My original mortgage lender has a very functioning web portal to set up autopay and check my account.

They sold my mortgage to a big bank whose web portal and app are pure garbage. Constantly crashing, the autopay frequently just doesn’t autopay, and getting a statement history requires delving through a bunch of random menus.

It’s really obnoxious that I just get no say unless I refinance.

Imagine buying a bond that you are not allowed to sell, and just have to wait for maturity. You'd pay less than for a normal bond, right? Same goes for a mortgage lender. They would risk less and you'd be paying a lot more for such a loan, if you can find one.

This exact thing happened to me. Went from an extremely nice bill paying experience to a buggy crashing one.