mamajoan

I called the mortgage company today for two reasons: one, because their online billing system hasn't been updated to reflect my new payment amount. And it doesn't let you type in an amount to pay; you can only pay the amount that it thinks you owe. You can pay more, if you want, but it doesn't let you pay less. So they said they would straighten that out.

I also called because I noticed a discrepancy on the statement that I received -- the one showing my new payment amount. Here's what it says under the heading "Anticipated Escrow Disbursements":

Items to be paid from your escrow account:
CITY TAX 278.80
Total Disbursement(s): 278.80

Monthly Escrow Deposit: 30.98

Your Monthly Deposit was calculated by dividing the Total Disbursement(s) by 12.

Well, anyone with half a brain can, I think, see at a glance that 278.80 divided by 12 is not 30.98. So I called and asked the chick about this.

First she asked "what are you getting?" i.e. what did I think 278 divided by 12 was. I said, well I didn't actually do it all the way out, I just eyeballed it, but it's like 23 something. She hmmed and hawed and then pulled out her calculator. *headdesk* Is it just me, or should a person who works at a mortgage company be able to do basic math like that? Not coming up with the exact figure, maybe, but glancing at it and seeing that, indeed, the answer would not be 30?

Then she tried to tell me that the 30.98 was arrived at by dividing a different number by 12. That number, 371.78, is shown elsewhere on the statement that I have. If you look at the form, it appears that the 371 was arrived at by adding up 30.98 twelve times.

OH NO YOU DIDN'T! So I told her quite firmly that yes, if you add up X twelve times and divide the result by 12, you get X; but that is circular logic and does not actually tell me where you got either of those numbers to begin with. Because the sentence shown on the form, "Your Monthly Deposit was calculated by dividing the Total Disbursement(s) by 12" is quite clear, but also quite clearly untrue.

Long story short, she did come up with an explanation that makes sense (to wit, my monthly payments are higher because I have an escrow shortage). I guess their template for this form isn't really set up to display that, hence why the numbers don't add up the way the form says they should. Which is annoying, but whatever.

The other sad part is that, if I understand correctly, she asked another person in the office do the math (278/12) so she could compare it to the result on her own calculator. And then she told me, as if it might be news, that they both got the same result and guess what, it was 23. *headdesk*

Groan. Basic math, people. Learn it, use it, love it. Especially if you work for a freaking mortgage company, for pete's sake. Yeesh.