Unhappy customer

This morning I spoke with Dong Lee who is the boss of Eileen Mercer, the mortgage broker from Mortgagebrokers.com with whom I had such a disastrous experience in November of last year. He had received my letter chronicling my challenges with Eileen during my property purchase and left a message a couple of days ago saying he wished to speak to me. I called him this morning and I believe we spoke for under two minutes. He confirmed he had received the letter, asked if I had anything else to say, confirmed that in the interim Eileen had called me, advised me that normally Eileen has a great track record and that this letter will be kept on file. He did not ask me the details of my call with Eileen (the one that started with me telling her that it was not a good time for her to call as I was on my way out the door and would miss my bus, to which she responded, "Yes, but I need to know why you sent this letter": clearly the fact that I was so angry about the situation and with her behaviour at the end of 2007 was lost on her and she was incapable of understanding that I was the aggrieved party and that to assuage me, it really ought to be done at a time that worked for me), he did not apologize on behalf of Mortgagebrokers.com, he did not ask what he could do to ensure I did not sully their reputation or disparage people from using their services: he assumed that because Eileen had called me everything was fine, though he does not have any idea of the conversation that I had with her, or at the minimum he has her recollection of it.
At any rate, I held off posting this letter in hopes that Mortgagebrokers.com would take some steps to quell the bitter taste in my mouth and to attempt to salvage their reputation in some fashion, but they failed to do so. As such, here is the letter that was sent to Eileen Mercer and her boss Dong Lee:


Mortgagebrokers.com
Unit 11 – 260 Edgeley Blvd
Vaughan, Ontario
L4K 3Y4


Attention: Dong Lee



January 8, 2008


Dear Mr. Lee,


I am writing to express the frustration that I experienced as a direct result of one of your mortgage brokers – Eileen Mercer - towards the end of 2007 when I was trying to secure a mortgage to finance my home purchase. Before I explain the stress and aggravation that she put me through I would like to note that a) this was my first piece of property and b) I had a cash down payment of $xx, was seeking a mortgage of $xx and that I have exemplary credit.

In the fall of 2007 I started my search for a condo. I selected Mortgagebrokers.com and trusted them to provide me with a competent mortgage broker. I looked at several condos, made an offer on two of them (neither panned out) and at that time I provided Eileen with all the documentation that she had requested: a copy of a void cheque; a gift letter from my parents; a copy of my account statement from the investment advisor showing the funds in the account, etc. She had me pre-approved for a mortgage with TD Bank at that time.

On October 29th, 2007 I had an accepted offer on a condo. I advised Eileen and told her the closing date was November 15th. On October 30th I gave her the name and contact information for my notary public, who required a copy of the mortgage for the closing.

On November 5th Eileen sent me a copy of the mortgage commitment with an incorrect mortgage rate, and asked me for a copy of the proof of down payment, which I had sent her previously, along with the letter from my parents saying the funds were a gift. I sent her another screen shot of the balance of my account on that day.

On November 8th it appeared that Eileen and my notary had still not spoken, so I gave the information to Eileen again who said she would call her right away. Eileen had not indicated that anything further was required from me for the mortgage and I assumed that the information that I had sent her three days ago was sufficient.

On November 13th I received an email from my notary that she still had not received the mortgage from Eileen and requested that I call her as well. I spoke to Eileen who told me that TD Bank had an issue with the October 31st statement from my the financial institution where my down payment was being held and that they wanted a “hard copy” instead of the copy that I had downloaded from their online site and faxed to Eileen. I spoke to Eileen later in the day was then told that TD was satisfied and that she would be sending the documents to my notary and promised that we would receive them that night. Not only did we not receive the information that night, we did not receive it the following morning: November 14th.

I spent the majority of my day at work on November 14th leaving several voice messages for Eileen which went unanswered, as did my emails. My notary public told me we might have to extend the closing date so that the deal would not fall into default. I personally called the person at TD Bank that Eileen had been dealing with twice, only to learn that the mortgage had still not been sent to my notary. I called Mortgagebrokers.com and explained my situation and asked that my case be reassigned to someone else. The receptionist said she would have someone call me back right away. No one called me back. I called a second time and was told that Eileen had a parent in the hospital which was why she might not be answering my calls. I explained again that my deal was about to go into default and that if Eileen could not handle my case that she should transfer it to a colleague. Eventually I was transferred to someone else who said he would do what he could, but could not shed any light on whether I would get the paperwork on time or where in the process the mortgage was. As the day drew to a close Eileen had not replied to any of the phone calls or emails that both I and my notary public sent. My mother offered to cash out her GICs – at a penalty – in order to finance my $xx mortgage and keep the November 15th closing date: I accepted her offer.

On November 15th (the day the deal closed) my notary received the documents which had been promised to us on November 14th and November 13th. To meet the deadline I had to take the day off work to facilitate all the paperwork by noon. Eileen did not apologize for her unprofessional behavior or give any explanation as to why she had stalled, lied and failed to return my phone calls, nor why, if a family member had been in the hospital, she didn’t assign my file to a colleague. My notary public was shocked by her lack of professionalism and asked where I had gotten her name from: I told her. She said on a go forward that I could use her mortgage broker, apologized that I had had such a horrific experience for my first home purchase, and assured me that it should never be this stressful or trying.

I have deliberately withheld from writing this letter because it has taken me two months for the anger to subside. I was excited about the purchase of my first home and I never dreamed that it would be such a thoroughly unpleasant and stressful experience.

I work for a company that develops customer experience management software for some of the largest companies in the world. Our clients seek to redress issues in a timely manner, increase customer retention, decrease customer churn and minimize bad press. I obviously have a lot of negative feedback for the way I was dealt with by Eileen Mercer, and by Mortgagebrokers.com. If you would like to discuss this further, and if you value my customer experience and wish to learn from this so that steps can be taken to ensure that no one else has the disastrous experience that I had, I would be glad to speak with you. My number is xx.