Consumer Affairs has long been a source for trusted information on products and services.
Their page dedicated to Guild Mortgage should give anyone who is considering them great pause.
The posts start on December 2009 and one of the very first is from a woman in Corona, CA the day before Christmas, obviously having nowhere else to turn but Consumer Affairs instead of enjoying time in her home with family.
In December of 2008 my husband was notified that he was being laid off. At that time it was our first contact with Guild Mortgage. We called and called and finally got through and notified the loan counselor that this was to occur in a month and asked for her suggestions because we were very concerned and did not want to lose our house. At that time we were advised by the loan counselor that Guild Mortgage Company was not restructuring or modifying loans. So we went to an outside loan modification company to try and get our loan modified; we went through that process, and after a few months waiting on a response, we received back a letter from Guild Mortgage that stated, “We are not modifying FHA loans.” We received that letter in May 2009.
We then submitted in June a modification request again with the help of FHA and have never to this day received an answer. Then in September 2009 we received a foreclosure notice taped to our front door stating our home was being foreclosed on. That same notice also stated they tried to call 8 times and received no response. We never received calls from Guild even upon request from us. So we again, as we have many times before, we called repeatedly and finally got to the foreclosure department and asked them for details regarding the foreclosure and asked for an extension on the foreclosure so we could work this out. She said Guild had tried on several occasions to contact us with no success. I question the truth in this statement as our phone numbers have not changed. On the contrary, it was us who called numerous times from December 2008 to November 2009 and was never able to reach a loan counselor or loss mitigation counselor.
When I finally did ask one of the customer service representatives why this is, she told me the process was for the customer service reps to answer the phones take a message and one of the loss mitigation reps would call us in 24-48 hours. On all the occasions we called and held on forever and left messages, absolutely no one from Guild Mortgage has ever called us back. This was extremely frustrating and did not show that Guild was working and making an effort to assist its customers.
Shauna was the first one who answered her phone and would return my calls, but at that point, our situation was in default and on its way to foreclosure. Shauna gave me the phone number of a loss mitigation representative to talk to about our package she had and the programs available to us including the FHA-HAMP. Ines had the package for several weeks with no contact or response from her to us. So we called Guild repeatedly again being told the messages would be returned within 24-48 business days and the call was never returned. Unfortunately Shauna became our only lifeline to the company, so my calls for everything were to her because she would answer the phone or return calls. Finally she sent loss mitigation an email advising she has postponed the sale and asked for her to review the file before 11/10/2009. This did not happen and again no response from Guild Mortgage.
We are being very tenacious about coming to a collaborative agreement, one that will take care of delinquent payments and create an affordable payment taking into consideration my wages and my husband’s unemployment. I wrote a letter in the beginning of November to the President of Guild Mortgage and coincidentally I received an email from a loss mitigation rep of Guild Mortgage stating he was trying to work with me to get this solved. He was very helpful in the beginning and offered me insight on what changes Guild Mortgage has been going through with the increased volume of mortgage defaults they are servicing. I understand this; however, it does not excuse the fact that I am very willing to make Guild Mortgage whole and obtain an affordable mortgage monthly payment considering our current situation.
He suggested I call or write FHA and my State Representative if I was unhappy with the restrictions of my FHA insured loan. He also reminded me that we should be more aware of what we sign when purchasing a home and know that default can lead to foreclosure. I was told that Guild is on the servicer of the loan and can only do what FHA allows. I don’t understand this because FHA is the insurer of the loan, so why is the servicer bound from doing anything like modification/restructuring loans as the servicer? He sent us a request for financial statement, bank statements, paycheck stubs, etc. We sent all that in and he suggested we cut expenses and we did. Now he’s saying upon our return of these forms that it appears nothing has changed.
We took a few weeks to negotiate and reduce our monthly obligations, our food bill, attorney fees, credit card payments, etc. I feel like we are on a merry-go-round and all we want to do is what everyone in America does - that is, to have and maintain our home, health and dignity. We are proud to be homeowners and are doing everything possible to keep it. We desperately need help and we need it right away. Now it is difficult to reach him. We have not received a return phone call, and after a couple of emails requesting a response, we finally got one, which is when he said "he didn't notice anything different from the last submission". Well, the financial statement is different because we did reduce monthly obligations as he suggested, so it is all confusing to me.
We are very serious and desperate about saving our home and making amends with Guild Mortgage. We just feel it is very difficult to reach someone to work things out; we are getting the runaround, poor customer service and misinformation. It seems as though the feeling is just foreclose because that is easy, don’t try to help the customers. It is difficult to find someone who will work with us to ensure we stay in our home and Guild Mortgage can be made whole. We would like someone to listen to our situation and restructure/modify our loan so our payment is under $1900 a month even if our term needs to be stretched to 40-60 years.
We love our home and do not want to be discriminated against because of a series of unfortunate events starting with my husband’s layoff from IBM and the current global recession our country is dealing with. We are proud to be homeowners and happy to have a stable and permanent home for our two children to grow up in. We have done what was asked of us; we lowered our credit card payments, lowered our food bill and most every necessity to the bare minimum. My husband is going to be enrolling in school in the winter to retrain and expand his options for employment and continues to receive his unemployment.
Help! Are you experiencing difficulty too?
Complaint after complaint lists the same issues: not being called back, not being easy to work with, poor customer service, costing people money, time, loans and in some cases - their homes.
In some cases, Guild Mortgage is claiming to help with loan modifications on people who can not afford their payments, and they are simply modifying it to be an increase in payment, missed payments being applied to the end of the loan, and extraordinarily high interest rates:
Last week on July 13th 2010, we've got a letter from them stating that our modification had been approved. I continued reading the letter and I noticed that instead of our payment going down, it had gone up from $2608 it went to $2702. They did not lower our interest nor our payment. We are behind in our payments about eight months so they added all that past due to the end of our loan and that's why our payment had gone up. Not only that but our interest would be variable at a 6.125. Of course we are not signing any documents accepting that crazy modification.
Now, due to our house is closer to a foreclosure, we really don't know what to do now or where to seek for help. I have two kids, a 9-year-old and a 3-year-old and just to think that we could lose our house stresses me out and stresses my wife out, too. We don't want to lose our house but if we have no other option or help, it seems like we will lose our house.
And as Will in Lancaster, PA wrote about recently, they are known for postponing closing and costing people on both sides of real estate transactions time and money:
My wife and I are selling our home and the buyer went to Guild get the loan. Well a month now after the Original close date past, they postponed the closing three times and then ended up not issuing the loan and the buyer is now going to our lender for the loan. They are very unprofessional and unorganized. They basically have held up three properties from sale and four families from their respective homes.
With 43 complaints about Guild Mortgage on one of the most trusted consumer opinion sites in the world, these issues are not isolated incidents, but instead - are indicative of a company who does not care about the satisfaction of customers, much less repeat business.
