To close this chapter on my refinance saga, I ended up leaving a voicemail and a final email (last Friday)with George Connolly. I heard back from him via email on the Monday indicating that the omitted funds would be credited to my Visa card in the next few days.
I am pleased to report that the credit *did* show up in my checking account this morning.
So, in the end and with a bit of fussing, the refinance was completed with the original terms intact. No doubt the appraisal fee / application fee issue was a miscommunication. An assumption that I would be familiar with what the mortgage industry considers normal even though I may associate with this world *maybe* twice a decade.
The overpayment on my original mortgage is still sitting in escrow. An email that I sent to the SunTrust customer care center on March 7 via their “Secure Mail” system associated with their mortgage system remains unanswered so I will need to follow up via phone.
I did receive a response regarding the overpayment of my Home Equity Line of Credit. Apparently the most effective way to get the cash back is to visit a branch and write a check for the balance and deposit into my account. Not sure why this can’t be done over the phone but it’s better than NOT being able to get the money back.
I chose to document these experiences partly as a reference for myself so that I can recall and refer to what transpired and partly as a resource for others who would research this topic on the Internet in preparation for their own refinance.
Is my experience typical? Should you do business with the people I have dealt with? My one experience would need to be considered in aggregate with others before making any decisions. You may not know my biases and my whole experience may be a fluke. All I can do is add my voice to the others out there and hope that I can contribute. It seems that this is the only recourse that the average Joe really has – the ability to share his story.
Even if you end up having the exact same experience, at least you can be steeled against it so that you know that you are not the only one for whom the experience goes this way.
If you have found this information useful, please feel free to leave a comment.
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Apparently the most effective way to get the cash back is to visit a branch and write a check for the balance and deposit into my account.
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If you have not done this yet, a question to ask….are there fees for doing this?
It’s a long, story, but I ended up with a balance in a credit card account for which the credit card was expired, and it was going to take MBNA 4 months to transfer the balance to my active card number. But I had cheques that could be written against this like of credit which they said would give me the money back quickly.
I got dinged for a large ‘cash advance fee’ for using one of those cheques just to get my own money back out.
Hey King,
Good point, that 1 1/2% origination fee (with some minimum and maximum limits) is certainly part of the reason why I shred those checks in disgust whenever they arrive in my mailbox. Well.. that and the fact that my account number’s on the bottom so I’m certainly not just tossing them in the trash.
I’m sure there probably *is* some kind of loan origination fee that I’ll be nailed with to get my cash back out. You can bet I would dispute it in the branch manager’s office.
There are so many “usual and customary” fees in this industry that there is no way that a normal person can possibly know about that I find it annoying when they keep popping up in my account unexpectedly. I don’t like *anything* unexpected in my financial world.
That said I should point out that one of the reasons that I do business with SunTrust is that they have, in the past, been VERY reasonable about service / banking fees. My portfolio account has no monthly fees, no limits on withdrawals/deposits, absolutely no fees for anything that I would do on a normal basis. They can make all their money off of my deposit capital by lending it to others and investing it. They certainly don’t give me anything for it in interest. But that trade-off is acceptable to me. I keep my “emergency money” in a higher interest account at another institution anyway. They also make tons of money off my mortgage and, when I occasionally purchase big ticket items like a car or do renovations on my house.