I recently had to deal with this shit from my mortgage handler. I wouldn’t do business with them if I could avoid it, but there’s nothing I can do. I have no say over who owns my debts.
They just wouldn’t endorse and return the check from insurance. No good reason for it, they just wouldn’t do it. They always needed more information.
Eventually I was just like look, the work has already been done for 6 months. My contractor is going to sue me if I don’t pay, and since you are the ones at fault for the delay, I’ll make sure you also get sued. I never consented to do business with you, and I wouldn’t. I do not trust any of you to be competent enough to do your jobs, and that’s pretty shit for such a big lender. This isn’t your house, and thus its structure and contents are none of your fucking business, the insurance check isn’t your money, thus you can’t hold it hostage for info that’s none of your fucking business, and if you don’t release it, well that’s on you, my contractor knows what’s going on.
Magically it only took a week after that to get it endorsed and returned. The sludge just somehow magically went away.
What did my mortgage company want that they were delaying so much? Information about my property that had nothing whatever to do with the insurance claim. Probably in the hopes that they could foreclose in the future. Because my house is worth a ton more than the debt they bough cost them.
This is also the company that wouldn’t allow me to refinance my mortgage to remove my co-signer and take out a bit extra to pay off debts… unless I wanted to take out more than the current value of the home (a loan I don’t remotely qualify for), and be upside down.
If you are in the US and are unfortunate enough to be stuck with freedom mortgage because your original lender sold you off to them, I’m sorry. If you are looking to get a mortgage, do your best to avoid them. Nothing you can ultimately do, though, as your consent to do business with them doesn’t matter and your only recourse is to refinance with another lender, or sell…
Insurance was it’s own little nightmare, and I’m also stuck there because my house is too old to be covered by most insurance providers (around 140 years old now; most insurance won’t cover anything beyond 100 yrs) and between the two things it was over a year from the storm until I paid my contractors for the work.
I also noticed there is something fucky going on at Freedom Mortgage. I asked them about the requirements for canceling my PMI. The guy on the phone said one thing, then I received an unrequested letter saying something else, then another unrequested letter completly contradicting everything prior, saying I can’t cancel PMI even if I pay down the principal to the PMI threshold, which I’m pretty sure isn’t how it works. I think they have AI running everything or something.
Literally all of my communications with them was over the phone, or previously with a lawyer (not my lawyer).
I didn’t think they were ai, but there’s a solid chance that determines their… output?
The lawyer thing was for a parcel transfer with my neighbor (new owner) to get rid of an easement neither of us wants but has been there since the 90s because that property is non-compliant (built directly on the property lines around half of my property). That was almost 3 years ago. They forced my neighbor to do all sorts of surveys and shit, cost him $20k. I said right at the start that I’m thrilled to do this, but nobody will ever set foot inside my house for it (the property lawyer assured me I would never need to allow someone into my house for this, as it’s nothing to do with the house. And that’s normal.)
Anyway at the end of the process they demanded a full appraisal of the property including access to the interior of my garage and house. Nope! You definitely don’t need that for a parcel swap that I gain land on…? That’s so invasive and felt like they just want to know if my house is worth the risk of illegal foreclosure. (My neighbor and I now have a verbal agreement that when I sell or pay off the mortgage, whichever comes first, the the land swap will be implemented as previously discussed)
And part of the shenanigans they pulled with the insurance thing was to start sending all my mail to that lawyer… 6 months into the insurance shit, and a full 3 years after I’d last talked to the lawyer (who, again, was not even my lawyer, the neighbor hired her). She just emailed me like “why am I getting your mortgage statements?” And then sent them a really nasty lawyer email saying basically “what the fuck are you people doing??”
They just pulled a random mailing address out of my file… after 12 years of only sending shit to the property address… sent my check to her, unsigned. Super glad I didn’t listen to them and send a check I endorsed (they probably would have cashed it, but I was adamant they wouldn’t be able to cash the check; I already didn’t trust them after that property swap thing. So I adamantly refused to send a partially endorsed check.)
Imho…? It’s weaponized incompetence, not ai.
Sorry for the wall of text, I’m still pretty salty about the whole thing.
No no, it’s great, thanks for sharing and sorry for your troubles. As I was reading your first comment I was getting freedom vibes and then, oh shit, you dropped their name. Yay! /s
The level of incompetence I’ve seen is peanuts compared to what you’ve been through. I looked up the specifics of PMI cancellation from the consumer financial protection bureau and the last letter they sent is simply wrong, while the second one was 99% correct. I think I’ll send them copies of the letters and ask for clarification just to be a hassel.
Again I keep thinking AI. In what way they’re using it, I don’t know, but the randomness of the responses I’ve received makes me think nobody is at the wheel. The one time I called, the person gave me inaccurate numbers for pmi cancellation, and he said had to wait for a calculator to spit out a value. Perhaps they are interacting with an AI that dictates their output.
I’m so glad it’s not just me thinking freedom mortgage is a fucked company. I mean the name alone says “we are here to fuck you”, just like every anti-democratic bill in the last 20 years being called “freedom peacekeeping against domestic terror” and it targets like gay people or smth.
Imho, give them hell. It’ll probably be a waste of time: they are super good at non-updates and shirking their responsibility…
But, you know, I’ve worked in call centers before and whenever anyone said anything about bringing in legal representation, our go-to was to escalate. I didn’t want to risk it with my mortgage company if I was empty-threating them, but when I had a viable threat of legal, boy did they jump.
So maybe for your instance, tell them you had a lawyer review the documents and found some inaccuracies between copies, and ask for a new copy to be sent to you, and maybe if you can spin up an alias that looks convincing, have them CC your “lawyer”.
It worked for me, and the call center I used to work for auto-escalated anything mentioning legal just as a default (people trained well handle well), so maybe that’s the ticket. But make it a credible threat. :)
Sounds very similar to something I went through. I went the fuck off after the 10th time of faxing the same crap. They finally did pay up, but it was lunacy how many hours on the phone it took.
I recently had to deal with this shit from my mortgage handler. I wouldn’t do business with them if I could avoid it, but there’s nothing I can do. I have no say over who owns my debts.
They just wouldn’t endorse and return the check from insurance. No good reason for it, they just wouldn’t do it. They always needed more information.
Eventually I was just like look, the work has already been done for 6 months. My contractor is going to sue me if I don’t pay, and since you are the ones at fault for the delay, I’ll make sure you also get sued. I never consented to do business with you, and I wouldn’t. I do not trust any of you to be competent enough to do your jobs, and that’s pretty shit for such a big lender. This isn’t your house, and thus its structure and contents are none of your fucking business, the insurance check isn’t your money, thus you can’t hold it hostage for info that’s none of your fucking business, and if you don’t release it, well that’s on you, my contractor knows what’s going on.
Magically it only took a week after that to get it endorsed and returned. The sludge just somehow magically went away.
What did my mortgage company want that they were delaying so much? Information about my property that had nothing whatever to do with the insurance claim. Probably in the hopes that they could foreclose in the future. Because my house is worth a ton more than the debt they bough cost them.
This is also the company that wouldn’t allow me to refinance my mortgage to remove my co-signer and take out a bit extra to pay off debts… unless I wanted to take out more than the current value of the home (a loan I don’t remotely qualify for), and be upside down.
If you are in the US and are unfortunate enough to be stuck with freedom mortgage because your original lender sold you off to them, I’m sorry. If you are looking to get a mortgage, do your best to avoid them. Nothing you can ultimately do, though, as your consent to do business with them doesn’t matter and your only recourse is to refinance with another lender, or sell…
Insurance was it’s own little nightmare, and I’m also stuck there because my house is too old to be covered by most insurance providers (around 140 years old now; most insurance won’t cover anything beyond 100 yrs) and between the two things it was over a year from the storm until I paid my contractors for the work.
I also noticed there is something fucky going on at Freedom Mortgage. I asked them about the requirements for canceling my PMI. The guy on the phone said one thing, then I received an unrequested letter saying something else, then another unrequested letter completly contradicting everything prior, saying I can’t cancel PMI even if I pay down the principal to the PMI threshold, which I’m pretty sure isn’t how it works. I think they have AI running everything or something.
Literally all of my communications with them was over the phone, or previously with a lawyer (not my lawyer).
I didn’t think they were ai, but there’s a solid chance that determines their… output?
The lawyer thing was for a parcel transfer with my neighbor (new owner) to get rid of an easement neither of us wants but has been there since the 90s because that property is non-compliant (built directly on the property lines around half of my property). That was almost 3 years ago. They forced my neighbor to do all sorts of surveys and shit, cost him $20k. I said right at the start that I’m thrilled to do this, but nobody will ever set foot inside my house for it (the property lawyer assured me I would never need to allow someone into my house for this, as it’s nothing to do with the house. And that’s normal.)
Anyway at the end of the process they demanded a full appraisal of the property including access to the interior of my garage and house. Nope! You definitely don’t need that for a parcel swap that I gain land on…? That’s so invasive and felt like they just want to know if my house is worth the risk of illegal foreclosure. (My neighbor and I now have a verbal agreement that when I sell or pay off the mortgage, whichever comes first, the the land swap will be implemented as previously discussed)
And part of the shenanigans they pulled with the insurance thing was to start sending all my mail to that lawyer… 6 months into the insurance shit, and a full 3 years after I’d last talked to the lawyer (who, again, was not even my lawyer, the neighbor hired her). She just emailed me like “why am I getting your mortgage statements?” And then sent them a really nasty lawyer email saying basically “what the fuck are you people doing??”
They just pulled a random mailing address out of my file… after 12 years of only sending shit to the property address… sent my check to her, unsigned. Super glad I didn’t listen to them and send a check I endorsed (they probably would have cashed it, but I was adamant they wouldn’t be able to cash the check; I already didn’t trust them after that property swap thing. So I adamantly refused to send a partially endorsed check.)
Imho…? It’s weaponized incompetence, not ai.
Sorry for the wall of text, I’m still pretty salty about the whole thing.
No no, it’s great, thanks for sharing and sorry for your troubles. As I was reading your first comment I was getting freedom vibes and then, oh shit, you dropped their name. Yay! /s
The level of incompetence I’ve seen is peanuts compared to what you’ve been through. I looked up the specifics of PMI cancellation from the consumer financial protection bureau and the last letter they sent is simply wrong, while the second one was 99% correct. I think I’ll send them copies of the letters and ask for clarification just to be a hassel.
Again I keep thinking AI. In what way they’re using it, I don’t know, but the randomness of the responses I’ve received makes me think nobody is at the wheel. The one time I called, the person gave me inaccurate numbers for pmi cancellation, and he said had to wait for a calculator to spit out a value. Perhaps they are interacting with an AI that dictates their output.
I’m so glad it’s not just me thinking freedom mortgage is a fucked company. I mean the name alone says “we are here to fuck you”, just like every anti-democratic bill in the last 20 years being called “freedom peacekeeping against domestic terror” and it targets like gay people or smth.
Imho, give them hell. It’ll probably be a waste of time: they are super good at non-updates and shirking their responsibility…
But, you know, I’ve worked in call centers before and whenever anyone said anything about bringing in legal representation, our go-to was to escalate. I didn’t want to risk it with my mortgage company if I was empty-threating them, but when I had a viable threat of legal, boy did they jump.
So maybe for your instance, tell them you had a lawyer review the documents and found some inaccuracies between copies, and ask for a new copy to be sent to you, and maybe if you can spin up an alias that looks convincing, have them CC your “lawyer”.
It worked for me, and the call center I used to work for auto-escalated anything mentioning legal just as a default (people trained well handle well), so maybe that’s the ticket. But make it a credible threat. :)
Sounds very similar to something I went through. I went the fuck off after the 10th time of faxing the same crap. They finally did pay up, but it was lunacy how many hours on the phone it took.