Well, I did it. USAA
mortgage department had the temerity to send my wife and I a survey on how they
did in handling our mortgage for our home in Illinois…..and I felt it only
proper to respond…I mean, just to tidy up lose ends…..sort of put a period on the
entire process.
Or, in this case, an exclamation point.
And with all due respect to the gentler sex…..I elevated “douching
out” to a new level…..really upped my game….set the bar really high so to
speak.
So much so that, about half way through the survey, a
screen popped up saying “You have responded with an unusually high number of
low marks, would you like someone from our mortgage department to contact you?”
I wrote in the box “I would rather you not…..you had 45 days
to address my concerns and used that time to only exacerbate the problems. I am left with the understanding that you all
followed your process and that it is the process itself that is dysfunctional,
so unless you are going to change the process, save the call.” (they did not, but I will get to that).
And before any of you freak, I did not mention your stories
by name….though I gathered from your out pouring of support earlier that all of
you would gladly pony up your stories in court.
So, of roughly 50 questions designed to give the respondent
every opportunity to sing their praises, I gave them a “strongly” disagree or
non-concur on 45, a “disagree” or non-concur on three, and a “not applicable”
or “did not apply” on two.
In the narrative portions I cited the following:
-Thirty to
45 days is a lie that should not be told.
It takes every bit of 45 days, and then possibly more.
-Pre-approval
letters for a mortgage of up to $350K at a locked in interest rate is useless
when the buyer shows up at the closing and USAA has increased the interest rate
and therefore the monthly mortgage payment.
-There is an
industry standard for credit ratings; a credit rating of 780, which mine was,
is considered the high side of good, and with at least one bureau, the low side
of excellent. That number is actually
useful in setting mortgage interest rates….USAA should start using that; USAA
should also stick to the “locked in” interest rate, which it did not.
-A potential
buyer should not have to threaten going up the chain of command in order to keep
his mortgage application moving through the process.
-Debt paid
off during the mortgage process should not be held against the borrower and in
fact, should benefit the borrower (during the 45 days I paid off the remainder
of a home improvement loan, used the proceeds from the sale of our Kansas home
to pay off another debt, AND to pay $20K down on our, much less expensive, Illinois
house. I DID buy a new truck but even
that left me in a better financial position than I was in when I got my
pre-approval authorization.
-On the
issue of documents, yes, I was asked for the same document more than once, and
supplied them more than once. And while
I am at it, I fail to see how providing three years of past income tax returns
indicates that I am going to have an income in the future. Additionally, I do not understand why supposedly
educated people cannot understand that I was in the same job for years, that
the contract was held by different contract companies, and that I was never out
of work (how many times did I have to explain to different people that my job
did NOT change, my office did not change, my people did not change…just the
logo on my paycheck changed. As a result
of the mortgage underwriters failure to grasp reality, I was treated as someone
that changed JOBS frequently).
-Getting a phone
call, after business hours, the night before closing, relieved that the title
company acknowledged receipt of the mortgage documents is hardly in good taste,
or good business. Informing me that I
need a cashier’s check after banking hours….ditto. And being late with the funds for the date
and time of closing as dictated by you…..other than being embarrassing to me,
did not cast USAA in good light.
-The realtor
that sold me my house, the title company that handled that closing, and the
title company that handled the purchase of the Illinois house are all in
agreement…..they would rather not handle anything with the USAA logo on it.
As I became bogged down in what turned out to be a major
colon pain with USAA, several of my vast network of friends….okay, mostly
facebook friends, all wondered why I went with USAA and not (in no particular
order) Navy Federal Credit, Quicken, Pentagon Federal Credit, and a host of
banks local to those writers homes. My
answer was that I would have gone with any of them when I realized the mess I
had entered, but that starting over again would have gotten me no closer to a
closing date because I would have been starting over. To be honest…..I would have DONE it, would
have started over, if I had only realized the ass pain that would accompany the
extended USAA process.
My bad….I went
into this with eyes wide open.
Do I feel like USAA was deceptive? To a degree I do. Beginning with the interest rate that I locked
in at the start of the process and did not get at the closing table. Next up was my credit score. One of two things happened in the process…..either
the credit score, which everyone loved at the outset, went down, and that would
be hard to understand, since I have said, my situation only strengthened during
the process….or it didn’t matter….I can not decide. Next, it was almost impossible….no, it was
impossible, to ever know what the next step was. Every time I called or emailed I was always
informed that USAA needed additional documents….but at no time was I given a
complete list of what was needed.
Additionally, my identity security program informed me by email of every check into one of my credit references…..which ALWAYS coincided with my
submitting a requested document; in forty five days I had twenty or more credit
alerts…which could NOT have been a positive.
I ended the survey by telling them no…..I would not ever recommend
USAA mortgage services to anyone, especially a member unless they wanted to be
treated like a criminal getting a Freddie Mac loan for a house they could not
afford. I added that I would actively
discourage anyone I knew from working through their mortgage program. And, for any actual USAA people that might
have actually worked in the system (USAA has already sold the loan), if the
answer is that they have subbed the process out, then the sub-contractor is
doing absolutely NOTHING to enhance the USAA name.
And yes, I already have a POC at Quicken……I will be
re-financing as soon as I can……and at this point, I would take any interest
rate if I thought it would be a poke in the USAA eye.
I pulled the trigger on the survey and my phone rang from a
USAA number within 15 minutes.
I didn’t answer.
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