After teaching here for 7 months, this doesn't surprise me at all

Post on a forum from a mortgage broker:

I’m just ordering the last item on a purchase loan . . .P and S date is about 10 days away. The borrower calls me and says she got a call from XXXXX bank’s retail call center on the other side of the country, and they are offering her a better deal. Now, this was in a rising rate environment a year or two back, and she had been locked with me for almost a month, so I was pretty skeptical and I tell her to bring in the papers.

She hems and haws . . .and finally brings the papers in.

I am getting her 6.625% on a one loan 3-fam purchase, some hairy exceptions, tough deal.

XXXXX retail’s GFE says 7.5%, paying nearly 2 points.

I point out to her that that doesn’t look like a better deal to me. We go through the exact payments (mine was way lower), what a "point" is, etc. Basically, this was no contest.

After an hour of going through all this, she says . . ."Yeah, I hear what you are saying, but I think you are making a mistake. Your rate is ’six-six-two-five’, and hers is only ’seven-five’. Yours has four numbers and hers has only two. I really like you, and I’m sorry that you have gone to all this trouble, but I’m going to go with her, because her rate is lower." (?????????)

I tried for another hour to explain a decimal point. I asked her if there was anyone in her family that might want to give her a second opinion. Nope.

I thought she was hiding something, but I checked it later. She really did close with the "seven-five".

The realtor tried to get her to go back to me . . .I kept calling, had the attorney call, nothing. The retail lender delayed her closing and got everyone all kinds of ticked off.

I was kicking myself for not thinking fast enough. I should have told her I could give her "seven".

She sends me an Christmas card every year,though, "for my trouble". hahaha.