Consumer complaint received 2016-08-01
Company: Rocket Mortgage, LLC
State: IN
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: VA mortgage
Issue: Settlement process and costs

Complaint:
A few weeks past I received an offer letter from Quicken loans in regards to the VA XXXX refinance program with interest rates that were at 3.25 %. I am always interested in getting a better rate to lower payments and long term savings so so I called expressing interest and to see if I could get some information on costs and timing. I spoke with XXXX of their mortgage bankers and after discussing the program he informed me he would do the credit check and call me back with the details. I received the call back after about 30 minutes and the banker told me that he found a much better program and it was the best option with the best rate however it was not the streamline loan I sought after and now I would have to pay for an appraisal fee and some others which was not required with the streamline. With Quicken being a large and reputable company I proceeded but with caution expressing my concern for the low breakeven payback and high costs of the loan. The banker ensured me that he used " conservative '' safe numbers for the loan that were high and that these high costs would come down once I received the final loan statement when we were ready for closing. ****The catch here is that I had to pay {$400.00} for the appraisal fee in order to get this rate lock that he stated would probably not hold and I had to do it now. This is my grievance and where I feel he was being dishonest. I was told that the {$400.00} would be returned to me at closing in the form of a credit so it essentially was not a cost to me at all but what I eventually learned was that they use this so that the loanee now has invested in this process with them and use it to make sure that potential buyers do not either change their mind on doing the loan or speak with other mortgage companies. In conclusion I had to pay {$400.00} for the appraisal, {$75.00} for the pest inspection and {$140.00} for a water test that I did not need and when the final loan papers came in when we were ready for closing the costs did not go down as Quicken had promised they would. At this point it did not make sense to complete the process as the investment was too high and any payback period had now doubled. I reached out to Quicken to go over this and in their attempt to resolve they actually made an offer to charge me even more for the loan by doing a 15year instead of the 30year we had been working on. In frustration I felt it was maybe necessary to do what I should have done before which is talk to other lenders about costs and rates and this is where I quickly learned where I had been misled. In summary I ended up getting the same loan I had initially asked for from another lender for about {$2300.00} less that what they were charging. They used the appraisal charge as a lock on me and had no intention of trying to resolve the issues. They then use another group to push an aggressive closing date to quickly get their money. I feel that others need to be warned about Quicken Loans about their tactics especially since they are using VA programs that are supposed to benefit veterans.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation