4 years ago
Lakeview Loan Servicing and LoanCare have made an ...
Lakeview Loan Servicing and LoanCare have made an egregious error to my escrow account and have taken no action to correct the error. I am now resorting to negative online reviews and regulatory complaints in an effort to get somebody anybody .with either one of these companies to do something.
In early March, I received a notice that my house payment was going up more than 35%, from $926 to $1276 due to an escrow shortage. Along with that notice were included escrow analysis documents that indicated a most recent disbursement of $1,668 dollars. The problem with that is that only $651 had been due to the county. It took just a few moments of research to identify the problem.
Before I contacted Lakeview or LoanCare, I called the county to inquire, and they assured me that not only had my county taxes not gone up, but they are in fact going down this year, to $611 per disbursement. They also assured me that a payment for my property in the amount of $1668 had not been received or credited for our property, but that just the amount due had been received (and even that was late).
This error is causing an extraordinary leap in my house payment because not only did the escrow analysis show a bogus payment, but the 2019 taxes for the house is estimated based on the bogus payment. The snowballing of all these accounting errors in the escrow account has resulted in a $370 increase in the escrow payments due, when in fact the escrow payment should not be increasing at all.
I phoned LoanCare and a customer service person told me she would forward it to the tax department and I should call back in a week. Unsatisfied with this response I called back a few days later and talked to another CSR who could clearly understand the problem. However, he told me the same thing, the tax department would have to take care of it and they may or may not call me back.
After this call, I was ready to file a regulatory complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and then possibly the Federal Trade Commission, because having read about so many of these errors online, I wonder if this is an intentional scam and not simply clerical errors. Clerical errors could not possibly be this difficult to fix.
The only thing that stopped me is that in response to many negative reviews, Lakeview provided a name, Carol Kriete, presented as an Issue Resolution Manager. Several people reported that she had fixed their issue. I called the number and received a call back the same day. A gentleman named David Johnson called me back and made a hard promise to contact me within 48 hours with an issue resolution. Lakeview also sent me a letter, formally recognizing my complaint. I had been exasperated with the effort this is taking as this issue should take 15 minutes and one competent person to correct, but I was at least glad I had found a person willing to take ownership of the issue.
That conversation was TWENTY TWO days ago, and I have not heard back from David Johnson, despite repeated efforts to contact him. In fact on Monday I was left on hold for over an hour on two separate occasions without ever getting to talk to someone about this issue. My house payment is now 17 days past due, and I would have made it on time, but I feel if I pay the bogus amount that Lakeview / LoanCare will not return the overpayment. I have little reason at this point to trust either of these entities.
So today I am out of patience, and spending my valuable time making regulatory complaints against both Lakeview Loan Servicing and LoanCare. I highly recommend that customers steer clear of both Lakeview Loan Servicing and LoanCare if at all possible.
Alexandra Youmans