Countrywide Home Loan Company Review

From my experiences with Countrywide I think they must be one of the most disgraceful and incompetent lenders. I had the misfortunate of having a mortgage and HELOC with Countrywide. Below are the main issues I had:

Unauthorized credit report pulls: When I was a Countrywide customer, they called me on 2 separate occasions to ask if I was interested in refinancing. Both times I asked what the rate was and since they were unappealing I declined. Yet it turns out they pulled my credit report each time without telling me just to give me refinance rates during a 1-minute phone call!

HELOC woes: HELOC fees were exorbitant. For a $25k draw they charged $669 origination and $455 termination fees. I was refinancing with another lender and needed the HELOC closed ASAP. Even after I paid off the HELOC account in full, it took Countrywide 6 weeks to close the account. And that was after paying a $30 "expedited payoff fee" plus 4 phone calls and 2 visits to the local branch.

ESCROW woes: At the beginning Countrywide miscalculated the monthly escrow payment for the property tax--it was double what the previous owner paid. When I inquired they said the escrow amount would be corrected after the first tax bill was paid.
     Inexplicably they forgot to pay the first tax bill. On the due date I ended up paying the bill myself. After multiple phone calls they agreed to reimburse me, to cut the escrow payment in half, and to refund the sizable overage.
    For subsequent tax bills I had to hound them over the phone if they were not paid within 2 weeks of the due date. Even after their snafus Countrywide refused to waive the escrow requirement.

Relentless marketing tactics: Countrywide tried to get me to refinance by phone, mail, and email on a regular basis. Thank goodness for caller ID screening, paper shredding, and spam filtering.