So this week we received a letter in the mail stating that we “may be owed a refund of several thousand dollars from your mortgage lender.” It then gives the date we signed our home loan and the amount of our original loan. The letter goes on to say:

“Government studies by the FDIC as well as financial audits of lenders have shown that thousands of mortgages contained mistakes or overcharges. Your monthly mortgage payment may have been miscalculated and you may be due a refund from either your current or previous mortgage lender. The average refund is $1,497.32 and one third of the refunds equal $3,000 to $7,500. You are eligible for a mortgage analysis and refund review.”

At first I thought wow, I would not mind a refund! Then I think…this is not from my mortgage company, and all it says for the return address is: Mortgage Auditing Program//Division of Consumer Services – of WHAT company? So I Google: “Mortgage Auditing Program” and all I find are tons of hits about how this is a scam. That you have to pay $249 to sign up, etc. Yuck, I hate stuff like this, because it always makes me think of my grandma and how if she had received something like this, she might have believed it. She was very trusting of companies she worked with, and this is just vague enough and enticing enough to mess with your mind. Who does not want to learn that they could receive a refund from their mortgage company?

If you stop to think about it, the only time you usually see any type of refund from a large company for a mistake is through a class action lawsuit. So if your mortgage was miscalculated, then most likely others were too, or it was part of a larger situation where large numbers were effected and charged a fee they were not truly required to pay. If that happened, you would hear about it in the news or directly from your mortgage company.

Further research shows that the Better Business Bureau gave this company an F rating and they had 41 complaints in the last 12 months. With the following comment: “For $249 the company performs a review of the payments you have made to your mortgage lender.”