Re-fi or Sci-fi?

It all started about four months ago with a letter from my bank offering to refinance our home.

We crunched the numbers, and with interest rates down it sounded like a good idea. The equity is pretty good and the value of the house is stable so we thought we could knock it out in no time. Wrong.

Now here we are into at least month four and I’ve been stunned by the amount of nit-picking on the part of the bank.

I have had e-mails from my bank contact almost daily. First they got our home phone number wrong. They did a reverse search of the wrong number and came up with a left-field name—and wanted to know what this person’s relationship was to me!

It took a signed letter to let them know it was not my number and this person was a stranger. This was the first of a half-dozen signed and faxed letters for a number of hair-splitting details. In fact, several times I’ve wanted to jettison the whole thing.

Here’s the latest. We previously had refinanced the house and at the time paid off a small HELOC. Somehow that account number came up with a “dispute” label on my credit report (which is excellent, BTW)—almost eight years after the fact. What’s more, the lender thought it was a credit card account and not a HELOC. Oh, and the HELOC was with a bank that was taken over by this lender several years back, but this lender evidently had no record of it.

Luckily after searching through papers at home, we found a record of the original account showing that it was indeed a HELOC—meaning that it was paid off, the account closed and therefore there is no dispute. End of story.

I’m amazed that I’m getting this kind of hassle from a major international bank—that already holds our mortgage—my credit is very good and the value of the house far exceeds the amount of the mortgage. I have to wonder what kind of hoops others are going through for mortgages, loans or insurance coverage for that matter. I know it's a tough market, but this is rediculous!

I’ve heard that underwriters, more than ever, are asking insurance buyers for more records and back-up information. The thought of the level of detail a risk manager might be asked to provide for their organization makes my head spin!

After what I’ve been going through (and it’s not over until I sign the papers) it seems the rounds of questions and requests of a risk manager, especially on a difficult coverage, could be endless.

Is anybody else out there going through something that seems out of this world as far as details and requests? I'd like to hear about it.