Fairbanks Capital Mortgage ripoff mistreated and ripped off Salt Lake City Utah
Fairbanks bought my loan from CountryWide Mortgage. Fairbanks refuses to acknowledge contractual grace periods. They call and harrass you all hours of the day and night beginning the 2nd of the month if you have not paid. They will hold payments in suspense and then post payment after expiration of grace period, thus incurring late fees.
Recently they applied my May payment to April, even though April had already been paid. They then charged me a fraudulent late fee. I called them to correct this mistake and was assured it would be rectified. I went back online the next day to discover that my records now reflected that I was 2 months behind instead of 1 month even though I was actually current.
The customer service people are powerless and their collection department is rude and obnoxious. They actually advised me that there is no such thing as a grace period and that if payment was not received on or before the 1st of every month they would report me to the credit bureau.
Caveat to all - check your credit report! Fairbanks has been reporting credit under a different name - Loan Servicing Center and/or LSC. What's up with that?
I am interested in joining in on a class action suit with others from Florida who are experiencing problems with Fairbanks.
Lynn
Riverview, Florida
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Robin
Waldron,Arkansas,
U.S.A.
Lynn (and others); info from HUD website concerning loan servicing complaints
#2Consumer Suggestion
Thu, May 15, 2003
This information is straight from the HUD website:
"Section 6 (RESPA) provides borrowers with important consumer protections relating to the servicing of their loans. Under Section 6, borrowers who have a porblem with the servicing of their loan (including escrow account questions), should contact their loan servicer IN WRITING, outlining the nature of the complaint. The servicer must acknowledge the complaint in writing within twenty business days of receipt of the complaint. Within sixty business days the servicer must resolve the complaint by correcting the account or giving a statement of the reasons for its position. Until the complaint is resolved, borrowers should continue to make the servicer's required payment."
Again, ALL LEGITIMATE LEGAL BUSINESS IS DONE IN WRITING! Mail certified mail, return receipt requested and be sure to keep the signature card that the Post Office will give you after delivery of your letter. Keep a copy of your original complaint letter as well. Wait, wait, wait, twenty business days (no weekends or holidays, sorry). If you do not hear from your servicer in writing within the alloted length of time, civil suit may be filed either as an individual or as a class action. File HUD complaint as well.
Under Section 10 of RESPA, HUD is empowered to extract a civil penalty from servicers who do not submit the REQUIRED annual escrow account statement to borrowers. Folks, this alone could clean up the National Debt considering the number of complaints about this issue on this site alone!! Borrowers should contact HUD's Office of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs to report servicers who fail to supply these statements.
Hopefully, the Feds will recognize the necessity of taking the burden of legal action from the shoulders of the borrower and begin regulating more closely themselves. By the time these companies have finished cleaning out a person's bank account, there is no money left for legal fees! What good are Federal laws if the darn Feds cannot or will not enforce them?
Many lawyers will not touch these cases; it's scary to be a consumer these days. The biggest snafu with these laws is that the Federal regs do not seem to realize that the majority of the problems occur when the loans are transferred from the originating lender (who is fairly well bound to follow procedure) to the "servicing company" (who seems to be able to do what it wants with impunity). Very few follow the RESPA requirement that the borrower be notified 15 days before transferring the loan. How can a consumer complain about an infraction that he or she is not even aware has occurred? Then comes the ol "you're ninety days past due" letter and the fats in the fire. Let the pocket-picking begin! Let's collect those big, fat past due fees. ILLEGAL!
RESPA covers you there, as well.
"A Servicing Transfer Statement is required if the loan servicer sells or assigns the servicing rights to a borrower's loan to another loan servicer. Generally, the loan servicer must notify the borrower 15 days before the effective date of the loan transfer, As long as the borrower makes a timely payment to the old servicer within 60 days of the loan transfer, THE BORROWER CANNOT BE PENALIZED! The notice MUST include the name and address of the new servicer, toll-free telephone numbers, and the date the new servicer will begin accepting payments."
I urge all of you affected by any of these so-called servicing companies to go to http://www.hud.gov/. There is a wealth of information to help you protect yourself from these leeches. There is contact info for filing complaints; let's let the Feds pick the pockets of these servicers for awhile.