When I met my husband, he was a young GI with bad credit, and I was a college senior with no credit. After we married, I worked tirelessly on the family budget, ensuring we were never late on our bills and that the family had food on the table. Being in a military family is not always easy, but the learned discipline and sacrifice carried over into our finances and brought with it stability. Our credit score is now almost 800. We both have good jobs, plus military retirement income. Refinancing our house should have been easy. I can say with certainty that I haven't been as stressed as I've been in the past four months since my husband was active duty. And while we don't consider ourselves quitters, we finally knew when it was time to admit defeat and end the farce that should have been a cut and dry, easy refinance with Loan United.
Troy pretended to know what he was doing, when it was clear he didn't. His communication was lacking, to say the least. After multiple stretches of hearing nothing for him, I'd complain about the lack of communication, and he'd blame it on his higher ups. It would have taken nothing for him to at least contact me and let me know they were still working on the loan. For the first two months of this four-month nightmare, I had to message Troy often, asking what was happening and if he'd forgotten about us. Sometimes it would take three days to answer. Other times, I wouldn't get an answer.
Twice, my husband and I were notified last minute of a loan closing appointment, and only after me prodding Troy for a date and time. My husband had to scramble to get off work the first time. Troy sent us a text on the way to the appointment letting us know the closing was cancelled because they forgot to get the survey from us. Troy was very apologetic and said we were getting a $200 gift card. BTW, we never got it, and I know we never will.
The second time I had to cancel a doctor's appointment after I'd let Troy know in advance about this appointment. Troy said it was the only day available to close, or it would carry over another month. But guess what? That closing was cancelled, too, and we weren't warned by Troy this time. The notary was kind enough to call us a few hours before the appointment and ask us if we'd heard that the closing was cancelled. Nope. We hadn't heard. Here's the interesting part. I had already warned Troy that I had spoken to a local mortgage company who said Texas law said we needed an appraisal for a cash out refinance. He had assured me he was in this business for twenty years and knew what he was doing. Guess what? Turned out we needed that appraisal, which was why we couldn't close.
That was the day I had a break down. My husband said to cancel the refinance and find someone new, but by this point interest rates had gone up, and Troy said we were still locked at our low interest rate. I asked Troy who was supposed to pay for the appraisal. He wouldn't answer me. I found out when I got a $600 bill for the appraisal. I had to be the one to follow up with that appraiser, then another one when that appraisal didn't work out. As it Turned out, Loan United was using East Coast appraisal companies who then subcontracted to Texas appraisers, but those appraisers weren't doing it for $600. They wanted a minimum of $1300, and the wait could take months. At this point, I no longer believed anything Troy had to say, and I had little faith in getting an extension for our interest rate.
I'd had enough. After all this headache, I finally sent Troy a message, "Please cancel this loan application and refund me the appraisal fees. I shouldn't need to explain why."
His response, "yea the appraiser is trying to charge 1300 dollars"
That's it. No apology for the four months of hell. No promising to make this right for us. Once again, the fault was someone else's.
But it gets better! After I sent that message to Troy, I got this email from Loan United: You recently closed a loan with Loan United. Tell us how we did. We would love your feedback to improve our customer satisfaction. We thank you for your business and appreciate your patience during these difficult times. PS: We love 5 star ratings :)
That's right, Loan United sent me an email asking me to give them five stars for screwing us around for four months. We found a new, local mortgage company. Our new loan officer has been amazing and got us approved day two and by day five had us scheduled for an appraisal. She has been sending me updates every day! She has also taught me a valuable lesson that the peace of mind with good customer service is far more valuable than interest points. We are paying higher interest. Thanks to Loan United dragging this out, we missed out on the best rates.
Thanks, Loan United, for treating this military veteran and his spouse like total crap. Thanks for honoring our sacrifices by screwing us out of thousands of dollars. read more
