patrick.net

So, WF kept sending Elliemae love letters, suggesting that I call them and refinance. They even called me several times, whispering sweet messages into my recorder about how much they valued me as a customer and how badly they wanted to help me refi.

I called them in early January, and they offered me a sweet deal. Under HARP, all I had to do was sign some papers and they would drop my interest rate. It cost me around $500 in fees to drop my payment another $150. I had better than 80% ltv and a good credit score, so it was win-win.

So all should have been good - but I live in one area and work in another. Sometimes I don't make it home all week... so I asked them to send any correspondence to my work address, and to use my day phone number (cell) when they call me.

The first go-'round, they called me faithfully. They called me when I was with patients, in my car, at my house, in endless/useless meetings... my point is that they called me, and assured me multiple times that I was a valued customer and that they wanted to please me by providing personal service. And, during each phone call they ended with "don't forget to fill out the customer service questionnaire you'll get..."

WF departments simply don't talk to each other. They sent the loan docs to my house instead of my work, then called me several times urging me to sign the papers asap. I told them I hadn't received them, and it took a few days for them to send another copy to my work, leaving me with a couple of hours to review it & find a notary, drive there & sign the paperwork, then fed-ex it back. I went to a WF to see if they would notarize, btw - they told me that when the notary returned from lunch there would be a charge for the services (even tho mortgage company WF had told me it was free...). Oops, I missed a signature, my bad. Perhaps if I had been given more time, I wouldn't have done so.

Apparently, WF called my home phone and left an unintelligible message on my recorder telling me that the loan didn't go through. I truly didn't hear the message.

They called me on my cell phone early in the morning on the day my payment was due (the one I thought I didn't have any longer), telling me to make the payment so that they could send the loan papers again. I asked why they hadn't told me... and they told me that they had left that message on my home phone. The one that I couldn't understand.

So it was back on the merry-go-round. WF sends the loan docs to my house (again); this time I went home and got them a few days later, sent them back and the loan finally went through.

I filled out the questionnaire, as requested. My beef was that they called my cell so many times, yet when they really needed to give me information they called my home. They sent the loan docs to the wrong address twice, and each time I spoke with them about these issues they either told me that they had called or sent the docs to the only number/address on file, or that they weren't responsible for the fuck-ups because - well, they weren't. One woman called me on my cell and tried to tell me that the home number was the only one on file. Seriously, it was more important to be right than to be correct.

I wrote my comments in the little box (tried to copy them but the page wouldn't let me) and hit "submit." And they were erased. This time, I was smart. I wrote them on a document and copied the text, tried to paste it onto the page... and it wouldn't take. So I wrote them down again, and again they were deleted. The third time I was too pissed to write them and wrote an email to the head of the mortgage company.

They're investigating my complaints. I'm sure that the outcome won't matter to me, because I got the loan and we've all moved on. I'd like to say that I wanted to make them better and that hopefully the problems wouldn't happen with anyone else in the future, but truthfully I was fucking pissed at their disorganization and I wrote a letter. Case closed.

But I would never use WF again if it hadn't been for the fact that my mortgage was with them in the first place, and the deal was too awesome to turn down.

#housing