insurance company, who made a conference call to Richard and she was able to get everything cleared up... again.