Fresh start

So my Brooklynites are shed of their lender "Tank of Ta Bearica". Not of their choosing, but a good thing nonetheless. We've been struggling with the lender almost since day one.

On day one, it was all roses & unicorns shooting rainbows out their butts. It's gone downhill since then. I wasn't enamored of Tank of Ta Bearica to begin with, I've dealt with them before. They've screwed with my clients before. I don't think they offer good service. I don't think they are looking out for the interest of their customers. I don't like them.

But my clients came to me with them and it's not my place to tell them they couldn't use their own bank. What I did say was that I hadn't had good results with them in the past, but that maybe this gal would be different. Not so much.

So far, the non-responsiveness of the gal is the least of the problems. But she didn't know me. I will track you down. I will use different phones to call you if I have to. I will use every number you give me and every email address (in a five minute period) as well if I need information. See, I think if you're my clients bank that you should give us updates as to where we are at in the process. If you have an automatic email that gets sent out every week to tell us where we're at, that's fine. Just give us something. But if you're not going to update us on some regular schedule, for the love of Pete DO NOT AVOID MY OR MY CLIENT'S CALLS! Are you kidding me? To not answer the phone or return a call because you don't have anything new to tell me? Or even worse, to avoid calling me or my client because something bad has happened and you don't want to deal with it?

That last sentence is correct. On two different occasions this gal didn't call when something went wrong. It wasn't until I got a hold of her that I heard. The first was the low appraisal issue. I didn't get a call or an email. It wasn't until I contacted the gal the next day to see if it came back that I heard the news. Then I had to be the one making all the calls to figure out how to get the appraisal reviewed.

The second issue was this most recent one, wherein Tank of Ta Bearica has decided not to give the loan at all to my guys. Why? Because of something we knew when we went into the process that takes time to fix. 90 days to be exact. And they knew it when we went in as well. We were very upfront about what needed to happen and everyone agreed it could be done. But after jerking us around for a month, they've decided they can't do it. At all. Nice, very nice.

So, because of my previous experience with Tank of Ta Bearica, I had already alerted another lender (and my client) to the possibility of a last minute change. So when it all went to hell in a hand-basket late yesterday, I simply called my client, who then called the backup and we're on our way again with hardly a hiccup in the transfer.

Hopefully, with people who actually give a rat's ass about customer service working with us we'll actually be able to get to closing in one piece. My guys get the house they love in time for the holidays, the backup gets some good word of mouth advertising and I get to tell future clients why I prefer not to work with Tank of Ta Bearica. Because just saying that they're the Devil isn't as compelling as actually proving it with first hand experience.