We contacted Quicken Loans Detroit, MI office to inquire about refinancing and after a couple of weeks of discussing our options we received a loan application to sign-off. We were reluctant to sign the application and did not agree verbally with the agent to proceed with processing the loan, appraisal or anything else but the minute Quicken Loans received the application form our credit card was hit with a $500 fee. The agent we talked to was so kind an helpful during the first two weeks and when we told her that we needed more time to think things over and wanted the $500 credited back to our credit card she got extremely rude and actually hung up the phone on us. We are still trying to get the $500 back and will not stop until we do. This is not an ethical company to do business with and when you’re taking about refinancing a home don’t get sucked in by their sly words and how much better you’ll be in the long run. Do your refinancing “face-to-face” with a reputable firm.

Dan Resnik

Well, we bit on it. Quicken Loans has a beautiful website and I suppose it's designed to elicit trust. And I read what other people said, that they ask you for fees and never give the money back, and want your credit card number. With all the scams in mortgage lending, I thought that maybe these mortgage companies learned their lesson and now they were restructured.

We spent about 25 minutes discussing a new home loan, and the agent gave us this spiel that he was going to hook us up with their realtor, and bank, and we were going to get a house and they were going to do the mortgage.
Then he asked us for our credit card number and he wanted $600 just to secure the loan, sort of a good faith thing. It's a scam. Then we got an email that said unfortunately they couldn't give us a loan, (we qualified with a major bank as well), and their Fresh Start Credit Repair company would help us out...of some more money I suppose.
Anyway, that's what happens if you try to negotiate a loan with Quicken.

The Quicken Loans of a long time ago was set up to talk you into doing a loan and selling you on that they are a direct lender. The truth is that they are a large BROKER. They secure money of investors not their own and then sell the loan off to CountryWide or Bank of America. The loan process starts by first thing they buy leads from on line sites like Lower my bill.com or Lending Tree. Then their LOLA or lead origination lead allocation system feeds the leads to the mortgage bankers. The banker calls the lead until they can convince them to do a loan.

The puzzling part is that they are a broker in all sense of the words, meaning that the money comes from outside sources and bundled and sold off in that market. More elaboration on this is that the loan tracker system is a data base of past clients and its some what of a farse. Pretty funny when you think about it as the top leadership in the Quicken structure are rolling in the money and paying the mortgage bankers a very low commission amount. It's looks more like a reverse pyramid if anything.

Sets up loan packs supposedly takes an application fee then when the numbers get tight because no one is giving fair appraisals any longer they don't return calls or emails. They stall giving the consumers the facts as they learn them which puts the borrower behind the curtain of truth. Was tole before Christmas the appraisal came back lower but would still be Okay. 2 weeks later almost still being told I would close first week of the year but all along lender knew it would not happen without additional funds from me but waited until almost three weeks after getting appraisal to put the numbers to me then could not give me the rate. Also found out from a different lender the real truth is in my situation the FHA will not even write a loan package with what they 'Claim' would get it done due to new guidelines that took effect 1/1/09. Lied all along to me but dragged it out to prejudice my options and try and act like it was progressing normally. RIPOFF from the get go!!! NOT ONE WORD OF TRUTH FROM 12/23/08-1/05/09.

I was contacted by these people after filling out a request for loan information on lending tree. I was trying to refinance my 10/1 ARM which is around 190K. I have 5 years left before the rate could possibly go up but since rates are low now, I figured it was a good time to get out of the ARM.

Anyway, I had a hard time getting any information out of these people and they wanted me to give them my credit card for a good faith deposit of $750 which I would get back at closing. I did not want to give my Credit card to them and they would not give me any firm information without it. I did manage to find out that the rate was 4.99 fixed but that it was going to cost me 1 point for origination fees and 1 point for Fannie Mae fees and then they had some other charges including the usual legal fees and home appraisal etc. The longer I talked to this character on the phone, the more I was finding out that I didn't trust the guy. When I was finished writing down everything he told me on the phone it added up to nearly 7K to refinance my mortgage.

Then I did some investigating. I called the bank where I got my last mortgage (The 10/1 ARM) and got a fixed rate 1/4 point lower (4.75) on the same loan amount with 1 point and they waved several of the fees because I am a repeat customer and my daughter is in the process of getting her 1st mortgage with them. The Quicken Loans 1 point Fannie Mae fee is nonsense. It is only charged if you are cashing out and if your credit score is over 720 (which mine is) then the actual fannie mae fee is only .25 points not 1 point.

These Quicken loan people are fast talking and try to suck you in by having you pay this "Good Faith" deposit. In fact, you will be the only one acting in "Good Faith" and based on what I have read, you will never see your "Good Faith" deposit again whether you get the loan or not. After deciding NOT to use Quicken Loans, they called me and e-mailed me continually for the next several days trying to tell me that I was going to get stuck in my home and the value was going to go down and my mortgage was going to go up $600 per month and blah blah. Eventually, the guy pretty much told me I was stupid for not dealing with them. But then I told him that his Fannie Mae fee was BS and that I was going to report them for fraud and I have not heard from them since.

Take it from someone who has had 5 mortgages, 2 refinances and several construction loans since buying their fist home in 1982. These people are snake-oil salesman. Go to your local bank and ask the mortgage officer for information on locally available programs and stay away from these guys. Shame on Lending Tree for recommending such people.