Mountain America

STARTED GREAT....TURNED HORRIBLE QUICKLY!! I have refinanced my house twice through Mountain America in the last 2.5 years. The first time, they were phenomenal to work with. Joel, my loan guy, was very knowledgeable. He was helpful during every step of the process. He kept me appraised and informed the entire time. It was a great experience especially given my lack of knowledge in such an area. I had only been a home owner for 4.5 years up to that point so his experience and helpfulness went a long way in my hesitation and nervousness. Because of this experience, I decided to use Mountain America again when I needed to refinance a second time. The process started out great. Brandi, my loan lady, was great to work with. She was informative and helpful. She seemed knowledgeable about loans and mortgages. She was not quite as good as Joel about keeping me informed. I had to poke her for information/updates if I wanted them. However, once I did, she was always friendly and easy to chat with. When Brandi was through the application process with me, she turned me over to a loan lady named Rachel. She handled the closing process. She was always very friendly and nice to talk to but she did an absolutely HORRIBLE job keeping me informed. I showed up to my closing being told I had to pay $350 when no one had told me I owed money or even gave me a heads up warning that I might owe money. I understand they can't give me an exact amount until the day of closing but giving me a rough estimate would have been greatly appreciation. This extra money out of my pocket was a huge shock to me. While I have a savings account and I have plenty of money to foot the bill, I do NOT like it being sprung on me that I all of a sudden owe someone $350, unplanned or unanticipated. I was very frustrated with this. It gets worse. Partly the title company's fault and partly Rachel's fault, neither verified that the automated Mountain America system sent us the required documents to be e-signed on signing day. We logged into the account and did as the system prompted, like Rachel said. She failed to notice it never asked us to sign any documents. So we signed half the documents in person, unaware that there were more that needed to be signed electronically. No one caught the mistake until 3 days later when the refinance was supposed to take an affect. So we had to start all over with the signing process several days later. Not only did this incredibly inconvenience my fiance and I, but it messed up the loan payment dates because we rolled into a new month. So once again, it was sprung on me that I owed the title company another $650!!!! Not only that, but now I had to call my previous mortgage company to try to stop an auto draft payment because the payoff was not going to reach them in time. Rachel never bothered to inform me of any of this or explain why I was owing more money. All she did was set up the appointment for the second signing day. She has HORRIBLE customer service. Besides her friendly attitude, she's about useless for making a customer feel comfortable and appreciated with the refinance process. It's a big deal for someone like me because it's a lot of money and a lot of documents. The fact that we had to sign twice because of their errors and the fact that it was sprung on us we had to pay $1000 in less than 2 weeks that we were not expecting, is completely uncalled for and horrible customer service. I'm very disappointed in Mountain America from this experience. Even though my first experience was great, I'm not sure I'll use this company again if I need to refinance or purchase a home.