As I stated back in October of last year (2012), I decided to refinance my home (Refinancing My Home)  to a lower interest rate.  I went through the Lending Tree form and was contacted by several mortgage brokers and lenders who were interested in my business.  I said  (in my post linked above) everything was going smoothly and I was expecting to save about $300 a month.  The lender, Reliance First Capital, informed me that I would need to have a VA appraisal of my home that would cost $425.  I thought that was kind of steep.  But, based on savings, I thought I could recoup that in less than two months.  The VA appraiser came out to my home and took maybe twenty minutes to do the appraisal.  This is the point where everything started going wrong.  My home was not quite worth what I thought it was.  With the VA processing fee and the estimated $1700 worth of repairs needed, my refinancing request was still within the confines of the appraisal itself.  I was assured by the mortgage specialist this would be no problem....repeatedly.  I was repeatedly misinformed.

After three months of getting the run around, I finally ceased all contact with Reliance First Capital.  All I wanted, at this juncture, was my money back that I paid for the VA appraisal.  I should have known better.  I contacted Lending Tree and demanded my $425.00 appraisal fee.  This was on Tuesday of this week.  Yesterday, I was contacted by a Vice-President of Reliance First Capital wanting to know about why I wanted a $425 fee refund.  Long story short, he stated that since I refused to have the repairs done (and despite being repeatedly told the repairs would be no problem with the refinancing request) , that his company was under no compulsion to refund the fee.  They did not feel obligated.  Furthermore, the VA appraiser had no connection to Reliance First Capital. So, now, I am out $425.  I feel I was lied to, misinformed and just generally given bad service from this company.  I have no intention of letting it end here.  I have other options to continue this fight.  At the very least, I can see to it that this does not happen to someone else.  Even the Vice-President said I was given "bad customer service" when no one told me if I did not have the repairs done (as indicated on the appraisal) that there would be no VA refinancing.  My question to the VP was since this is a federally guaranteed loan, what difference does it make?  He stated something about a montage of requirements that still did not answer the question to my satisfaction.

I am not a happy camper right now, as you can imagine.  I can not advise anyone, who wishes to do a home loan or refinancing, to do business with Lending Tree or their lender in my case, Reliance First Capital.  Now, things my change.  Reliance may see that I was treated unfairly.  I doubt it.  If they do refund my $425.00, I will make note of it in another post.  But, until that time, I advise you to avoid Reliance First Capital and Lending Tree.