LendingTree
Wasted my time and damaged my credit ripoff

So here goes:

I'm looking to buy a home. I go to lendingtree and fill out a request. They ask for some general information such as employer, salary, residence, debt, loan amount and type of loan you want. Less than 24 hrs later I get a response saying I "PRE QUALIFIED" with 8 different lenders. Great! Right? NO!

About a week later I am informed by "MyFICO Scorewatch" that my FICO score dropped 22 points. I look at the details and find out that the reason for the 22 point drop was a recent inquiry from CREDCO (they supply lendingtree with your credit report).

Now that the damage is done to my score, I might as well work with lendingtree to get my loan. I contacted the representative and he requested more info from me. They needed 2 years woth of W2s, my last 2 paystubs, and my last bank statement. I faxed it all over to them and waited for a decision. Next day I got one: They said that because of a few collections listed on my report (total $4500) that I ca CANNOT be approved for ANY loan amount. They said the shopped it to 150 different lenders and not a single one would approve me for a loan.

I don't understand!

Why did they say I was "pre qualified"? Well

Here's the deal:

In order to "pre qualify" with lendingtree, all you need to do is give some basic info and then "HIT THE SUBMIT BUTTON".

NO, I'm not exagerating. I put it to a test: I logged into my lendingtree account and submitted a new request using all my previous information, but this time I requested a loan in the amount of $2,000, 000 (yes, two million dollars) and guess what. I was "pre qualified"! AMAZING, I was "pre qualified" on a $2 million dollar, zero down loan, all on a $55,000 per year salary.

Now here is what is truely amazing... I talked with a couple of local "real" morgage brokers and here is what I got from them:

Broker 1 told me that, based on my salary and employment alone, they will "PRE APPROVE" me for a $300,000 zero down loan.

Broker 2 told me, after pulling my credit report, that they can "PRE APPROVE" me for a $400,000 zero down loan.

Of course this flies in the face of lendingtree's "we can't approve you for any amount with any lender" statement.

So, in the end it all came down to this:

Lendingtree did nothing for me other than:

1) waste 2 days of my time (the home I wanted is no longer on the market and I had spent several months looking before finally finding the RIGHT one)

2) damage my credit score by 22 points (this would be the equivalent to having a tax lien and 2 collection accounts added to your report)

3) put me on some kind of call list (since my application with lendingtree, i am getting all kinds of BS calls, even though I was and m registered on the "do not call list"

BTW when I asked the rep at lendingtree about pulling my credit report and the damage it did to my score... He said "your score did not drop 22 points" and "we do a soft pull". MY ASS! He was kind enough to send me a copy of the report he had (a 3-in-1 version provided by CREDCO) and of course it is a highly detailed full report also known as a "HARD PULL".

Lendingtree surely made a few hundred dollars on selling my information to every tom, dick, and harry. All I can say is F#K LendingTree.

Company: LendingTree
Country: USA
State: Nationwide
Site: www.lendingtree.com

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