ORLANDO,Fla. — A Lake county woman claims changing insurance companies turned into a mortgage nightmare that almost forced her out of her own home.
She claims the lender drained her escrow account, paying insurance premiums to the wrong company. When her loan payments soared to pay for the mistakes she called action 9's Todd Ulrich for help.
She didn't know it, but Cassandra Shafeek's home was covered by two separate insurance policies.
One she had canceled but her mortgage company paid the premium anyway. “The right hand didn't know what the left one is doing,” said Shafeek.
Her mortgage is handled by Ocwen Loan Servicing. She claims a year ago, she did not renew her policy with Universal Property Insurance and picked a new company then notified Ocwen about the change.
“No doubt I have documentation to support that,” said Shafeek. But Ocwen paid Universal a full premium, not once but twice. Over $6,000 and that increased her monthly loan payment by more than $500.
Ocwen Loan Servicing, based in Orlando has an ugly history including a federal judgment that accused the company of deception and illegal practices. It's rated F at the BBB with more than 3 thousand complaints.
BBB President Holly Salmons, “These customer service and communication errors on the companies part cost these consumers thousands of dollars.”
Shafeek also blames Universal Property, but claims Ocwen made the mistake much worse, because it didn't send an escrow statement showing the payment errors for 10 months. Then every attempt to correct it failed. “And I started calling and asking what was going on and I got nowhere.”
Todd Ulrich reached Ocwen which said it has to pay insurance bills received, but it would investigate.
48 hours later, Cassandra said Ocwen called her for the very first time. Now her extra insurance premium had been refunded, and her mortgage payment won't increase.
“There’s no way I can afford paying almost $600 more for my house,” said Shafeek.
Ocwen services two million mortgages, and blamed the mistake on a third party, that it helped correct.
Universal Property Insurance did not return our calls.
Ocwen response:
“Ocwen services more than two million mortgage loans of borrowers throughout the country, many of whom are non-prime borrowers struggling to meet their mortgage payments and stay in their homes. Ocwen is committed to helping all of our borrowers. If a borrower raises a matter of concern, we attempt to work with the borrower promptly to find a potential solution. We recently have been in touch with Ms. Shafeek and we identified the cause of the problem, which was caused by a third party. We have determined a solution to her situation.
Ocwen does respond to borrower complaints brought to us through the BBB. Previously, we explained to the BBB that due to privacy considerations for our customers, our process was to respond directly to a borrower, rather than to share private customer information with the BBB, which is a private non-governmental third party. Recently, we have requested that the BBB work with us on a process to obtain authorization from a borrower for Ocwen to include the BBB on our responses. We since have implemented this new process, and Ocwen now directs all responses to customer inquiries submitted through the BBB to both the consumer and to the BBB.”