Banker Reviews

Where should a person go in case he/she experiences financial problems? The answer is obvious – to the bank, a credit or loan company. They will definitely help you out and will give you the needed amount of money. But then every month they will make you coming back again and again. And then it may be very difficult to say them ‘good-by’.

Quicken Loans. Quicken Loans is a company that provides home mortgage lending services throughout the U.S. It entered the market 1985. The company was founded by Dan Gilbert and Ron Berman. Today it is one of the country’s largest independent mortgage companies, headquartered in Livonia, Michigan. In 2007 the martgage industry faced a crisis, and the company does not provide Second Mortgages, Home Equity Lines of Credit, Alt-A Products, and Deferred Interest Loans any more. More over Quicken Loans has been involved in a law suit. Its employees claimed ton to be paid for overtime working hours.

Pros and cons. There is no easy money. Either you have to work hard to have some, to steel and then go to prison or borrow and then… Before applying for a credit it is very important to weigh all the pros and cons. Then if the decision is taken the other step is to choose the company, since there are plenty of them. Some offer favorable interest rates, others longer terms for settling the credit, and so on. They try to trick in as many clients as possible because they bring them profit. Quicken Loans, for example, offers its services in all the 50 states, processes the loan within 15 days. They even come to your office or home, if you are too busy, to sign all the necessary documents. All you have to do is too take money and then return 3 times more. In addition to the interest rate there will different fines and charges which you will have to pay. It is not a problem to borrow money but it is hard to pay them back.

But life is not simple and not everybody is lucky to be well-off. And somehow it is necessary to manage the situation.

Sometimes we need to choose between some companies to select the right one. This concerns financial institution as well. These companies can make or break the lives of people. That is why it is very important and even vital to make the right choice and choose the financial services company that would fit all the needs and desires of the client. And this company can be Commerce Bank.

Company overview. Commerce Bancorp dba Commerce Bank is a bank holding company. Commerce Bank provides a diverse range of services of financial nature such as commercial banking, consumer banking, brokerage services and investment services. The bank operates in 9 U.S. states. Commerce was originally by an owner of fast food restaurant franchise to bring fast food convenience to banking. The tagline of the company is: “No stupid fees, no stupid hours.” Commerce Bank is headquartered in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Commerce Bank features. There is a number of financial services performed by Commerce Bank that include seven day drive through hours, immediate fashioning of automated teller machine cards at the very moment of opening the account. In addition, the company offers to use its free coin counting machines and foreign ATM fee reimbursement. Besides, there are special dog cookies in the lobbies of Commerce Bank location stores and lollipops for human clients.

Criticism. There have been several law suits filed against the Commerce Bank executives. These law suits alleged that those people were involved in corruption. Besides, Commerce Bank paid a huge penalty to National Association of Securities Dealers for some violations of MSRB. There have been numerous complaint filed by the clients and former employees of the company. People state, that Commerce Bank provides very poor customer service. Customer service representatives are being very rude and intolerant to the customers and cannot help. They seem to be incompetent and inapt people that are able just to make the situation worse by their indifference and rudeness.

Bank is the residence of money. There is not such a person in the world who have not had dealt with banks. People go there to open an account, to borrow money, to pay bills and the like. Do all the banks offer proper service to their clients? Do banks take claims for granted and ignore them or they properly handle people’s complaints? It is easier to speak using your own experience.

What is KeyBank? KeyBankis a bank headquartered in the Key Tower in Cleveland, Ohio. KeyBank is owned by KeyCorp which was formed in 1994 through the merger of Society Corp. of Cleveland (”Society Bank”) and Key Bank Albany, New York. The bank provides investment management, retail and commercial banking, consumer finance, and investment banking products and services to individuals and companies throughout the United States and, for certain businesses, internationally. The company’s businesses deliver their products and services through branches and offices. It has almost 1500 ATMs in 13 states where full service branches operate.

Bitter experience. A friend of mine opened an account in the main office of the KeyBank in Cleveland. She was told that for the first 5 days only 3% of the sum would be available and in 5 days the rest of the money. When in 3 days she went shopping it turned out that more than those 3% were withdrawn and the next day she got a letter informing her about a debt on her account and which would be covered with the money that would come in 2 days. When the time came it turned out that the amount of the withdrawn sum was doubled. No one in the bank could properly explain the situation. Unfortunately, she did not manage to get her money back.

A tendency? And that is not the only case of such misunderstandings. Lots of people send their claims to KeyBank but no results. Improper instructions, wrong pin codes for plastic cards, unpredictable fees and charges – all these things should have decreased the reputation of the bank. But no! It is the 12th largest bank in the United States based on total deposits. How come?

Large banks are not reliable because numerous clients and big sums of money cause constant misunderstandings and confusions. Small banks can go bankrupt very soon. You never know where to go ‘to be right on money’.

There is a number of diversified financial marketing and service holding companies. They specialize in different branches of the financial industry such as residential mortgage banking, insurance providing, debt collection services, receivables management and many other services of financial nature. And every one of us at least once in a life used the services of such corporations because our existence is closely connected with material things such as money. And it could have been good or bad experience. One of these corporations is Countrywide Financial Corporation.

About the company. This company specializes in residential mortgage banking. Countrywide Financial produces, buys, and securitizes home loans. In 2006 the company serviced one fifth of all the mortgages in the country. The company was founded in 1969 and since then has been originating mortgage loans through its network. Countrywide Financial has a special Mortgage Banking division that deals with loan production, loan servicing and loan closing services. The company originates new mortgages or purchases them from other lenders. Mortgage loans are offered directly to consumers.

Countrywide complaints. Countrywide Financial Corporation has been the subject to many class action suits. Countrywide employees sued the company for forcing them to work overtime for free. The company settled the lawsuit and paid $30 million in compensation. Besides, the company performs in-depth investigations of new employee applicants without their permission. That is why applicants complain and state that these background searches are illegal and discriminatory. Besides, the company provides loans to customers with poor credit records and then compromised their ability to pay for their living. Countrywide was also accused in predatory business practices after missing the payments and then forcing the customers to pay late fees and leading to the lost of homes. This policy is considered to be unethical and brutal. People with financial difficulties have nothing to do but to go to such predators and then they just cheat them.

There are some companies that issues credit cards to people who has bad credit record or no record at all. That sometimes results in multiple over-limit or late payment charges. Consumers consider this practice to be predatory. But such companies as Capital One and American Express do not agree with the statement. They say they are not responsible for their customers’ decisions.

Capital One. Capital One Financial Corporation is one of the largest bank-holding companies in the US. This very firm was founded to one of the first companies that had started a mass marketing of credit cards in the beginning of 90s. Capital One issues cards to those who has a poor credit record or just some financial difficulties, so to say subprime customer base. The company has even won a special prize for the innovations Capital One has introduced in the credit cards productions. Capital One even has its offices opened in Canada, Great Britain and Spain. The company provides credit cards with low credit limits to the customers with whom they can run a risk to have numerous over-limits and late payments. But very often they causes those late payment themselves, just failing to post the payment. And thus they create even more problems to their already problematic customers.

American Express. American Express is widely recognizable company that specializes in issuing credit cards, charge cards and traveler’s cheques. Company’s first credit card was issued in 1950 and since then American Express understood that it is a real possibility in credit card business. Today the company offer a great set of different credit cards: Blue, Red, Green, Clear, Gold, Platinum. Even though it is one of the most trusted and reliable companies ever, they still happen to have problems with their customers. Sometimes they just fail to deliver good customer service when their customers have some problems with credit cards. But usually American Express sticks to its rules and promises to help their customers to solve any problems.

Your home mortgage loan is a matter of extreme importance. Your home is your safe place. But when people get into some financial hardships and their credit record is bad, the situation with the home loan gets worse. Subprime home loan servicing companies are like those sharks who are trying to destroy their customers’ well-being and health. They actually get profit form that. Somebody may consider this business practices to be predatory, but the home loan servicing companies like Fairbanks Capital and Countrywide Home do not think so.

Fairbanks Capital. This company keeps on destroying its customers’ lives. Making the financial situation of the clients worse, Fairbanks Capital just takes their homes and ruins their credits. They do not care that people work hard to get back on their feet. Fairbanks Capital considers that it is much more lucrative to have those customers down on the ground and receive their late fees. They just make the situation hopeless. Fairbanks Capital is causing a lot of people to lose their homes they have worked very hard on. And if you try to call their customer service to deal with the problem and get some answer, all you will get is run-arounds and lack of competence.

Countrywide Home Loans. This company is of the same type as Fairbanks. They do not trust even their long time customers. It happens they fail to receive the right amount of the mortgage payment and start to act at once. First of all, Countrywide Home sent a letter to their client stating that they will never accept any other payment that would be less than needed. And they return the last payment making you a month behind your payment. And they can send these threatening letters even to the customers with perfect credit record without even trying to look into the situation.

When you are trying to prevent some bad thing to happen, you search though different sites with complaints, terrible stories about rip-offs and run-arounds. And that is quite right because that means that you are trying to feel safe and it is much better safe than sorry. And when you run over the finance section, you may get a kind of puzzled because of the name BOA, BOA complaints and the posts connected with it. But everything is very simple: this acronym stands for the names of two establishments at the same time – Bank of Africa and Bank of America. Let us make a short summary on the both of them.

Bank of Africa. In the Internet this financial institution is known due to the huge number of Bank of Africa complaints, precisely Bank of Africa spam complaints. There is a famous letter that you receive and actually should delete as a scam, but sometimes you just do not do it and can be tempted to believe all the stuff that is written down there. And it is about quite a worthy sum of money being abandoned. And this generous African bank or actually some of its employees decided that you have to inherit that money just because after some vague research they have decided to choose you. And all you actually have to do is to send them some personal data including you social security number, number of your accounts and credit card number. It seems to be nothing, but if you fall for this crap you will lose much more. So, stay away!

Bank of America. Though this establishment does not seem to be so exotic and is truly American, it becomes very often a reason of many disappointments, too. And that is why you can run across so many Bank of America complaints. For example, they can just freeze an unsuspecting and innocent person’s account and leave him or her without anything for living. Especially, when this person - their client - is not American but other country citizen. It sounds like some kind of discrimination that is why and because of many other reasons, it is better to avoid dealing with Bank of America.

When some bad things happen to you because of some shady company, it would be very important and nice of you to share your experience with other people. It is very humanely to spread the word nowadays when all these scam, fraud and harassment things occur again and again. This matter especially concerns financial sphere. Honest people work really hard for money. And this is very unjust when these common people are cheated and ripped off trying to pay off the loan or mortgage. And usually they understand that they cannot defend themselves, because they knew that the type of financing they have chosen is not a prime one. Thus, they have to be ready to everything. Like in case with Americredit.

Their business practice. Companies like Americredit are not that pick and choose when it comes to collecting their money. They start with calling your home every day and night unlimited number of times. They can even call to harass you on the 4th of July. Americredit can also call your neighbours and say that you owe them money, or that you are very late on payments. And this could be because of them delaying your payments. And you get the first mark on credit record the very first time they state you have missed your due date. From that time Americredit keep on ruining your credit history which from the very beginning was not that good otherwise you would not involve yourself with this company. Besides, their interest rates are really exorbitant. And Americaredit can change your due date without any notifying and explanation which may cause your first late payment.

Their client service. If you would try to call Americredit customer service, you would be discouraged from the very first call. Their customer service representatives are very incompetent and unable to answer any of your questions. You would be able to get some information or maybe even explanation only if you reach a supervisor.

While coming to a debt institution and asking for a loan or mortgage loan, you are supposed to show really good credit record and ability to pay off your debt and the interests on that debt. On the other hand, the lending institution makes up a contractual agreement, according to which it also supposed to execute the contract. Usually a loan and especially mortgage loan are to be paid back over rather long period of time. But sometimes terms and conditions of the agreement are not carried out by the lender that is why there are so many complaints against them.

Loans.
Loan is an amount of money which borrower receives from the lender. And then the borrower is supposed to pay the debt back, usually in regular installments. And for this service the debtor is to pay interest on the debt, which can make the repayable amount twice as big as the given amount. This depends on the terms of the lending agreement. But sometimes the debtor experiences some troubles in life and can be one month behind the payment which is not a violation if the sum is paid off later with higher interests. But during this very month the lending establishment can figure out that you actually are a person with a bad credit, always behind your payments and sell your debt to the debt collection agency. And than life of that person goes topsy-turvy: constant phone calls with threats, harassment, etc. This is usual practice of the collectors.

Mortgages.
Mortgage is actually a loan secured on real estate; this is the way people buy property without the need to pay all the cost instantaneously. In the USA it is very common when a house purchase is funded by a mortgage. Earlier only banks or other debt institution were giving mortgages, but now this market is so huge that the necessity for the third party – mortgage brokers – appeared. And with the case of mortgages there are the same issues coming around as in the case with regular loans. But here the threat to lose your home is much more horrible.

All these problems with credit cards, credit card fraud and scam have become such a usual thing, that it is really amazing that still nothing is done. And these people, if one can name them so, keep on cheating hard working American citizens who care about their credit record. And one of these companies is Emerge Mastercard.

How it can happen to you.
At most times it happens out of the blue. You have good credit record, you have never been late with you payments, you have never been over the credit limit. And then one bright day you receive a letter from you your credit card company such as Providian or GetSmart, stating that your account has been sold to Emerge Mastercard. And you may not even ask those managers why your account has been sold: they will give no answer. Or they might just say that you have must have been deemed a very bad risk.

What troubles you may encounter.
Problems come right after your account has been sold. You receive a bill statement, saying that Emerge Mastercard has doubled your previous interest rate with no explanation on it. And then they delay your payments as much as possible making you pay late fees. Yes, they make you pay for their error! And when you are trying to get an answer calling their customer service and you found out that it is impossible to talk to anyone there. All you get is run around and rudeness. Or you may finally catch an English-speaking person on the phone and inform him or her of the problems you are having with your statement and that person would answer you that a statement is courtesy and that they do not have to send you anything. The only way out could be to hire a credit attorney and close all Emerge accounts.