home loans:USE Credit union review

I got my home loan from USE Credit Union, in San Diego (the UCSD branch). I never plan to use them for anything else, as they did a horrible job of it. It left a sour taste in my mouth that I doubt will ever go away. The world needs a web 2.0 loan company with less of the 'human' touch, because I can tell you right now the "human" touch here means "how many mistakes can we make" + "how rude can we be".

Half of my problems were due to USE contracting out most of the loan processing to PHH Mortgage in NJ, who are also a bunch of bumbling idiots. I will leave out the problems I had with them, however, and focus on USE, though keep in mind that you will be forced to deal with PHH if you get your loan from PHH.

First, USE (Kathleen) told me that a 30 day close would be no problem. Then, pretty much stating the day after I signed the contract with them, they backed up on that statement and starting saying that it would be difficult to meet that deadline - bait and switch! The documents gave to USE had to be sent to PHH since they do all the loan processing, and several documents were 'lost' in that process because Kathleen didn't mark them properly. Then she lied and said my documents were sent to underwriting for review, when PHH was still waiting for the lost documents. We lost 5 days out of our 30 day close just because of this one mistake. But there are so many more. Kathleen claimed to know the inside scoop on how UCSD does employment verification, and that she would handle it personally to make sure it went smoothly. Well, she didn't handle it personally, they didn't do it the way she said they needed to, and it didn't go smoothly. BUT the reason was USE put down the wrong UPS billing number, and had nothing to do with Kathleen's claims about special procedures needed. Worse, when I called Kathleen to find out about the status of the request, she claimed that she had called UCSD earlier that day, and would call again. Well, I eventually called UCSD myself, and they had never been contacted about my employment file. Lesson: never trust anything that USE people say. I could go on and on about the stupid mistakes they kept on making the whole way though, but it's just to painful to relive the process. In the end the only really important metric of success was achieved,more or less: we were able to close in 31 days. That was only true because I ended up spending an hour every day calling all of the involved parties to make sure that each had gotten what they were supposed do, and where doing what was needed with it. Many of these people were folks dealing with the mortgage company/USE, so I really shouldn't have been responsible for that.

One final lie: I asked Kathleen if they were going to sell my loan to somebody else after closing? She said that loans were their bread and butter, and it was very, very unlikely. Well, just 12 days after closing they did just that, and sold the loan. It doesn't really affect me, but it's a great example of how USE (or at leas Kathleen) tells you what you want to hear, independent of the truth.

A word of advice, more generally. When you are shopping for a home loan, ask who does their processing for them. If it's PHH Mortgage, you don't want that loan!