Recently, our 2nd mortgage was sold to another loan servicing company. This is probably 3 times now. It’s the market. Ok, I get it. Don’t love it.
But it’s really annoying for the customer because now I have to go and set up new accounts in the new company’s system, set up the original payment, only to then set up the recurring payment once first payment has cleared (for reasons passing understanding). It’s a terrible system, but it’s what we have.
Now, this only occurred to me today because I got a phone call from the new servicing company while I was sitting in a conference session. Have I heard from them before today? No, I have not. I couldn’t take the call, so I let it (silently) ring, just assuming it would go to VM. They didn’t leave a VM. I mean, why would they do that?!?
Keep in mind, I had logged on to their system, set up an account, and all of that mess when we first got the letter (yes, a physically printed sheet of paper) in the mail from the old servicing company informing me of the change. When I tried to link the loan (from the old company) with my name, loan number, and SSN, the system came back with “an error occurred with our system…please try again later”. Utterly generic, so I left it there, and vowed to try again before the due date of the 15th. (Spoiler alert: remember this date!)
Well, life happens. This is my second week traveling for work, and I have not been in my normal routine. So, when the call came in this morning, it sparked my brain and I silently chided myself for not remembering to take care of this before the fated 15th of the month.
After the session ended, I opened my laptop and called them back to get this thing going. As I punched in my SSN, an automated message told me “Your loan number has changed to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx”. Well, that explains why the linking I had attempted 2 weeks earlier with my old loan number was not working. I wrote down the new number, typed that in to the linking screen, and boom goes the dynamite. We’re in business.
Now…
GOOD customer service would have been to contact me 3 days ago, on the 14th of the month instead of the 17th. You know, BEFORE my due date of the 15th. Now, I have set up the first payment to pay out today (the 17th), and they will most likely charge me a late fee. (If they do, I’m getting on the phone so fast…)
And not only that, I now have a second memory exercise (because the first one was a raging success!) of setting up the recurring payment once this first payment clears. So, they’ve set me up again (for failure). This time, though, I’ve added it to the calendar (what I should have done the first time).
All of that to say…(again?!!) what happened to customer service?ng
