Beware of National City MortgageNational City Mortgage performed an unauthorized withdrawal from our bank account and instead of refunding us the money in a timely manner, began to give us the run-around after nearly a month had passed since they "stole" that money from us. Here's how all this began: National City Mortgage owns our bank loan. Every 1st of the month they get to widthdraw that month's mortgage payment from our bank account. No problem with that. Not yet. They also offer an "accellerated payoff" program, withdrawing 50% of the monthly mortgage every 14 days, thus amounting to a slightly faster payoff than paying a 13th mortgage payment at the end of the year. We decided to go with that accellerated payoff program in May or June of 2002, but chose to start these payments only in September 2002, as we needed to pay off some other debts before accellerating the mortgage payments. Whoa!Imagine our surprise when on June 27 our checks started bouncing! As it turned out, National City Mortgage withdrew a FULL month's payment (instead of half) on June 14, and would probably have withdrawn another full month's payment on the 28th if we hadn't called our bank and removed National City Mortgage's access authorization to our account effective immediately! We called National City Mortgage. The gentleman on the phone was very apologetic and promised that we'd have the refund in our hands by the middle of the following week. So, we expected to have the refund in our hands July 3, or July 5 at the latest. But those days came and went. No check. No check Monday. No check Tuesday. No check Wednesday. Adding Insult to InjuryWe called National City Mortgage on July 10 and received a call back several hours later during which we were told several things:
The fact that we were promised immediate response clashes significantly with the delays, the lies and the back-pedaling we're now receiving. And if that doesn't take the cake, we called them back and worked our way laboriously up the chain of commmand, from Joe Cousart, to Alan Draheim, and finally to Jason Rew, none of whom seemed willing to admit that a problem existed. They just kept saying that refunds take time. No acknowledgment that they made an extremely serious error, are costing us big grief, seriously impacting our ability to meet our financial obligations, and are now essentially acting like mobsters when we complain. In fact, when we asked Mr. Rew to let us speak to his supervisor, he laughed and cut us off! This has simply gone too far. Much too far. Update July 15: Now they're claiming that they wired the money to another division in their company, the place that actually ran the loan that had been paid off (refinanced). Why did they not wire the money back into our bank account from which they had taken it in the first place?! Why pass on the money in respons to our demand to get it back? This truly smells like an elaborate fraud scheme!! Bottom LineIf someone takes something from you without authorization, does that not amount to theft? National City Mortgage withdrew over $2000 from our bank account without authorization. National City Mortgage stole $2000 from us and after a month we have yet to see a penny of it! National City Mortgage essentially takes zero responsibility for their mistake. When we express annoyance and insist that they stop hiding behind supposed rules and regulations, and claiming that the U.S. Postal Service takes two weeks to deliver mail, they laugh at us and hang up! They could have returned the money in a heart-beat using the same fast electronic methods that they used to remove money from our account. Their claim that they weren't authorized to do so is utterly preposterous to me. So, did they intend to defraud us? Are they just pretending to refund our money? Is this Wire Fraud? Fraud involving interstate commerce? Things to ComeAt this point we're livid! The fact that National City Mortgage snatched over $2000 from our bank account and is now taking their merry time refunding it, while laughing at us on the phone and then cutting us off. . . heck, I can guess what they'd do if we skipped a mortgage payment, and laughed at them on the phone when they called to demand the money, and then cut them off repeatedly. They'd come after us. Affect our credit report. Being foreclosure proceedings? Serve legal documents. All sorts of nasty stuff. What tools do mere consumers have? Time to report this case to the Federal Trade Commission. Even if nothing comes of it now, it should put a big fat black mark on the record. And perhaps the FTC finds prior complaints and just maybe it turns out that this is yet another case where corporate culture from the top down condones financial and accounting improprieties, the likes of which have recently soiled the reputations of other major American companies. How it all played out in the endJune 21, 2003 National City Mortgage contacted us upon running across this web site (hey, power to the people. Who would have thought it possible!) and offered to set things right with us. Ultimately, they did set things right: we got our money back, got a reduction on our interest rate, and even an additional screw-up was set right in the end. My only regret at this stage is that National City Mortgage didn't jump to correct the original problem when we reported it, but instead treated us like crap. They explained that it was not National City Mortgage itself, but one of their contractors who handled accellerated mortgage payoffs. But hey, if they hire thugs, then they should carry the blame, too. At this point our mortgage is paid off and we're no longer doing business with National City Mortgage. Whether we ever will again is a question for another day. The people at National City Mortgage who we've talked to are, by all appearances, located or working at: National City Mortgage |