The long road home

..and waiting..and waited...After twenty-five days with no word from Priceline, we called them. Our loan processor suddenly became incredibly silent, ignoring emails, ignoring voice messages (she never seemed to answer her phone)--just very unresponsive. Finally, we were assigned a new processor, or at least we think that's what happened because suddenly we began to get emails from someone else at Priceline mortgage. She set up the appraisal, and someone from the west coast flew in to appraise our home. Note that we're in a small-ish town on the East coast. The appraisal came back $20,000 less than we paid for it two years ago--and that's with recent upgrades including a hot tub, new hardwood floors, and a freshly tiled bathroom. A local appraiser and a local lender recently told us that the appraisal was MUCH too low; but at this point, there's not much we can do about that. We nixxed the cash out idea, since our loan-to-value was too low according to this new appraisal.


The twists and turns in that road

By now, we're two months into the deal. Priceline never once initiated contact with us, except at the very beginning to give us a rate quote. We thought after the appraisal, things would move quick, but after two weeks of sending them emails asking what we could do to speed things up, yet another processor responds to tell me we're just waiting on the title search and that it should be completed by the end of the week. Two more weeks pass and I ask for the title company's phone number and email. From here on out, I cc'd the title company on every email concerning title, and I called them seven times and left voice messages. Finally, I sent an email to Priceline asking if we can use our own company. No response. I called and left another voicemessage. No response. I send another--you guessed it: no response. I sent a third and cc'd it to all three loan processors, this time telling them we wanted to cancel the deal if they didn't respond to my question about the title company. A response! Finally! This was the week before Thanksgiving. And yes, we could select our own company to do the search.
I immediately contacted the company that did our search only two years ago and was told everything was on file and it would take about a day to update everything. Given the holiday week though, the person who does the searches was out of the office but would have it done the Monday after Thanksgiving! Amazingly, that afternoon, the company priceline had doing the title search called and said they'd have it done in a day. We elected to use our own people anyway.


Ah, it closes!

I'll leave out all the details in between, but on December 12th, Priceline called to schedule a closing on Monday, the 16th at 11:00am. We're giddy. Finally we're closing! Our rep informs us that someone from the title company will call us to tell us where to go to close (we're in a state that requires us to close at an attorney's office). Ah, the hassles aren't over though. We received a fedex with all of the closing papers on Friday night. We don't know where we're supposed to go because the call never comes, and the info is not included in the closing package. What is included is a HUD statement that informs us we'll owe 12,000 more at closing then our rep told us, and that they used their own title company despite our request! Of course, no one at Priceline is there to take our call.

Monday rolls around with no phone calls from anyone. We send out frantic emails, leave frantic voice messages, and talk to numerous 'supervisors.' At 10:55 am we reach an agent at the title company/escrow company/appraisal service (it's an all-in-one place) who is very helpful and tells us we're scheduled to close at noon, and that they'll send a notary to our home (and that we'll have to waive our right to an attorney). Noon comes and goes, no notary shows up. We called Priceline, and while we were trying to track down a supervisor there, the title company leaves a voicemail for us telling us that the notary can't make it because of the blizzard in our area! There was no blizzard anywhere on the east coast, and it was beautiful and sunny that day. Not even a hint of snow, and not a bit of old snow on the ground.

I'll skip ahead again: Priceline emails us a revised HUD statement with the correct numbers (still about $1,800 more than they originally quoted. At 11:00 PM a notary shows up. He's paid by the hour, so he tells us stories about his life, about his multiple houses and business, and in general he drones on and on. He finally left our home at 1 a.m., papers signed. We had to later FedEx the check to them because we didn't know how much we owed at closing until about 10:00 that evening.


The Bottom Line

We've refinanced before, and are pretty comfortable with the process. This process has been unbelievable--although we probably could have dealt with it if Priceline had kept us informed of progress. We should have eaten the $250 dollars we paid to start with and gone with a local lender, but we didn't. The bottom line is that we'll never again use, nor will we recommend, Priceline Mortgage.

An update: 12/26/02

Okay, so we thought it was all over--but today we called our bank to make sure they had received our payoff. They were supposed to receive it on 12/21, but because of the hassles, we just didn't trust the new mortgage company. Sure enough, it hadn't been received. Our bank said that the last time Priceline had called for a payoff amount was early November, and that it had expired on 11/20. I called Priceline who said they hadn't dispersed the funds, and they informed us they had already sold our loan to someone else ; that someone else just happens to be that all-in-one Title company we had so many problems with. That company has no one around the day after Christmas, so I've left a multitude of voicemails and the waiting continues. Until they disperse the funds, we're carrying two mortgages on the house.

Recommended:
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