UPDATE: First Tennessee reached out with this response:

"First Tennessee Bank is dedicated to our customers and we take this matter very seriously. We are reviewing this situation, but we do not release personal information about customer accounts."

James Dowd
Business Communications Manager
First Horizon National Corp.

Original post continues below...

The Maryville Daily Times reports that a local man took out a 15 year mortgage with a local bank. The bank was then acquired by another bank, and all was well. Then the second bank was acquired by First Tennessee and its parent bank, First Horizon. Something fell through the cracks and that's when the troubles began.

According to the article, he had been making regular, on-time payments for 11 years and his loan was in good standing. But when he went to First Tennessee to make his monthly payment they wouldn't accept his money. FTB had turned the mortgage processing over to another company and said he would need a form from them. He contacted the third-party mortgage processor, and after a couple of months got the forms he needed. He sent payment using the new form, and First Tennessee refused his payment again. He tried to pay in cash, and that was also refused.

This went on for six months until he got a notice from yet another company saying that his mortgage was being foreclosed unless he paid it off in full. After a lot of runaround, he told his boss about it. His boss talked to the bank and, according to the article, paid off the mortgage. (This part is a little confusing.) But the guy still doesn't have title to his home and all First Tennessee would tell him is that his foreclosure is "on hold."

Nobody from First Tennessee or the mortgage processing company would talk to the paper about the situation. I'm guessing the guy doesn't have the resources to lawyer up, despite having maintained meticulous documentation of the entire comedy of errors.

This is happening to a working man who is just trying to do the right thing and provide for his family. Now he's in danger of losing their home. This is what happens when giant, faceless megacorps take over and nobody knows how anything works any more and nobody cares except shareholders. And in this case, shareholders are losing money they should be making from this man's mortgage payments. It goes beyond negligence. It's outrageous. It should be criminal, if it isn't already.