ComplaintsforFirst Reliance Bank

• Initial Complaint

  03/22/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Escrow inappropriately being applied. At closing, no escrow selected by me. 9/16/21 my insurance company erroneously bills FR for insurance, they pay the $501.40 then send me escrow analysis of $41 ish/month for the next year. Starting next payment I am instead billed $97.49/mo. 4 months later I have continued to pay this $97.49 and now told I have a remaining balance of $111.44, which when I attempt to pay in full to remove escrow from my account, I am told that I owe more than that because they have now taking it upon themselves to escrow my account indefinitely, and they're applying my extra payments as escrow "cushion". I spent 2 hours on the phone with 6 reps this morning being told that all that needed to be done was to pay the $111.44 and escrow would be removed from my account. I go to pay, confirm with the rep they transfer me to, get told "you're wrong" in those exact words. I ask for supervisor, who says "that's nice, but no, you're wrong, is there anything I can help you with today" in a snarky tone. I ask for her supervisor, get put on hold another 10 minutes and told "she's busy, she'll call you later". So, as of now, I am no longer going to pay FR anything until the escrow is zeroed out with the remaining $111.44 balance being paid today (of which $97.49 is included in my 3/1 payment). They have failed to abide by the terms in our closing documents (contract) and therefore they are in violation, so litigation is the next step.

  Business response

  07/21/2022

  Business Response /* (1000, 8, 2022/03/31) */ Contact Name and Title: John H***** VP Contact Phone: XXX-XXX-XXXX Contact Email: *******@firstreliance.com Dear Better Business Bureau, Today we were made aware of a complaint filed to your organization from Mr. ******* ********** concerning a servicing error with our bank. We wanted to update you on that complaint and the steps we took to resolve the issue with our customer. We immediately reached out to the customer via phone call when this issue got to my desk. According to our records Mr. O'Connell's taxes and insurance should not have been escrowed. Our Servicing group received a billing statement from his insurance carrier an paid the amount in error and set up an escrow account. We have reached out to our servicer to correct the loan. We should have this resolved in a couple of days. I have spoken with Mr. O'Connell and he understand this is being resolved. We take issues like this one extremely seriously and always want to ensure we do the right thing for our customers. Our customers are the most important part of our business. We also appreciate the opportunity to learn from these issues and make sure we are constantly refining our processes and procedures to better serve our customers in the future. We strongly hope that since this issue has been successfully resolved that there would be no negative impact of First Reliance Bank with your organization or on your website.

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