A Rant: Why I Hate Bank of America

Explain to me how someone is in charge of processing your mortgage and yet is never there to process it. I get it - buying a house is stressful. I know; I've done it before. But the incompetency of Bank of America is almost too much to bear. I wish I could fire them right now but if I have any hopes of settling before June 30 and securing my tax credit money, I'm stuck.

I must say, my loan officer, Stephanie has been exceptional. I would love to give anyone her number if they were looking for a loan, except for one problem. She works for Bank of America. Once she handed the loan off to the processor, I entered no man's land. In Stephanie's defense, she checked in with me periodically and in fact, any time I really need to get through to the bonehead processor, she made it happen.

It started with a list of standard, ridiculous requests. Can you send us a picture of your family? Can you tell us what kind of food you like to eat? Can we see the bank statements of your next door neighbor's cousin? While I found the requests a little intrusive, I complied and was left with just a few things I needed to provide; specifically things related to the sale of the house Stephen and I owned together. And this was a problem. Because not only did Bank of America hold the existing mortgage, they were also the ones in charge of  processing Stephen's refinance. It took about 2 months for them to finally send the packet to underwriting and then they had to cancel settlement 3 times due to paperwork errors on their part. They miscalculating something and had to call at the last minute and tell Stephen the payout was off by $10,000. By the day of settlement, that number had shrunk to only $7000 the original number. They also sent papers that had me resigning onto the loan that I was coming off of.  Then they failed to release the settlement funds. Then they made the check out to Stephen instead of me. It wasn't until this past Thursday that Stephen was able to deposit the check into the bank. And apparently his bank doesn't have alot of faith in Bank of America because they put a 5 day hold on the check.

So earlier this week, I get a call from Stephanie asking is the appraisal division had ever sent me the report. I told her no, that Kevin, my processor had said he was sending it a few weeks ago. He never did so I assumed it was ok. It was not. In fact the appraisal was much lower than the contract price and no one ever felt the need to let me know until 10 days before settlement. This may be the only positive that has occurred because I managed to get a $20,000 price reduction.

Then I get an email from Kevin, who I haven't heard from since about May 18th, asking for a list of things he needs from me. These things include signed HUD1 and warranty deeds on the house Stephen and I had owned. When I investigated this and tracked down the settlement agent at 9:30 Thursday night, she explained that all signed documents are sent back to Bank of America and because we settled in the house, we didn't get signed copies, instead electronic ones (without signatures).They also wanted Max's birth certificate to prove that Stephen is Max's father but that's a whole other story. Kevin also told me to just wait until Friday morning to send anything because he was going to make sure everything was sorted out. He never emailed. I called. I emailed. I called Stephanie. I emailed Stephanie. At 6:30pm on Friday night I was informed that Kevin was on vacation until June 14 (my settlement is June 11) and that because I have failed to get them the requested items (that I was waiting to hear from Kevin about), I will not be able to settle on Friday.

And this is why I hate Bank of America.