Complaint / Review
Amerisave Mortage Corporation
Amerisave Charged loan extension fee and never telling us when it applied (many days prior to lock in expiration date)

History is adapted from an email sent April16 Ms. Carol Poupart President, Amerisave Mortgage DearMs. Poupart Weare writing you because we have been having a problem with our refinance loanand it seems nobody at Amerisave wants to hear our concerns. You are the last stop before we decide onwhether to walk away from the loan. If we do walk, it will be because we believewe cant trust Amerisave to give us the straight story about any issue thatshould arise. The perception of publictrust is an asset that no company can afford to lose, if they wish to remainsuccessful going forward. Theother attached file contains a letter we wrote to Ms. Marisa Davis, anAmerisave representative, asking for a re-consideration of a loan extension feeand explaining our side of the dispute. Unfortunately, in her answer, she didnot address any of our points, but instead blamed us for everything — which isexactly what Rebecca Raskin, another Amerisave representative, did. It appearsneither party was able to look at the issue from the customers point of view. Perhapsthe perspective of a higher level manager will help to clarify the realconcerns we have and help you to address these concerns within yourorganization. Thecritical point is that we were led to believe by various Amerisave emails andthe website that April 15th was the end of the 30-day period lock in periodwhich we could settle. Unfortunately, wefound out that Amerisave was secretly working towards an April 9thdate a date they did not share with us until April 7th. Normally, we would have been able to adjust ourschedule to accommodate this very late change of settlement date, butunfortunately we were on the road visiting colleges that week so we werespending hours in the car every day. Even given this logistical challenge, wewere able to offer a time and city to settle on April 9th. Youll see in ourletter that Amerisave chose not to accept that offer, nor did they pursue apossible Saturday closing in Detroit.instead they chose April 14th whichwas after our return home. When they told us of that settlement date, they saideverything is fine, which led us to believe that the extension fee issue hadbeen resolved in our favor. We had no reason to believe otherwise and so we hadagreed to this date. It was only at the settlementtable that we found out that Amerisave had misled us and the fee was stillthere. The everything is fine turned out to mean everything is fine forAmerisave and not for us. Atthe settlement, we signed all document except one. This is now where we are. Itwould be convenient to complete this loan, but it very hard to do this when Amerisavedoesnt want to look at any role they had in the multiple miscommunicationsthat occurred. The attached letter we wrote to Ms. Davis details the manyproblems we ran into and these problems speak to some real procedural andcommunications concerns. Iassume Amerisave is in the business of successfully completing loans.inmarketing, the perception of doing the right thing is very valuable to abusinesss long-term prospects. I hope the problems we have encountered are theexception rather than the rule, and that after reading our attachment youll beable to correct what appears to be procedural and communications issues withinyour company. Then help us to complete the loan process by removing the loanextension fee. Thankyou for your attention to this matter.

Signed

Copy of email sent to Ms. Davis, Amerisave's National Sales Manager a day before:

Ms. Marisa Davis

April15

Im disappointed that you made a decision without hearingall sides in the dispute. I had hoped you would take an unbiased look at allthe facts and talk to both sides before making your decision.&nbspIts always very easy to blame the other sidein a situation like this, because it avoids having to take a closer look at whatcould be a procedural problem in your organization. When the rate was locked on March 16th, our interpretationof this was that we had 30 daysto settle. Your representative saidthe rate was locked untilApril 15th; there was no languagethat indicated that there was a three-day cancellation period that had to beincluded within that 30-day timeframe. When the Linear representative informedus of this fact last night, it was the first time we had heard of this. Onprevious closings, this issue never came up so we had no experience of this newprocedure. Nothing from Amerisave put us on notice that ourinterpretation wasn't correct. Amerisavedid not disclose this critical piece of information —that we didnt have 30 days like we thought — we had only 24 days.&nbspThis omission is central to thisdispute.&nbspSo we ended up working on thebasis that we had 30 days to settle, while Amerisave was working on the basiswe had 24 days to settle. Thus, there was never a true meeting of the minds. All the communications from Amerisave alluded to the factthat, yes, there was a lock extension fee, but it did not state what day it wouldapply or even why it was being applied since it appeared to us we would easilymake the 30-day deadline. To us, it appeared to be an arbitrary fee that wasadded on at the last moment for no apparent reason. As a result, we based our decision-making on April 15th, while Amerisave knew all along that the critical date was April 9th. The very first time we found out about theApril 9th date was in an email we received on April 7th, when we were on the road. Even so, weoffered up a closing time and date of April 9th from 2-4PM inMeadville PA, which is where we were that day. Since Meadville is close to EriePA, even that would have been possible. If Amerisave wanted to pursue it, allthey had to do was call the hotel and we would have responded. They did not. On their own, Amerisave chose, and I want to stress thatfact: on their own, Amerisave chose April 14th at 6pm as thesettlement date and time — saying in an email to us from Keisha that everythingis fine which we interpreted as this issue had gone away. Recall that April 14th closing date was suggested to Amerisavewhile we were operating under the belief that April 15th was thedeadline.&nbspHow wrong we were! I note thatAmerisave chose a date which maximizes our cost and your income. Settling in Detroit, Michigan on Saturday was also possible. Recall that I had said in an email thatwe were heading to Detroit Friday evening. But no effort was made to arrange a close forthat day either. We learned that Linears people also work on Saturdays lastnight as well. &nbspIn effect, the man fromLinear was far more informative than the Amerisave representatives.

If Amerisave had been specific on dates from the start and informed us that, even given the 30 day lock in, we would need to settle on or before April 9thto avoid extension fees, then this is what would have happened. We would havemade it work. We have been in the midst of dealing with a $200K collegedecision, so the refinance was just one of many activities that were ongoing. Wewere also planning a trip to visit the final list of colleges from March 31stto April 12. So settling on April 14 or 15th was just fine with us. Had we known that April 9th was the deadline, wewould have had to push everything up to March 29th simply becauseour plans were so fluid that we couldnt even tell where we were going to be orwhat we were going to be doing in that 12 day period. Now going from lock tosettlement in two weeks probably wasnt possible, even if we had met all yourdeadlines, so we would have discussed the situation with you and you probably wouldhave advised us to hold off the lock until we returned. We would have accepted that. However, lacking the specific knowledge thatApril 15th wasnt the critical date because of the omissions fromAmerisave did not allow that process to even begin. Last night when speaking with the Amerisave representative, almostthe first words out of her mouth were its all your fault. It has been myobservation that like W.C. Fields said, blame is for dogs and small children. Your representative did not facilitate the process and, in fact, I had torequest a supervisor.&nbspHad we known thatthe $725 fee was being imposed at closing, we could have escalated the issuelast week and resolved it instead of having to do it at what is now the 11thhour.&nbspRecall that the Amerisaverepresentative had said that was everything is fine.&nbspTo our detriment, we believed what we weretold by the email. Remember in my first paragraph I said there were proceduralproblems, well you now see what those were and how the lack of training, knowledge, and communication added to this total collection ofmisunderstandings.

I would ask you to reconsider your decision given thesefacts. We may have been delayed in getting back with some information, butthere was a complete failure by Amerisave to communicate the essence of whatthe dates really meant for all sides rather than a veiled threat of extensionfees with no clarification of why they would be necessary. Also, you set up newloans all the time while we have very little experience in this area. We depended on you to our detriment to helpmake this all come together.

Signed

Result: Amerisave reduced the$725 extension fee by $300. We chose to settle to avoid further charges and still fight in other forums A report was later filed with the Atlanta Better Business Bureau but nothing came of that approach. The last communication to the Atlanta BBB was not returned.

This is still a ripoff which is why I'm filing this report. Amerisave never did tell us when the loan extension fee applied until they applied it.