HSBC Horror Stories

SK in Kentucky said: “Here is a copy of our 5th and most recent letter we sent last week to Beneficial/HSBC. We got the wording from another watchdog site and the HUD website:

Dear Beneficial/HSBC;
This is a “Qualified Written Request” under Section 6 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). We are writing to request the following:

(1) an easy to read printout of ALL ENTRIES made during the entire life of our loan;
(2) a complete and legible copy of our original loan application complete with proof of income;

(3) a legible copy of any insurance premiums, add-ons or extras attached to our loan;

(4) a loan modification to lower the interest rate for the remainder of our loan
We have reason to believe that the loan terms were misrepresented to us at the time of application and further obscured and/or modified prior to signing. We refinanced with Beneficial in August 2006 to consolidate bills and because we were led to believe our monthly mortgage payment would be lower. It is actually much higher. We are also paying our own taxes and insurance on top of the higher payment. We believe that our income was inflated on the application or else the refinance would not have been possible. We believe that our appraisal was also inflated and that our current mortgage is up-side-down. It is also our belief that certain documents may have not been presented at all, such as the addition of insurance or other “extras”.

Here is a Summary of our attempts to gain a Loan Modification from Beneficial thus far:
1. We started the process of trying to renegotiate this loan in October 2007 when we spoke with your Hardship department. On October 26, 2007, we faxed all the documents we were told to obtain a hardship. We were told that we had been denied for hardship because we have HSBC credit cards and that was not good enough reason to obtain a hardship. (We are currently unable to make any payments on our credit cards and still find it hard to keep our mortgage payment paid up to date)

2. In November 2007, we made an appointment to come into the local Beneficial office to speak to someone about a loan modification. The young man we spoke with pulled our information on the computer and put in a request for a refinance. He told us we were denied for the refinance because our credit scores were too low. We explained to the young man that we wanted a loan modification, not a refinance.

He then told us to try Beneficial’s Hardship department. We told him we had already tried that and had been denied. He looked that up on the computer and told us we were denied because our income was too high. He also told us that my husband’s income was listed as twice what he actually makes! Beneficial had put down that my husband is paid weekly when he is actually paid bi-weekly. We turned in our last three (3) pay check stubs for both of us at the time we filled out the loan application so we are perplexed as to how this could have happened!? The young man said he would have to talk to his supervisor but of course the supervisor was out of the office that day. We called back the next day and we were told that the supervisor said “No” to our request for a loan modification and for us to try the Hardship department again.

3. The next thing we tried, as advised by Beneficial, was to visit our local HUD office. The HUD counselor we met with called Beneficial to try to work something out but all the operator wanted to know was why had we fallen behind and when we would get caught up on our loan. She had no interest in helping us whatsoever. We also had several mean and harassing phone calls from Beneficial at home and at work until we finally got the mortgage caught-up with our tax refund. We still owe over $700.00 in late fees and continue to have difficulty making our payment on time which causes a $99.00 late fee to be added monthly.

All through the course of this we have written 4 letters to Beneficial begging for help and filled-out a “Payment Assistant Form” on the website and have still heard nothing. The only correspondence we have received are form letters from Beneficial telling us that we now “qualify for refinancing so visit your local branch now” even though I am sure our credit scores have not magically gotten better. At this point, we feel that Beneficial is giving us the run-around and has no intentions of helping us keep our home. We feel that we were talked into a terrible loan with an outrageous interest rate and now because our home is upside-down and our credit scores are so low, we are “stuck” and cannot refinance out of this mess.

If we had known then what we know now we would have never agreed to this loan.
At this time, we have not contacted an attorney or anyone else for help with this matter. We have learned a lot by simply doing research on the Internet, reading the HUD website and various watchdog groups that have given us free information. Please understand that we want to keep our home. All we want is a simple loan modification to permanently lower the interest rate for the remainder of the loan in order to afford our monthly payment.

Let this letter serve to document our request to have our communications responded to in a timely manner. We understand that under Section 6 of RESPA you are required to acknowledge our request within 20 business days and must try to resolve the issue within 60 business days. Sincerely…

(Now we discovered that this account has been taken off the website and when we called to inquire, they said the website is having troubles, even though we are still able to access our side-loan with them. We are not sure what this means.) Any ideas or comments?”