FifthThird Bank screwed us

[W2R]

Honestly I am so glad that I don't have to own rental units for income. If I had them, I'd have to deal with mortgages and all the associated baloney. I *DO* like the idea of having an additional income stream for retirement, but this is not one I'd choose. The older I get, the less patient I am with unnecessary aggravation such as what the OP is going through. My sympathies and good luck in getting your credit fixed and so on.

 

[Dash man]

Im still wondering how you are using a VA loan on a rental that you dont live in. They probably sent a notice to that address about the escrow change, but since you dont live there, you didnt get it.

The VA only requires you to live in the property the first year. I used a VA loan for a home I lived in for four years, then rented out for six more years. It would be ridiculous for them to force you to refinance a home just because you used a VA loan for the original purchase. Who'd police it anyways?


Enjoying life!

 

[latexman]

Why don't you spend the $ you are planning on paying a lawyer to refinance the mortgage with a different bank or institution. Then you won't have to deal with them, and you might even get a lower rate.

 

[columbus]

We would love to refi both mortgages but thats the other rub...they trashed our perfect credit so were stuck with them. Perfect crime...try to secretly foreclose on house with $100k in equity, if that fails charge the borrower a couple grand and wreck their credit so they can't leave. Our number one goal is fixing credit...then if we can get money back that would be nice. Not sure if we can submit a case ourselves or if best to pay some expert?

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[COcheesehead]

We would love to refi both mortgages but thats the other rub...they trashed our perfect credit so were stuck with them. Perfect crime...try to secretly foreclose on house with $100k in equity, if that fails charge the borrower a couple grand and wreck their credit so they can't leave. Our number one goal is fixing credit...then if we can get money back that would be nice. Not sure if we can submit a case ourselves or if best to pay some expert?

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Have you checked on your credit score? You say you had perfect credit, so you had an 850 score? What is it now?

 

[CRLLS]

Way back before the internet our mortgage escrow holder paid our property taxes twice instead of once for one of the half year bills. That overpayment used up our required buffer so when our next annual adjustment came out our escrow amount for the new payment was huge.

Very similar to us. Our Mortgage holder decided to pay both our, AND someone else's property taxes from our escrow account. That emptied our account and put us in the hole. They wanted to increase our escrow to a) make up the difference they fronted us in a few months and b) pay monthly at the estimated new rate. As I recall, if their numbers were right, our monthly escrow contribution about quadrupled. Fixing it was fairly easy since the error was obvious. I have paid our own taxes ever since!

 

[CRLLS]

In addition to the above, We received a letter from a different mortgage co that our account was sold to them and we needed to make our mortgage payment to them. I thought it was odd that we were not notified by our mortgage co. So a phone call was made. They ( the original mortgage holder) said that they DID sell a bunch of mortgages to the other co. But our mortgage was not one of them. We should keep on paying to them. I never heard from the other co again. I'm sure that they got our contact info from somewhere! Must have been on the data file handed over at the sale of the other mortgages.

You can't trust anyone! It is up to us to keep those big finance co's in line.

 

[Gumby]

That's why we had our mortgage with our hometown bank, the main office of which (it only has 4 offices) is three blocks from our house. They never sell mortgages to other lenders. So if there was ever a problem, I could just walk on over and talk to them in person. Or I could wait until Sunday and talk to the bank president, who is a fellow congregant at my church. Their mortgage rates were not the lowest, but the ability to deal with them in person, and the ability to support our own community instead of some distant, impersonal financial colossus were important to us.

 

[meierlde]

Out of curiosity did you send a change of address card to the bank when you moved out? You might also have written them a letter telling the bank the house was now a rental. If you look on the local tax web site what address is shown for the owners?

 

[columbus]

Yeah we were 830's...now it is hard to tell...credit karma says 685. We were waiting to pull until the disputes ended and our normal payment history resumes.

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[COcheesehead]

Out of curiosity did you send a change of address card to the bank when you moved out? You might also have written them a letter telling the bank the house was now a rental. If you look on the local tax web site what address is shown for the owners?

Not if they didn't want the bank to know it was rental. That may have changed the terms of the loan and might be part of the problem here.

 

[Milton]

If an attorney won't take a case without you putting up money it's a good indication you don't have a case in my opinion. Or, if you insist on "fighting" the good fight then you would need to pay an attorney an up front retainer. That up front retainer would probably be greater than the amount in dispute.

Absolutely correct.

I am not suggesting it isn't a lot of money, as it is, but the odds of recouping that money seem remote.

Well, I will suggest that $1,500 isn't a lot of money. It is not worth all the financial cost of a lawsuit (legal fees aren't cheap). Even if you handle the small claims court action yourself, your time is worth something. And the stress and hassle of any sort of litigation takes a psychological toll that exceeds $1,500 for most reasonable people

As Cobra9777 has already advised, the best thing to do is to put this behind you and focus on rebuilding your credit score.

 

[columbus]

To answer...yes we have them new address...they also have the mortgage for our new address. Last year we had to once again tell them to send tax doc to correct address. Their servicing systems are trash...i can go on with details but I get the idea we have to just move on and save our sanity. I dont agree with all the commenters siding with the bank...this in no way should have led to foreclose and credit beating over 100% bank errors and my wife and I not logging in online each month to babysit. We cant monitor everything all the time...one would hope their bank would help them after a laundry list of mistakes were made that led to yhis nightmare but instead treated like garbage.

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[ERD50]

... not logging in online each month to babysit. We cant monitor everything all the time...

Monitoring is your best defense. Yes, it takes some small effort, but there can be great rewards of not having to deal with junk like this.

As someone else mentioned I think, there are set times one would expect an escrow charge change - tax time, insurance adjustments, etc. You would not have to "monitor everything all the time", but checking every few months, or once a quarter or something should not be that big a deal.

It's up to you.

-ERD50

 

[Al in Ohio]

I also live in Columbus and have been a Fifth Third customer for over 20 years. Personally they have been the best bank for us compared to the banks we left prior. If I call to complain about a late fee..... they have removed it from my account 100% of the time. Their online banking system is also top notch. JMO. My blame would rest on your renters (if anyone else) in this instance. You might ask yourself if this could ever happen again with this same bank after this gets cleared up? Probably not because you will cover your bases. So what does that tell you?


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[carnivalday]

What babysitting do you have to do? Do you not look at your electric bill every month? Your cable bill? Just because you put a payment on autopayment doesnt absolve you from checking on it to make sure its correct. If you can't monitor your own financials, who will?

 

[COcheesehead]

This is not just for the OP, but a good reminder for everyone, there are so many monitoring tools these days we all need to take advantage of them. Payment alerts, billing alerts, use of your credit card, etc. I get an email for almost every transaction. Takes 2 seconds to review and delete...from anywhere in the world. Use the technology that is made available to us. Trust, but verify.

 

[Dawg52]

When I moved a few months ago(primary home) I not only set up a forwarding address with the PO, I notified all concerned of my new address. I have a a vacation condo I have taxes to pay and other bills at that location. Although most are paid via draft, I notified them of my new billing address because I didn't want to have something fall into the cracks. Sometimes even when doing that.....crap happens.

I sympathize with the OP. Never fun getting a mess corrected.

 

[ChiliPepr]

If you have not paid the amount owed yet, use that as leverage to fix your credit... Get the bank to remove all the dings to the credit agencies when you pay the amount owed.

Also, is your auto-payment with the bank? Or do you just have an auto-payment sent to them? I have my auto payment set up with my mortgage provider and when my escrow goes up or down, my payment also changes. You may want to look into move the auto-pay to to the mortgage holder and have them withdraw instead of sending them a check..

 

[Milton]

This is not just for the OP, but a good reminder for everyone, there are so many monitoring tools these days we all need to take advantage of them. Payment alerts, billing alerts, use of your credit card, etc. I get an email for almost every transaction. Takes 2 seconds to review and delete...from anywhere in the world.

+1.

If you have not paid the amount owed yet, use that as leverage to fix your credit... Get the bank to remove all the dings to the credit agencies when you pay the amount owed.

Seriously? That's the way you operate with lenders ("I'll pay you back the money I owe, IF you agree to a new term I retroactively impose")?

 

[rodi]

Question for the OP -

When you found out about the change in escrow - did you offer to make up the amount you owe? Have you been making the correct mortgage payments in the mean time? That isn't clear from your posts....

You posted here in February about this - and I'm surprised it isn't closer to resolution in the past 6 months.

 

[ERD50]

Question for the OP -

When you found out about the change in escrow - did you offer to make up the amount you owe? Have you been making the correct mortgage payments in the mean time? That isn't clear from your posts....

You posted here in February about this - and I'm surprised it isn't closer to resolution in the past 6 months.

Ahhh, I didn't recall that old thread. Might have been better for OP to post there for some continuity.

So very curious - what has gone on in 6 months? He just seems to be repeating here?

And this post from previous thread totally confuses me:

Yes we paid...they cashed...then they said they tried to mail checks back to us...but they supposedly went to wrong address.

If they cashed your checks, what checks were they trying to mail back to you? None of this is making any sense.

-ERD50

 

[COcheesehead]

I don't think we are getting the whole story.

 

[Walt34]

That's why we had our mortgage with our hometown bank, the main office of which (it only has 4 offices) is three blocks from our house. They never sell mortgages to other lenders. So if there was ever a problem, I could just walk on over and talk to them in person.

I did the same thing for much the same reasons when I refinanced for lower interest rates. Local bank, half-dozen or so branches, and while I didn't know the bank president, I did know all of their fraud investigators. Oh, and it was a 10-minute drive to the closest branch but I could live with that.

About 10 years later they changed their policy and did sell the mortgage but by then we were debating whether to pay off the house and that settled the question. We paid it off. Good thing too! The new bank was a mess, as we found out when we began inquiring why the lien had not been cleared. That took about six months - the box containing our file was stored in a hallway.

The first mortgage had been with some national bank and they were consistently late sending the checks for the house insurance and property taxes, and I'd get nastygrams from the insurance company and the County. When I refinanced with the local bank I asked it if was required that I escrow those fees. It was not, so I just paid them directly myself from then on. It wasn't hard to "guesstimate" what the amounts would be and I didn't get any surprises.

Clearly this is not a solution for the "paycheck-to-paycheck" lifestyle but it worked for me.

 

[harley]

This is not just for the OP, but a good reminder for everyone, there are so many monitoring tools these days we all need to take advantage of them. Payment alerts, billing alerts, use of your credit card, etc. I get an email for almost every transaction. Takes 2 seconds to review and delete...from anywhere in the world. Use the technology that is made available to us. Trust, but verify.

I agree, make use of the tools that are available. Hopefully they'll become a little more customizable or at least more useful in the future. For example, I don't need an alert to tell me I missed a payment. I need an alert that will tell me my payment is due tomorrow (or in a few days) and I haven't yet scheduled a payment. But overall, the alerts are a good idea. I don't get quite as many as every transaction, but I do get quite a few. As you say, it's a matter of seconds to peruse and delete (or file) them.

Also, control of your finances is equally important. I never do escrow. It's my money, my bills, and my responsibility to pay them and keep track of them. While I do use autopay on a few repeating cost bills, I still check the value when the bill comes in and file the receipt after the autopay.