Oh, those charmers at seterus Mortgage
Do you know who owns your mortgage? Wanna bet?
In 2004, the nice New York couple who rented me my house decided to retire to San Diego instead of Las Vegas. They asked me if I wanted to buy. It sounded easier than moving. I asked the folks at my bank, then called Bank West of Nevada, if they issued mortgage loans, thinking it would be nice not only to patronize a local business, and also to be able to go down the street and visit my mortgage holder in person if there was ever a problem. They told me they did.
That wasn’t quite true. When I sat down to sign the forms, it turned out my lender was an outfit called RBMG, which had been acquired in 2001 by NetBank, an Internet-only outfit which was to fail massively in 2007.
Within weeks, my “RBMG” mortgage was turned over to Countrywide, or so I thought. Then, when Countrywide tanked, I was told to start sending in payments to Bank of America.
By this October, my checks were heading to an outfit called “seterus” — yes, lower-case “s” — apparently in Pasadena, California, though I now learn that address is a glorified mail drop.
I’ve sent them three checks, each one for a different amount. For the payment due Oct.1, I was told to use the old Bank of America invoice and payment amount — $1,572.64. For Nov. 1, they billed me $1,535.33. For my payment due Dec. 1, the coupon said to pay $1,498.02.
On Dec. 5 — despite the fact the payment is not considered “past due” till Dec. 16 — one Christopher Hill called me at work from the seterus office in Beaverton, Oregon, complaining my payment due Dec. 1 had not been received. I told him I’d mailed the check Nov. 28.
Lo and behold, Mr. Hill searched his computer files and found such a payment HAD been received, but that it had not “credited.” It was being held “in suspense” because it was short by more than $10 from the $1535.33 required.
I told him I wouldn’t have made up a figure like $1,498.02 out of thin air; that must surely have been the amount requested on their coupon. He asked me to check. I told him I would.
At home that evening, I found the statement. But of course the coupon wasn’t there — I’d mailed it in with my payment, as instructed.
I tried to call seterus back at 9:30 the next morning, at the only number they provide, 866-570-5277. After “pushing 1 for English” (Spanish language service is provided for illegals whose mortgages have been acquired by the federal government) I spent 22 minutes listening to the kind of instrumental music they play at skating rinks.
I checked online. No other phone numbers. Now pay attention, because this works:
I proceeded to call information for Portland, Oregon. Under “state government,” I asked for the number of the Oregon state Division of Finance and Corporate Securities. These nice folks answered their phones immediately, and were happy to tell me “seterus” isn’t an Oregon corporation, at all. All the corporate contact information was in “Research Triangle, North Carolina,” where the main number for the CEO, CFO, and corporate counsel (all good people to speak to if you can’t get through on the skating-rink line) is 888-576-5277. Furthermore, the “corporate contact person” is one Karen Pollock, at 919-517-1217, e-mail kbpolloc@us.ibm.com.
No “k.” Also no “seterus.” Instead … “IBM.”
‘NOT THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS. THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS AND THIRTY-ONE CENTS’
I left a message for Karen Pollock in North Carolina. I then tried the telephone boiler room in Beaverton again, finally reaching not Christopher Hill but one Julie Knox, who wanted the last four digits of my Social Slave number. Since my Social Security card says right on it “Not for Purposes of Identification” and I had no intention of seeking any government retirement benefits, I declined. (Anyone who knows when and where you were born can reconstruct the first five digits of your Social Slave number in a heartbeat. And no, they don’t already have it. Seterus recently sent me a W-9 “request for Social Security number,” the only “servicer” ever to do so. I asked my accountant why. He said, “That means they’ve lost your Social Security number. Don’t give it to them.”)
Eventually she relented, insisting the “amount due” showing on my November coupon had been $1,535.33, and I would be considered delinquent unless I mailed them another $37.31.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Isn’t it possible that because the first amount I sent you back in September was $1,572.64, based on the old B of A invoice which you instructed me to use, and you’ve decided to reduce the amount of escrow in your monthly bill and are now billing me $1535.33, you didn’t end up with $37.31 sitting ‘in suspense,’ and to take care of that you didn’t simply send me a November monthly statement asking me to pay $1,498.02?” I asked.
Absolutely not, said Julie Knox.
“OK. I’ll mail you the thirty-seven dollars,” I said.
“Not thirty-seven dollars,” she said. “Thirty-seven dollars and thirty-one cents.”
Well, well. Talk about precision.
So, including $4.50 “to buy Christopher and Karen and Julie each a cup of coffee,” I wrote out a check for $41.81, along with a lengthy hand-written cover note, which will require them to spend hours sending me a written reply.
Why? Because seterus is governed by labyrinthine U.S. government protocols on how to handle disputes and inquiries, because seterus doesn’t own my mortgage, any more than Countrywide or B of A ever did.
I asked everyone I spoke to Tuesday who owns that note. In the end, everyone agreed my note is owned by the Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, the actuarially bankrupt government mortgage devourer. All these other outfits — including the latest one, which is a division of IBM, as hard as they may work to conceal that — merely refer to themselves as “servicers,” like the gals down at the local Asian Massage parlor.
By the time I had my check for $41.81 ready to go, the phone rang again.
You’ve already guessed, haven’t you? Karen Pollock in “Research Triangle, North Carolina,” anxious not to talk to me, had contacted one Michelle Patterson, in seterus’ Consumer and Government Affairs office in Beaverton, Ore., who can be reached at 503-270-4036. She’d looked into my account, and what do you suppose she figured out?
“Because your first payment to us was for $1,572.64, off the old B of A coupon we told you to use, we had an extra $37.31 sitting ‘in suspense,’ so the amount on your payment coupon due Dec. 1 was $1,498.02, which was the amount you sent us. They billed you that lesser amount to make it all come out even.”
Just like I told Christopher and Julie?
“Yes. Unfortunately, that $37.31 had sat there for so long that it got credited as an additional payment against your principle, and that’s why they didn’t see it on their screens and were telling you to send in an extra $37. So what I did is I grabbed that back and applied it to your December balance, so now you’re even and you don’t need to send us anything.”
Yeah, and she’ll still respect me in the morning.
“Who owns this note?” I asked.
“Fannie Mae.”
“When Fannie Mae bought this note, did they pay full face value, or did they pay an amount discounted to market?” I asked.
Michelle Patterson told me she didn’t know.
“Because if they paid full face value for a bunch of Las Vegas mortgages, when the majority of houses here are upside down, that’s in effect a government bailout for the issuing banks, which would never have been able to collect full value on these loans, right?”
Michelle Patterson told me she didn’t know.
‘THAT’S WHY WE’RE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE NOW …’
So I called Fannie Mae in Washington, and spoke to their chief PR flack, Amy Bonitatibus, at 202-752-4144. Amy said she couldn’t be sure, since she didn’t have my file in front of her, but in all likelihood she believes Fannie Mae bought my note very shortly after it was issued, and that everyone I’ve been dealing with since then is merely “a servicer.”
And Fannie Mae doesn’t get these notes at a discount, given the odds that some of them will default or show losses through short sales?
No, Ms. Bonitatibus said. “When we buy the loan presumably we pay full face value. That’s why we’re in so much trouble now, why we’re showing these huge losses, because there are so many defaults.”
Well, why in heck WOULDN’T a mortgage writer sell a mortgage to the federal government at full face value, reducing their risk of loss to zero, since all the risk now belongs to taxpayers? Who dreamed that up, Barney Frank?
Yet on Aug. 5, on the Web site Hot Air (http://tinyurl.com/3ursvka) Ed Morrissey reported:
“Fannie Mae, which has already eaten over $100 billion of taxpayer money after being absorbed by the federal government in 2008, took a loss in the second quarter of $5.2 billion Ñ and they want taxpayers to cover it. …”
I wonder if Fannie Mae’s private, never-suffer-a-loss stockholders paid seterus on a “cost-plus” basis to have their staff spend all those hours on the phone with me Dec. 5 and 6 … over a bill that had already been paid on time and in full?
And I’m one of the few idiots who’s still diligently paying. How do you think their music-on-hold, “Send-us-$37-or-else” approach is working when it comes to charming the “Walk Away” gang?
For a hint, check Craig’s List for a new type of classified ad we’ve just started seeing here, offering to sell the cabinets, plumbing and copper pipe out of upside-down houses, urging buyers to “bring your tools and some cash.”
December 20th, 2011 at 10:41 am
I seriously wonder if all mortgage companies have adopted a policy of hiring only innumerate, inarticulate high school dropouts to process customer accounts and provide customer “service” [sic]. None seem capable of fielding simple inquiries from irate customers wondering why their monthly payments have been misapplied/lost/incorrectly posted. I just finished a year’s worth of battle with Wells Fargo over my own mortgage account, never getting a satisfactory answer as to why a simple extra monthly payment toward principal was being misapplied, resulting in the lapse of an optional mortgage life insurance policy. I finally gave up, simply choosing to mail a check [!!] each quarter with the extra principal payment and purchasing the life insurance directly through the insurance company as a separate offering rather than dealing with the hassle of trusting some clueless chair warmer at Wells Fargo to use common sense.
While this certainly isn’t in the same vein as the problem you describe, it does seem to validate the idea that these state-corporate welfare queens really don’t have any incentive whatsoever to take care of the customer. Unless you want to go through the hassle of refinancing (in which case you’ll almost certainly wind up with a lender as bad as or worse than the one you left), it’s easier to just suffer and keep your battle armor at the ready.
December 20th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Man, that made my head spin.
December 21st, 2011 at 9:35 am
If you can’t buy a house with cash, you shouldn’t be buying a house.
That’s my position and I’m sticking to it.
December 21st, 2011 at 5:49 pm
You only know half the story (bad service) on “seterus”. The other half is that this company bought many home loans in southern Nevada and they (seterus) purchased Private Mortgage Insurance and put them on the loans that didn’t already have it. Seterus paid for the PMI without the homeowners knowledge. We know this because our home is in the foreclosure process and we had a wonderful “short-sale” offer. Seterus did not accept the offer because they preferred to cash-in on the PMI when the foreclosure is complete. We told them we don’t have PMI as we purchased the home with 20% down. That is when we found out seterus purchased PMI themselves. Wow, this was amazing! A company that cashes-in on the backs of homeowners who are down on their luck! Shame on them!!
January 3rd, 2012 at 1:18 pm
My story a very different but yet the same. In June 2010 Chase, who was my mortgage servicer, informed me that St John’s Insurance had terminated coverage. The house was empty as I had been recalled by the military. On June 22nd I purchased an insurance policy from Citizens, through Allstate. The young lady informed me that the invoice would be sent to Chase for payment.
Within days I received notification from Chase that seterus would be servicing our loan from July 1st 2010. Concerned about the payment,of the insurance policy,I checked with Allstate and was informed that they had not received payment, the premium amount
was $1043.00
I called Citizens who told me that they would honour he policy if the
premium was paid within 90 days of purchase. They emailed me a copy of the policy together with the invoice.
I sent this to seterus with a request that they pay. Unfortunately,
I never follwed up and a year later June 7 2011 they wrote informing me that there was no coverage and the were imposing forced place insurance in the amount of $3293.37.
It is now 6 months later and they have given me every excuse even
contradicting themselves as to why they never paid the premium and refusing to accept responsiblity.
I have tried various avenues for assistance but none of the agencies or attorneys I have spoken with seem interested because it is a ‘couple of thousand and many are in much worse situations than me”. A quote from an attorney I spoke to today who seemed to think that I should consider myself lucky and accept it.
January 18th, 2012 at 8:29 am
My mortgage was also turned over to seterus. It was originally through First Horizon, then an insurance company, then IBM, now seterus. They tried to pull the “you don’t have insurance scam” even before payment was due on the insurance policy I have had for years. They charge $5 to make an online payment, more than that (I think $7) for a phone payment, and moved their payment center to CA for people on the east coast, which costs more in per day interest when the payment has to cross the country.
We were told that a hedge fund owned seterus, when we called to question the varying amounts of interest calculated.
February 22nd, 2012 at 7:20 pm
This is scary stuff. My husband and I are in our 60′s. My husband just lost his job and we can not meet all of our bills on my income as a teacher. We have recently listed out house for short sale and begun the paper work with seterus. Our mortgage has been sold so many times it is hard to keep track and did seem to go from Chase to a bail bonds company briefly to seterus. Hmmmm. What was that about?So far we get called every Sunday by individuals who obviously have no clue why there calling or any information on the case. We have never had this kind of situation in our lives and it is hard enough without the fear of being taken advantage of a mortgage company.
March 31st, 2012 at 5:17 am
31 Mar 12 – I have Seterus and my experience has been the same or worse at some times. I have spent hours on the phone and received countless insurances that this will happen or that will happen. But Seterus screws up almost deliberately. Once I paid the property tax, to make a long story short I was told they wouldn’t pay the property tax, but they did. So the county got double paid. The county returned the double payment money to Seterus within about 2 months. But Seterus attempted to bill me for more than 6 month, fees associated with their overpayment of property tax. The whole time, they had the check from the county. A mortgage with Seterus is a horrible thing to live with. I recommend never using a bank to buy a home. Never, Never use a credit union much more simple. Seterus is the absolute worst organization I’ve ever had to work with. Terrible company makes one sick to their stomach.
May 10th, 2012 at 2:15 pm
I had a similar experience. My original mortgage servicer folded and my loan was transfered to Countywide>Bank of America>IBM LBPS. IBM LBPS (Lender Business Process Services… can you get any more abstract than that?) then became Seterus.
I asked why the name change, and was told something like “IBM doesn’t want their name involved in our company”. Whatever that means.
This all took place since 2007. Including LBPS changing it’s name to Seterus, it’s all such a shuffle, that it’s left me wondering how I could possibly get out of this without walking away. Even if I could properly refinance, the last five years have been such an insane shell game, what regional bank or credit union would want to go through a year or more of hassles with Seterus? I don’t believe for a second that all their obfuscations and stonewalling (“sorry we lost your paperwork”) is the result of incompetence. It’s clearly willful, and someone’s abusive money farming strategy. If they can prevent me from making a fair agreement with some steady, local bank, by hiding my note in a maze of paperwork, they keep winning, and I keep losing: my money, my hopes for a decent future, and my sanity.
My biggest fear, is that I honor this mortgage agreement, as I have been since the beginning, and at some point, maybe even the last payment I make, I get told by some other too-big-to-fight-off lender or servicer that I’ve been paying the wrong people the whole time, because the chain of custody of the note was somehow rediscovered, and the house isn’t mine. Of course, banks don’t make money by being honorable, so my old ass gets put on the street. That’s my biggest fear. It’s why I regularly think about walking now, before I get further down the rabbithole.
But then am I acting on fear or am I being wise to cut ties with dishonorable folk? It boggles my mind.
May 26th, 2012 at 6:57 am
My experiance with Seterus has been a real horror story. I needed to do a short sale on my home in Cape Coral, Fl and so I called Bank of America and told them what was going on. Two weeks later they send me a letter saying my contract had been sold to Seterus.To make a long story short, I went into short sale. My property was put on the market at 99,000 my unpaid balance was 95,000 first and 25,000 second mortgage. We had no interest so we lowered the price to 79,000 before we got an offer for 80,000 cash. The bank turned it down. The person then offered 85,000 and again was turned down. So then Seterus says we need 105,000 which is 10,000 over the first mortgage and with the comps on my home being around 80,000 I was dead in the water.I want to thank our government for looking out for my welfare and doing all possible to help us keep our homes.I am 66 years old and now filing bankruptcy,it was my only alternative to rid myself of all these charges and having peace of mind in whatever lifetime I have left.OBAMA YOU SUCK!!!!!!!
June 8th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Two women from the beaverton office are in custody for hit and run.
They ran over a poor woman on West Burnside and left her in the road to die. It took a while but fortunately the cops have arrested these two mortgage criminal gals from Seterus. They really thoufgt they could get away with murder. They had the car trailed and sent to corbett to be repaired and had family and boyfriens to help them try to escape the law. I guess if you work in a sleazy corporate environment with criminal psychopaths that screw people every day, it’s not much of a leap to run someone over with your car and leave them for dead.
I sincerely hope these two spend a long long time in prison and that people say no to Seterus for being such a cesspool of filth.
October 19th, 2012 at 10:25 am
My mortgage was just transferred to Seterus and I am horrified by what I am reading! Isn’t there someplace to go for help if this company is as illegal as alleged?? I don’t know what to do now.
May 10th, 2013 at 8:29 pm
I’m sure many of you have seen the pages of entries from a google search about “seterus”. Looking at them, you’ll see complaints similar to any of yours on these results pages. Imagine, when LBPS (fore-runner of seterus) (IBM) first took over servicing of our loan (May 1, 2009), as well as NEVER sending a first payment coupon, not being able to find our loan in the system (phone call May 10th,2009) and consequently assessing a late payment letter dated May 6th, 2009, I sent a letter to the “contact us” link at ibm.com, I got a phone call from “Karen” the next freakin day. She fixed the problem. I should have know how “eff-ed” up they were when this company, owned by IBM, did not have online payment services set up. If I remember correctly, didn’t IBM have something to do with “computers or something” a while back? I eventually found out that IBM stands for I Be (a) Moron. In the four plus years now, seterus has tried pages 1, 2, 3, 4, etc ….. of the screw homeowners handbook to steal money from us. Take heart! They’ve not gotten an extra penny from us. Just hours upon hours of time on the phone.
May 12th, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Thank goodness I found this. Seterus just turned my mortgage over to their foreclosure department for non-payment, even though I sent them payments. They sent them back. “Non-payment” is a crock. Seterus is a crock. I originally got behind last fall and called in December to make a repayment plan which went info effect. I paid January and February, but they sent the March payment back. When I called to find out why, the agent told me that the repayment plan was set up incorrectly by their agent so they canceled it. After a song and dance, I sent two full payments which were subsequently sent back, except I have not received the cashier’s check yet. The next agent told me that the previous agent misinformed me, and she gave me a reinstatement amount and said she would generate a letter with that information. I called four days later to check on the loan modification I had filed after talking to the second agent. Supposedly it was canceled because the borrower is deceased. I am the executor of the estate, on the deed, and have been paying on the mortgage since her death in 2009. Everyone at Seterus up to this point told me it was ok, I was allowed to apply for the modification on behalf of the state. Now this witch told me that was incorrect. She also told me that the “reinstatement” amount previously quoted was incorrect, it was a couple thousand dollars higher, and that the previous agent had not requested a reinstatement letter. Now supposedly I have to pay them $8,000 plus within the next four weeks. I have $4k because that’s what’s in arrears. They refuse to set up a new payment plan, even though it’s their own agent’s fault (the first one who supposedly did the repayment plan incorrectly). I hate these effers. I will definitely use the corporate contact information I see here to complain. I agree with the poster who said that Fannie Mae probably wouldn’t be too happy if they found out their servicers were denying customers the opportunity to catch up on their loans. I don’t think Fannie Mae wants my property although I’m in the middle of doing home improvements. If anyone has any comments or advice, please feel free to share here. I will provide my email address for private discussions if needed. Thank you.