Complaint / Review
Fifth Third Bank
Ripoff - Practice fraud with truth in lending laws disclosure

We recently had a closing for a refinancing with Fifth third Bank. Application process went smoothly, we received a good faith estimate with our interest rate and payments listed on it. We received a call from the processor and loan officer confirming a closing date.
We show up at the closing and preceed to sign the docs and notice that the interest rate has changed. Because the Loan officer was not required to come to the closing, we had to contact her/him to verify why the interest rate that was originally stated on application and good faith estimate had changed. After several phone calls and about 30 minutes later they called back and indeed verified that the interest on the closing docs are incorrect based on what they had locked in 3-weeks earlier. They also stated that once they lock in a rate it usually cannot be changed without notification.

However upon putting us on hold, and further investigating they found out the rate had been suddenly changed by someone in their underwritting department the day before without notifying us or the loan officer.
We of course stopped the closing per the loan officer instructions and was told they would get back to us later to reschedule the closing after further investigation.
3-hours later we received a phone call from the loan officer, stating that for some reason underwriting had unlock the rate the night before and had increased our interest rate because they claim that we after being approval 3-weeks ago, were considered to be a high debt risk. That in order to keep the rate that was originally quoted that we would need to bring in extra money to close to buy down points or increase the loan amount in order to pay for the extra points.

Nothing has changed on our credit since we put in this application with them. We have not purchase anything.

We called the Corporate office later that day to file a complaint about the whole process and was told someone would get back to us. Of course no one has...

I thought that The Truth in Lending and Disclosure law in Mortgage Banking was established to keep banks and mortgage companies from this sort of practices.