Mishandling of Loan Lend America

James and Donna Healy
1823 S. 300 E.
Anderson, IN 46017
765-378-4678
Loan number: 2009042527

Michael Primeau
President
Lend America

Mr. Primeau:

I am writing to let you know how very unhappy we are with the service received from your company while trying to obtain a loan. In late November 2008 I contacted your company concerning a loan to finish a new addition to our home. Etna Rosso, loan analyst took my call. I explained to her that we had started an addition to our home so we could make my three developmentally disabled relatives residing with us more comfortable and safe. We had enough money to do the framing and get it closed in, but we needed additional funds to complete the inside of the structure. She took my information and said we qualified, no problem. A few days later she called and said all was well and we could look at a closing date of 20 December, 2008. On the 19th I hadn’t heard anything so I called her. She informed me since we had already started construction we couldn’t do the type loan she had set up for us. She hadn’t bothered to call us at all. Had I not called I wonder when she was planning on letting us know. She then said we could do a renovation loan but we couldn’t get funding until we had all the plumbing, heating and electrical done. I told her we didn’t have the money to do this. That was the purpose of asking for the loan in the first place. She said, and I quote, “Couldn’t you just borrow the money from someone and pay it back when we fund the loan?” I told her I wasn’t trying to borrow from someone else!! I asked if the time to finish those projects was going to be a problem, since it would take a while to complete. She said, again, no problem. We were already in the system and the paperwork would be put on hold; so we stretched and begged our workers to work without full pay so we could get that done. We called to let her know those projects done, then she said we had to have a Certificate of Occupancy…more money out of pocket and people we couldn’t pay, all believing as we did that it would only be a few weeks. We got the certificate. We called again. She then told us we had to send all the paperwork again because our initial file had been shredded since it had been so long and she was trying to protect us. We sent all the paperwork back in. She set up for an appraisal. The appraisal came back at $225, 000. Then she said we had some flooring, trimwork, paint and porches that had to be done before they would fund. By this time we were extremely frustrated, but had people we owed due to her inability to give us full information each time we talked to her. She kept telling us “this is the last thing and then we can fund this loan” every time we talked to her. We finished the work and the appraiser had to come out again (adding up to almost $1000 in fees). I called her a couple of days later to see if it was in and she told me it was perfect, all the paperwork was done and we could close end of the week, no problem. No contact after that. From that time on, she told us three separate times we had a closing date, the paperwork had been signed and everything was approved. We asked several times to talk to a supervisor to no avail. I finally had to call the complaint department several times to get responses. This dragged over more than a month’s time. We were supposed to close in May (three separate times, according to her, and yes we have copies of the e-mail traffic from her stating so). Because she lied to us repeatedly, we had payments come due on our mortgage and ended up having to pay those. Finally, we got to the closing date. When the closer started with the paperwork, the amount of the loan was $22, 000 lower than it was supposed to be. The appraisal amount was lower than the appraiser quoted. The interest rate was higher than we were quoted. It was a mess. We signed the papers because at this point we have to be able to pay the people we owe or we would have cancelled this loan. I called your complaint department this morning. They transferred me to Andreas Elestheriou, Etna’s supervisor. He acted as if he understood, but had no idea any of the changes had been made, or anything about all the lies Etna told us. He couldn’t tell me why the totals were different or why the appraisal was changed. Shouldn’t loan officers know about changes before they send anything forward and shouldn’t the client be informed? We have been totally coerced by your people, lied to, cheated and treated terribly. If your whole company conducts business like this, I can’t imagine how any of you sleep at night. There will be a copy of this letter sent to the Better Business Bureau and I am investigating whether there is any other authority I can report to. I thought my husband was going to have a heart attack trying to get through this process and we have had extremely hard times trying to make this work. We did our part and your company was very shoddy about doing their end of the process. We have been through several mortgage loan processes and have never had this much heartache or been treated so badly.
This was supposed to be a special year for my family. My two sisters and a niece who are developmentally disabled were supposed to have a better and safer place to live, my son was graduating this year and was planning a graduation trip (which had to be cancelled) and to give up much more he should have been able to enjoy for his senior year. We were supposed to finally get a mortgage that would give us more freedom to do the things we wanted to do. In an economy that is awful, we were going to be doing better and being more secure. That was what this loan was supposed to do. Instead, we have had to beg, borrow and scrape to do the things this loan was originally intended for. It was intended to finish this house….we had to do that ourselves, begging people to wait for their money, putting them off time after time because your workers couldn’t get their jobs done. What was supposed to be a good year for us turned into a total nightmare.
I don’t know if you really care about your company’s reputation, or if it’s just a money game to you, but I will do my best to let everyone know how we were treated. If you really do care, I hope you will look into this and try to fix it so your future clients don’t have to suffer through what we have. I would appreciate a response.