Angie
Augusta,#2Consumer Suggestion
Mon, February 16, 2004
Two pieces of advice: 1)If you are working out payment agreements, get payment arrangements in writing and have them SIGNED by the rep you are working with. 2)Contact your state's banking commissioners office. They exist in part to protect homeowners from bad mortgage companies and shady deals. If you have proof you have been ripped off, the last thing these loan servicers want to happen is to have their license rovolked in that state. And your states banking commission provides the license to mortgage providers and servicers! Here's our story... Our loan originatior, Ameriquest worked with us to set up a payment plan to cure our loan when we had financial problems. They signed a 90 day payment arrangement. Over a 45 day period, after we had paid almost half of the money to Ameriquest to get us current, our loan was sold to Litton Loan Servicing. We sent our next check to them, as we were instructed to do by Ameriquest. It never cleared.Nor was it immediately returned. We called Litton's "customer service " line over ten times to check on status of our payment. The rep would always tell us they were waiting on paperwork from Ameriquest. After 31 days of waiting for our check to post,our eleventh call was transfered to Litton's foreclosure department. Ameriquest never applied our payments to the loan and apparently, Litton bought our loan because we looked as though we were in foreclosure. Thank God a contractor we know gave us the number and a contact at the Georgia Banking Commission. One letter and a copy of the signed agreement was all it took to get Litton to make things right. We never had to pay an attorney we couldn't afford. We used our states resources to help us. So get agreements in writing and know your state's resources ! It was a godsend for us.