Today’s closing was a microcosm of the entire refinancing experience.

1. We were told that we’d be walking out of the refi with a sizable check. When we got there, we found out that the mortgage company was expecting a check from us — yes, paying money instead of receiving (albeit a small amount, and we’ll still end up with the same net gain eventually).

2. My wife’s name was spelled “Jacquie” on all the closing forms. All of them. Every. Single. Page. Sometimes more than once per page. The reason (eventually) given was that the processing office had a “Jacquie” working there, so they just ignored the spelling given on all of our submitted paperwork and used that version.

Compromises were reached very shortly after our loan officer walked by the open door of the room we were talking in as I was saying “I’m going to leave if they don’t straighten this out” and Jackie said “absolutely, we can always find another company.”

Galvanized them into action, one might say.

The only plus was that the monthly house payments will be a good bit lower than the estimate we’d been given, so at least the massive inaccuracies throughout the process were evenly distributed.

I feel for you, man. We're in the process of getting a new car. "Um. What do you mean it'll be $3,000 more than you said it'd be?"

Rat bastards, all of 'em.

Hmmmm... I was thinking of refinancing, but maybe not with all this hassle...

When we bought the house we were at the mortgage office for 5 hours and still had to pay extra money. You know it's bad when Reggie is in tears!! Rat bastards indeed.

On the other paw, it's amazing what a serious, casually-delivered statement like, "We can always take our business elsewhere" can do in terms of getting results from businesses.

Tell me you closed today.

They did the same thing to my mom when she tried to refinance her house. The acted like everything was going along fine, scheduled the notary or whatever to come over and do the paperwork, and then casually mentioned that she needed to give them $1,400 they hadn't bothered to mention before. After reading this I wonder if that's their typical method.

Believe me, it's typical. When we first bought our house, the same thing happened to us. We were sitting there waiting for the closing and they casually asked if we could come up with another couple thou. Sorry, miscalculation. Can't be avoided. Fork it over or kiss the house bye-bye. Man, my butt hurt after all of that.