Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Furious with USAA mortgage

As I write this blog, let me reference a fellow USAA member’s experience:
http://blunoz.blogspot.com/2008/08/furious.html#comments

This story brings back familiar feelings and happenings. I love my other lines of business with USAA, however their mortgage branch treated me very poorly, to say the least. I have been a member with USAA since 1998.

My experience started by being told on the phone that the USAA processing fee is $350. Later I found out this is not the USAA processing, merely a “Good Faith Deposit”.

If you looking at the Good Faith Estimate (which I later learned to review with a fine tooth comb), you will see USAA actually charges $600 for a processing fee. I asked for a match on another GFE that was only $250 processing, but was told USAA has a policy of not matching any fees. Keep in mind the GFE’s I compared were very close in all ways except processing fee. Why did I stay? I thought I would receive better Customer Service.

Next my processor kept calling me at work when I asked to be emailed, did not review the document packet with me, and kept asking me for USAA statements; when they are available internally and all he had to do was put in a request to the applicable department to save me the headache.

My processor kept saying things like, “You’ll run into these hurdles with any mortgage company.” I didn’t want any mortgage company….I wanted USAA mortgage?!...or at least I thought I did….

I asked if a manager could help review my loan in process, however I was never given a manager. A “team lead” called me back on the phone, who was very rude and curt…and basically just told me a lot of nonsense.

He told me:
1) If we refunded your $600, we would have to refund everyone’s. (Keep in mind I wasn’t asking for a full refund, just a match on the processing)

2) Next he told me, “We got you a new processor right way…that is how much we care about customer service.” (The new processor was as a result of me demanding a new one!)

3) We provided serious coaching to your first processor (Here I was thinking, why are you blaming the little guy?? It wasn’t my intention to make his day horrible. Since I am talking to you, do what YOU can to make my process smoother….please)

After I closed the mortgage (because my closing window was short, and I didn’t have time to select another), I learned a couple things:
1) I wasn’t dealing with USAA. I was dealing with what they call “an affiliated processing partner”. Their emails all end with @theprocessingstaff.com

2) I called an “Executive Resolution Team Member”. My contact was very nice on the phone, but I was supposed to get a call back from the manager of the processing group…and I never did.

3) My mortgage was farmed off to US Bank. If you read other blogs on this topic or just run a Google search, you will see that USAA outsources their mortgage payments/escrow to either US Bank or PHH typically. People have problems here also, since it isn’t USAA directly. Ack…what is in store for me?

What did I learn from this entire mess? I learned that while I love my other USAA lines of business, I would never use their mortgage again. I learned that no concessions were ever made in my experience to keep me as a customer or make things better. I also learned that USAA mortgage is a collection of affiliated partners and payment/escrow outsourcing…..so when you think you are dealing with the USAA ideals you are used to. YOU ARE NOT. I also hope that I can save others out there from a similar experience.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this valuable information! I am genuinely disappointed to hear about USAA Mortgage's poor treatment to a long-time, loyal customer. I know I will be getting my mortgage from elsewhere.

    ReplyDelete