Search for RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing and most of what comes back is other borrowers: review sites, forum threads, complaint boards. That tells you something about how people arrive at the question, and it also points at the mistake that costs them the most. A complaint is not a dispute, and a review is not a record.
What RoundPoint is, and why your loan arrived there
RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing is a mortgage servicer. A servicer is generally not the owner of the loan; it is the company paid to administer it — taking the payments, holding the escrow, answering the phone, and reporting the account to Equifax, Experian and TransUnion every month.
Servicing rights are bought and sold, and they move without the borrower being asked. That is ordinary. The narrower question is whether the account is being reported accurately, and whoever reports it is a furnisher under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
A review is not a dispute, and this is where cases are lost
People who find an error usually do three things: they call the servicer, they write a review, and they file a complaint. All three are reasonable. None of them triggers the duty that matters.
The furnisher’s obligation to investigate is set off by a dispute filed with a credit bureau. Until that happens, the company is answering you as a customer service matter, on its own terms, with no obligation to reinvestigate anything and no record that a court will later look at.
So send the dispute to Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, in writing, with the documents that prove the entry is wrong, and keep proof of the date you sent it. Complain as well if you want to — but do not let the complaint stand in for the dispute.
Where servicing goes wrong on a credit report
- Payments made to the previous servicer that never arrive at the new one, reported as missed months.
- Two servicers reporting the same mortgage at the same time, so one debt appears on the file as two.
- Escrow shortfalls treated as delinquency, so a disagreement about taxes or insurance becomes a late payment.
- A balance a loan modification changed, still reported at the pre-modification figure.
- A loan discharged in bankruptcy still reported as owing, or carrying a balance after discharge.
- The transfer date recorded wrongly, opening a gap that reads as non-payment.
A mortgage is usually the largest account on a credit file. One mis-reported month on it moves a score further than almost anything else.
What the law requires once you dispute
Any company that reports information about you to the credit bureaus is a furnisher under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and those duties are not discretionary.
When you dispute an item with a credit bureau, the bureau must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation, and the furnisher must investigate, review what the bureau sends it, and report back. If the information is inaccurate or incomplete, it has to be corrected with every bureau it was reported to.
Whether any of that actually happened is recorded inside the companies’ own systems — the dispute file, the automated codes passed between bureau and furnisher, and the record of what a human being reviewed, if anyone did. Those records come out in a case and nowhere else. A dispute is answered by whatever a company chooses to tell you; litigation is answered by what it has to produce.
What the statute allows
For a negligent violation, a consumer may recover any actual damages sustained as a result of the failure, together with the costs of the action and reasonable attorney’s fees as determined by the court.
For a willful violation, a consumer may recover actual damages or statutory damages of not less than $100 and not more than $1,000, plus such punitive damages as the court may allow, and again costs and reasonable attorney’s fees.
On a mortgage the actual damages are usually concrete: a refinance declined or priced higher, a home equity line refused, an application on a second property denied, and the months spent trying to correct something that would not be corrected.
The deadline
An action must be brought no later than two years after you discover the violation, or five years after the violation occurred, whichever comes first. Write down the date you first saw the error.
What to send us
- Your mortgage statements, and any notice saying who is servicing the loan
- Your credit report from each bureau, showing how the account is reported and under whose name
- Proof of the payments in question — bank records, confirmations, canceled checks
- The modification agreement, discharge order or payoff letter, if one applies
- The dispute you filed, to which bureau, and proof of when
- Every response, including any letter saying the item was verified
Pull all three reports rather than one. An account reported correctly at one bureau and wrongly at the other two is itself evidence about the investigation.
What it costs
The fee provision is written into the Act: in a successful action the costs and reasonable attorney’s fees are recoverable from the defendant, as determined by the court. That is why this work is handled on a contingency basis rather than billed by the hour.
You pay nothing unless we win.
Where your situation fits
If your loan moved between servicers, see our pages on Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing and Select Portfolio Servicing, which cover transfer problems in more detail. If a subservicer is administering the loan for the bank that owns it, see Cenlar. If the bureau is the one refusing to correct the entry, see the credit bureau lawyer page. If you are still at the dispute stage, start with credit report dispute lawyer. Where a dispute has already failed, the FCRA lawsuit page sets out who can be sued. Our directory of mortgage servicers lists contact details for the major companies.
Have your report reviewed
The Kim Law Firm represents consumers in Fair Credit Reporting Act cases against mortgage servicers, the credit bureaus, the specialty reporting agencies, and the companies that furnish information to them. Send us your statements and your reports and we will tell you whether we see a claim.
Contact us to have your credit report reviewed.
Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.
This page is about credit reporting accuracy. The Kim Law Firm is not affiliated with RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing LLC, and this page is not a complaint about that company. It describes how mortgage servicing can produce credit reporting errors and what the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires when it does.