Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Company Update – September 15, 2009

We’re hearing from a number of Taylor Bean & Whitaker customers whose have accounts have been frozen for some unknown reasons. We’re also hearing that Cenlar’s toll-free number is no longer being answered.

Here’s today’s question:

Ilyce: My question pertains to the Taylor, Bean & Whitaker bankruptcy/frozen account issue. I participate in the Equity Accelerator Program (Paymap Inc.) that was originally sponsored by Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.

I refinanced my Taylor Bean & Whitaker loan with Bank of America and the Equity Accelerator program has been deducting my mortgage payments and sending them to Bank of America. I have just been advised that three August debits totaling $2,844 are part of the asset portfolio that was frozen by the FDIC.

Equity Accelerator has not been able to articulate why Bank of America mortgage payments were being routed through Taylor Bean & Whitaker. They also assured me that Bank of America was in the loop and that I wouldn’t be subject to late fees or credit issues resulting from a late or missed payment. I called Bank of America to confirm and neither statement was true. In fact, they were pretty clueless and referred me to Aegis who manages their accelerator program.

Aegis had my records and also indicated that my payments were frozen. Can you explain to me how my Bank of America mortgage payments would be processed via a Taylor Bean & Whitaker account and why Bank of America would have no knowledge of the issue?

I would also like to understand how I got caught up in this if Aegis was managing the Equity Accelerator payments to Bank of America. I would also like to know if I can expect to recover my money.

From, William

William, I can’t explain this, but I have sent along your question to the folks at Bank of America for comment. I will also make sure someone from the FDIC sees it. I don’t know what state you live in, but your first call should be to the banks and mortgage lender regulator in your state. In Georgia, that’s the Georgia Dept. of Banking and Finance. Each state has someone managing the Taylor Bean & Whitaker issue (whether full-time, as the regulators in the Southeast are finding they’re swamped and need a full-time person to manage all of the calls) or part-time.

Stay with it. I have been repeatedly assured by the Bank of America team that as long as you have tried to make your payments, you will not be dinged on your credit, nor will you be charged late fees.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I think the issues with Taylor Bean & Whitaker go pretty deep. I think that there was some funny playing around with the money and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see charges brought up against the folks who owned Taylor Bean & Whitaker as well as Colonial BancGroup. How these entities are all tied together – well, I don’t have those answers yet.

But stay tuned. I’ll continue to update the site as new answers come in.

For those of you concerned about Cenlar, it does appear that Cenlar is no longer answering its toll-free number. I’ll see if I can find another one.