Citifinancial - Joyce Bowser Customer Service Representative ripoff-threatening with foreclosure, verbal abuse-complaints about us Kittanning Pennsylvania

We had two accounts with Citifinancial. Our main 1st mortgage was with their main office in Irving, Texas. Our 2nd mortgage was with Kittanning, Pa. We were refinancing with another company, Beneficial, to pay-off all our accounts with Citifinancial. The people at Beneficial were taking care of all the details of getting the pay-offs and sending the checks to Citifinancial. This was done around Thanksgiving 2005. Our payment for the 2nd mortgage at Kittanning, Pa. was due each month on the 21st. On Dec. 23rd, Joyce Bowser from Citifinancial at Kittanning called to ask why we hadn't made our payment on Dec. 21st. We told her that we paid it off by refinancing with Beneficial. They had taken care of mailing the check for pay-off. She said they were never paid off. We had to make some phone calls back and forth between Citifinancial and Beneficial and found out that Beneficial had mailed both checks to pay-off both the 1st and 2nd mortgages to the main office in Irving, Texas. Then Citifinancial in Kittanning, Pa. said that Irving, Texas had never gotten the check for the 2nd mortgage. Beneficial said that they overnighted the checks for pay-off to Irving, Texas the next day after we refinanced (which was on Nov. 23rd, 2005) so it was overnighted on Nov. 25th, because the 24th was a holiday. They said that Irving, Texas got the check for the 1st mortgage pay-off, but not the second one. Both checks were in the same envelope. I don't know how they didn't get the 2nd check?!!

Therefore, the Kittanning Citifinancial office said that we were late in our payment and that they needed a payment to stop it from going into the late accounts. They said they needed the payment by the end of the day on Dec. 23rd and when they called it was around 5 p.m.


There was no way we could travel 25 miles to get the payment there in time. We weren't sure if they would take a direct-debit payment from our checking account over the phone, but didn't have much money to do this anyway, since the account was already supposedly paid-off and we were now making mortgage payments to another company in December. I felt that we couldn't afford to make another mortgage payment in Dec. especially right before Christmas. Kittanning Citifinancial threatend to turn our account over to a lawyer if we didn't pay this right then. We hung up the phone on them and said that they were liars, they wouldn't do that. Meanwhile, Beneficial said that they would have to investigage to make sure that the 2nd pay-off check that they had sent "hadn't" been cashed, and once they had that proof, they would reissue another check, but it would take a few days and would be after Christmas, later that week. This wasn't good enough for Kittanning Citifinancial.


They called us back, saying "Don't hang-up" and continuing to make statements to us that they were now going to foreclose on our account if we didn't pay it that day. We told them to go ahead, that there wad nothing else we could do. We called Beneficial and told them about it. They couldn't believe it. They said they didn't like the attitudes of the representatives they had dealt with over the phone at Kittanning Citifinancial, that they were snotty with them. A few days later, Beneficial called us to say that they were going to reissue a new check and needed a new pay-off amount, since it was a longer time period, the amount changed. We called Kittanning Citifinancial to request a new pay-off and asked them to fax this to Beneficial, which is in Clarion, Pa. When the person answerered the phone at Kittanning Citifinancial and we told them who we were, that person stated, "Oh, you are the customers who we have all the problems with."

I don't feel that that is appropriate to complain about customers in person, over the phone, to me it was a form of verbal abuse. We never did anything bad to them or caused any trouble to them. We always made our payments promptly, never late, and it was not actually our fault that they didn't get the check. Beneficial said that they were going to remedy this as soon as possible; they took full responsibility. Citifinancial also told us that Beneficial told them that they were only paying the original pay-off amount and that we would be responsible to pay the difference between the two pay-off amounts. We asked Beneficial if they did infact say that, and they told us no, that they said they told Citifinancial that they would write a check for the origianal amount and another amount for the difference and that we were not responsible for the difference. After that we got a letter from a lawyer Citifinancial had contacted instructing us that if we didn't come to an agreement with Citifinancial to resolve this that foreclosure would occur. (Another threat).

Meanwhile, Beneficial called us to say that they had overnighted another check to Kittanning Citifinancial for the new pay-off amount. This was before Jan. 1st,2006 the week after Christmas 2005. Next thing was that I got another statement from Kittanning Citifinancial showing non-payment and late fees, etc. I called them again and they told me they had gotten the pay-off from Beneficial and that the statement was automatically printed before they had gotten the pay-off from Beneficial, to disregard that bill. After this I got the loan papers in the mail from Kittanning Citifinancial showing a payment in full. They also sent a letter stating that they would miss us as a customer and were glad to be of service to us, and that if we ever need anything in the future, to keep them in mind. I doubt I will ever use their services again, after the problems I had with them in Dec. 2005.

Suzan
Hawthorn, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.

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