If you’re polite, you can get away with being incompetent

Sonofabitch! We’ve been Arkied again.

We initiated a refinance of our mortgage back in April with the bank that handled the initial mortgage in 2007.

I’ve checked with the bank a couple of times since then to find out if we have a closing date set and both times I was told they are really backed up because so many people are taking advantage of the lower interest rates, but that closing would probably be in a couple of weeks.

This being the second week of June and six weeks since we completed the necessary paperwork on our end of the deal, I’m growing increasingly impatient. I want to make travel plans for the next couple of months, but I’m being held hostage by the uncertainty of a closing date. I don’t want to be jerked back from some distant location for closing on the refi.

So I called the bank – which I will mercifully allow to remain unnamed - again this morning. The young woman who took my call pulled our file and told me they were still waiting for verification of Maria’s employment and copies of our driver’s licenses and Social Security cards. And since it has been so long since they got a copy of Maria’s paycheck stub, they need a more recent copy of that too.

WTF?

I distinctly remember the loan officer making copies of our licenses and SS cards.

I emailed this info to Maria and she called me a few minutes later to say she had just gotten off the phone with the woman at the bank after ascertaining that her employer never received the FAX requesting the verification of employment.

And, the 4.5% interest rate we locked in back in April is due to expire on Monday. Interest rates, of course, have risen significantly since then. She told Maria we can file for an extension of the 4.5% on Monday and probably keep it.

So, had we not inquired today, the car most certainly would have gone over the cliff and we would have lost our low interest rate because these people are so fucking stupid that they can’t pick up the phone and let us know they need more documentation. Some of it to replace items that we already provided and they lost.

The woman we spoke with said she just got back from maternity leave and nobody was doing her job in her absence. I learned a long time ago that there is no such thing as a good excuse and this is a classic example of that.

(

So now I have to run home and get Maria’s most recent  paycheck stub and take it and the other stuff to the bank and do my level best to restrain my rage over their incompetence and bungling.

And they, of course, will try to cover it all by being oh-so nice. That’s how it works around here. People screw up left and right, then use cheerfulness and politeness as a shield so you feel like a jerk if you unload on them.

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Lifelong friend Susan Kent Crumbo (she's second from right in the front row of my 6th grade birthday photo in the "Chick Magnet" blogpost earlier this month), writes:
As a mortgage lender, I can only laugh at your trials. What bullshit. A decent lender would have done a better job with her documents and you would have closed a long time ago. Dont let that rate go! Tell them that it is not your fault that they cant keep track of your docs and you are not going to pay to extend your lock. You want a free extension. Rates have gone up so dont let go of it.