We've known for quite a while that DH would be deploying early next year. He's in the National Guard, but has been on Active Duty since early this year in preparation for their mobilization/deployment. As soon as we had his active duty orders in hand, I sent SCRA requests with copies of his orders to our 3 main creditors. 2 were car loans and the third was to Saxon Mortgage. Saxon's was the only one that I sent via certified mail and even though it was signed for they said that they didn't receive it. I ended up faxing a copy to them which they acknowledged at the end of April, 2 weeks after the certified mail had been signed for. It took them until almost the end of July before they finished processing our request. When they received our request though, they reversed all of the payments that we had made back to March. That meant March, April and the May payment that I had just sent them. 3 months of payments not credited to our account. At the "high" point, they had 4 months of mortgage payments that they didn't apply to our account.
Since requesting relief under the SCRA, Saxon routinely charges miscellaneous fees to our account which I then have to call and ask about, then fax in a letter disputing the fee and pray that they remove it from our account. The one month it was $19 worth of property inspection fees and just this month it was $90 for a Broker Price Opinion. We've never been late in making our mortgage payment. We made the full regular payment through the whole 3 months of begging Saxon to get it done. They just kept putting it into a suspense account and our online account at one point showed as being over 100 days late. I went to JAG and the attorney there called Saxon on the phone and was treated much the same as I was when I called. They were rude and uncooperative, although they actually let him speak with a supervisor which they would always decline to do for me.
They've reduced our payment amount to what it would be if our loan was at 6% interest, but only credit the principal at our original 10.6% rate. The other 2 companies that I requested relief from made our interest rate 6%, so our principal payments on them are increased.
We're actually having to refinance to a 7.625% interest rate because we don't have enough equity in our home to do a VA refinance once the fees are added on. I had originally planned on refinancing once DH came home from deployment, but Saxon is obviously interested in making things more stressful for us instead of really helping a military family. I'm just hoping that we're able to get the refinance done before DH mobilizes next month.
