Consumer complaint received 2021-04-12
Company: Social Finance, Inc.
State: TX
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Applying for a mortgage or refinancing an existing mortgage

Complaint:
I began the process to refinance my home in early XXXX. After shopping several lenders, I chose to proceed with SoFi, as they had quoted me a 15 year mortgage at 2.25 %. I discussed this with the loan officer XXXX XXXX  and he verbally told me that the 2.25 % was locked for 60 days. 

Shortly after this, Texas experienced a severe ice storm and I was without power and reliable access to email for almost a week. The two weeks immediately following this were extremely busy for me as I am an engineer in the power industry. 

When I resumed working on my loan application in early XXXX I was told that my loan application had been withdrawn for failure to provide a W2 and recent pay stubs. I never received these requests, and when I searched my inbox I found that XXXX had quarantined them as suspicious, since they were sent using a 3rd party application and were flagged as likely phishing attempts. 

Mr. XXXX then explained that I was not locked at 2.25 % as he had led me to believe. He then created a new loan at 2.625 %, half a percentage point higher than previous. I was unhappy, but this was still a lower rate than my current mortgage so I continued with the application. 

Mr. XXXX XXXX began handling most of the paperwork from this point on. Some of the issues with Mr . XXXX include : - Providing me the wrong email address to request a payoff quote from my current lender. This delayed the application by nearly a week, since he did not respond for several days when I informed him of the bounce. He then wanted me to call in and sit on hold during a very busy workday to expedite the payoff request. 
-One version of the disclosure form had the wrong school district and county listed for the escrow account. I raised this concern several times beginning in early XXXX and still have not received acknowledgement of this error. 
-For the employment verification, I clearly explained that my local work address is just a field office and that the HR department is located in another state. I provided the phone number for HR. Instead, Mr . XXXX performed a XXXX search and called the number listed for my local field office. This led him to speak to a salesperson, whom he proceeded to ask several personal questions about my income, job performance, bonus pay, etc. This was a gross violation of my privacy. The salesperson to whom he spoke is a subordinate of mine. My salesperson asked Mr . XXXX to instead contact HR, but Mr . XXXX was insistent and went on to discuss personal details of my finances with someone who works under me. 
-Upon confronting Mr . XXXX about the violation of my privacy during the improper phone call to my salesperson, Mr XXXX XXXX accused my salesperson of lying to me about what was said in the call, despite the completed questionnaire showing the answers to these exact questions as filled out by Mr XXXX XXXX. 

Finally, today Mr . XXXX provided me with the details of the final closing, which has already been delayed. The interest rate quoted is now a FULL PERCENTAGE POINT higher at 3.625 %. This is equal to my current mortgage. I strongly suspect that much of the incompetence I experienced was designed to delay the loan process so that the 60  day rate lock expired and enabled SoFi to raise my rate significantly at the last minute.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation