PenFed Credit Union

WE HAVE HAD PENFED CREDIT CARD SINCE 2008 AND HAVE MADE PAYMENTS ONLINE FOR OVER 12 YEARS. THE LAST 2 MONTHS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCESS WEBSITE ONLINE TO MAKE PAYMENT. HAVE CALLED CUSTOMER SERVICE AT LEAST 8 TIMES AND THEY HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO HELP ME. I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAS HAPPENED BUT SOMETHING HAS REALLY SCREWED UP THE WEBSITE!

I would like to think I am a dependable 27 year old customer with 0 debt and a good number of credit lines and limit. Considering the details they have of me they know I would have 0 issue paying the auto loan that I applied for. When I called I was told I got rejected due to the fact that I do not have a 100 year old credit history(limit credit history of 36 months apparently). They also said that to get the loan that I would need to have a co borrower which makes no sense whatsoever. Not only that they sabotaged my ability to get any car loan due to the hard credit check that they did and were not even willing to reconsider the application.

What a sleazy operation. I applied for a HELOC, after nearly 3 months they tell me that my "free" appraisal is going to cost $490. After I reluctantly agree to it, they said, "our mistake, it's actually $1,000 because you are in Hawaii". What a waste of time. The best part of the experience was they sent me letter explaining that my credit score was only 1 point below the maximum allowable. I had to join their credit union to apply for the HELOC. I think that was the only point of their HELOC marketing machine. I'm never going to use their services and they can keep my $5 initial opening deposit. I'm going to sign up for paper statements and keep my account open for a thousand years so every month they send me a statement on their postage- it's a tiny little paper cut in their profits. I'm sure some people are desperate enough to pay their $1000.00 bait-and-switch fee. I'm not one of them. I'll be looking forward to my monthly mailed statements. My parakeets needs something to defecate on.

I am beyond frustrated with my VA refinance process with PenFed. I started this process in February; provided ALL documentation required; had appraisal, water test, termite inspection in the middle of this pandemic; provided all VA documents and then SILENCE until June. I emailed and called weekly to get updates on our loan. No communication. When I reached back out to our originator and then started reaching out to our loan processor's manager, I was told our loan officer was out of the office unexpectedly, and she would close our loan by the end of the month. Silence again until mid-July, miraculously the loan processor was back in the office. This is after I started sending daily emails and texts trying to get SOMEONE to communicate with me. This time, they need to run my credit AGAIN, and had another list of documents to be upload AGAIN. Friday I was told to look for financing elsewhere??? No reason why, no response to emails and no response to my phone call? I have invested MONTHS into this refinance backed by VA and they cannot continue with my loan? I have never been treated so disrespectfully by a company with no communication whatsoever. This has tied up our finances for five months and is completely unacceptable.

I'm in the process of buying a new home and selling my current home. The buyers for my current house are using Penfed. Pended has been processing the buyers lone for almost 45 days with a close date of July 23. As of today with both realtors, my lender and the closing company contacting Penfed for an update on the loan status. Penfed will barley return any emails or phones calls and when the do they state the loan process is in underwriting. They refuse to inform any of the parties if the appraisal has come in and will not give a close date. I have sold a home before with no complications and the loan officers have always been able to give and meet a closing date. I stand to loose the home I'm purchasing and any money that I have put towards the sale of my current home and the purchase of my new home.

As I write this review, I am overwhelmed. It seems that many of these reviews written reflect what I and my husband are currently going through. We put in an offer on a home a couple of months ago. Initially, our loan officer initially was absent and we struggled with receiving any communication back with even simple questions. Our buyers agent even shown frustration as he had to deal with the lack of communication when an offer was on the table. The sellers agent even suggested that we were playing games! We got past this and honestly, the communication improved. We are in contract now on a home; however, a new struggle has begun. We have switched loan processors. We continuously have to turn in the same documents. The new loan processor introduced himself two week after we have already seen he was our new processor via the loan portal. Now he will not respond to any email. He will not answer or return any calls. Our seller is expecting a conditionally approved loan soon. We have preapproval and locked rate but nothing else. We have been stuck in underwriter for forever. Nothing has changed just a request for the same documents over and over. To add, my husband has been a member for years. He is active duty military and has been a loyal customer. His car loan, which is paid for was with Penfed. Our saving is with Penfed. I am honestly disappointed with the entire process and scared that we will lose out on this home along with our $3500 in escrow. Now I await a callback, but do not expect much.

DON'T USE THIS LENDER. I've been selling real estate for over 16 years and in all of my experiences with mortgage / lenders this one was THE WORST. They caused buyer and seller $$ for not closing on time(16 days late) due to the incompetent employees not doing their job and simply not communicating at all. They were to THE FINAL DAY on the lock in rate. It took myself, the buyers agent and the title company a lot of extra effort to get to a manager to get things moving. It's impossible to get anyone on the phone much less respond to emails.

DO NOT USE THEM! They were horrible to work with. They took a ridiculous amount of time to review and process my refinance request. Their communication was terrible and I spent a lot of time following up. They rescheduled my close date 7 times, When I reached out to the closing officer, they didn't care, provided little information or just didn't respond. I often heard from the title company that my date had changed and then had to call to find out what was going on. My loan officer went on vacation and forgot to tell me. Someone else started to pick up my application, then once again zero timely communications. After 7 delays, and complying with their requirement to update my Home Owners Insurance, they denied my loan. I have excellent credit, and was requesting 1/3 of the value of my home plus have significant other assets. This was my first and last time using PenFed for anything.

AVOID! At a minimum...BEWARE!
I entered into a 30 contract to buy a home. PenFed gave me a great loan rate and stated they could meet the contract requirements. HOWEVER!! On day 21 they did not provide the Loan Confirmation Letter as required in the contract. Leading up to day 21, my Agent and I constantly contacted the Loan Manager and Loan Processor to ensure the Letter was sent. They hardly answered the phone or emails. But when we finally did receive a response, we were brushed off and told it would happen...it never did!
PenFed's refusal to comply with the requirements allowed the seller to claim I breach of contract and I lost both the house and my $4500 Escrow deposit.
I have been a PenFed member for over 20years (which now I will end). But my best advice at this point is; use a Direct Lender and never use PenFed for a home loan. They obviously can't comply with a simple contract. Doug O.

I cannot get any of the phone numbers to work for customer care. we only received one of our credit cards and I need to double check on the other one however I cannot talk to a person. I am concerned that the institution is not being run well.

Pentagon Federal Credit Union is a bank that serves the military. They have incorrectly registered a payment I made on my home equity line of credit. I tried to call them and send multiple emails to them today and they did not respond. I was on hold for three hours and 4 minutes and just hung up and tried to call back, but no one answers again and I left my phone number.

They are a bank and we cannot conduct business if they do not answer their phone. This is not the first time I have been on hold for several hours. They also pass me around to various people when I call and each time I'm on hold for several minutes (20 to an hour). I keep notes of their poor responsiveness to customer support.

I need to speak with someone so they can fix their error. If they don't fix it, I will not be billed incorrectly and that can go on my credit report.

I do not know what to say. I have been with Penfed for many years and I find their bank accounts, credit cards and auto loans amazing. Never had Any issues what so ever. Great rewards and customer service. My first home I did not use penfed but for the second I did and the pre approval and initial loan officer was great but once it got to the processor It was a nightmare. Calls are never returned and emails are never answered. For two weeks I kept emailing to ask what documents I still owed them since they asked for the same document multiple times. Never heard anything . After a week of emails and voice messages I would get one sentence email saying they are waiting on underwriting and I should get it back that day, nothing for two weeks then they get it back after we keep having to push off the closing. They do not call you to tel you to push it off you need to call and leave multiple messages and then they just inform you that it needs to be pushed off. This morning she said she would have closing docs by COB when I emailed her at 5 pm she said she will have it tommrow not sure why there is zero communication. Real estate agent freind is convinced they are trying to scuttle the deal because we locked in at such a low rate. I have bought a home before but have no clue how a first time home buyer can deal with them.

BEWARE PENFED FOLKS I started a refinance first week of March, Its now June 23rd and I have no idea when i'll close. I have emails with processor and supervisors that show a consistent lack of any professionalism. The original close date was 15 May. It took me months to get any response and once I did, I scorched the processor and his supervisors for their lack of professionalism, not doing their job and not providing updates. WHERE's THE COMMUNICATION. I need the refinance to close before a new purchase with close date 15 July to get VA certificate. The amount of people, time and resources that are held captive waiting is preposterous... secondly I keep getting change of estimates that vary in closing cost as much as 2500 to include origination point fees. Wow, how can that be since it's a no points, with a locked interest rate. How is this legal. I'll definitely file complaints with Secretary of State, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and I'd love to take this company to court.
Beware folks, even though you have a LTV within 80/20 percent, the company can just invent fees two months into process, as they wish and change what you've agreed to and after you feel you're half-way into this mess. I read the fine print, but I missed where this is written, and good luck getting anyone to show you where it's ok for them to do this in writing. Here is what happens:
A revised Loan Estimate is required in three different situations:
1. When a floating rate is subsequently locked. ( In my case I had a locked rate, with no points)
2. When a financial institution CHOOSES TO RESET THEIR TOLERANCES DUE TO A CHANGED CIRCUMSTANCE.
3. When a financial institution chooses to provide a courtesy Loan Estimate with updated fees and terms.
Pay attention folks! Number two is important - when an institution CHOOSES to reset their TOLERANCES due to a changed circumstance. Well what you need to know, and it may you'll learn is a moving target, is what is a changed circumstance. So as in my case, all the main elements remain unchanged, but should you get an appraisal, the amounts in the appraisal will result in more charges to the consumer ill-regardless of the impact of that appraisal. For instance, lets say you think you've found a good deal, you submit a refinance application, have a nice credit score of over 780 and get approval for an fixed interest rate of 3.0 percent with no points. You plan to take out 10k as cash and your home that is paid down to 50 percent of what you estimate you owe. Now you get an appraisal which comes in at 55 percent of what you owe. (Now here's the slight of hand). The requirement that you read in black and white is 80/20 LTV. They will say this is the requirement. BUT what they don't tell you is that the 5 percent of difference in what you told them when they asked "how much is you're home worth?" and the actual appraisal will result in "PENFED resetting their tolerances due to a changed circumstance" then add 500 origination fees along with other 2000 fees as they see fit.
BEWARE.
A. Cook

I've had to deal with them for several years because they're my deceased father's bank and it's been a very frustrating experience. His accounts are all closed, but even after sending them a copy of the POA they're very secretive and make me jump through a bunch of security theater hoops to make payments or get basic information. And I only have partial access to online banking so I have to call every month to make a credit card payment.

I've been a happy PenFed member for many years and been happily using my credit card PenFed Platinum Cash Rewards *** (X-***) for many years as well. However due to recent events, I have not been able to use it due to everything that's going on. I called in to cancel the card and get my annual fee refunded within the 30 days period, however it was soon discovered that there was a false charge on my card (5/15) and I had to wait for a replacement card and wait for the charges to be reversed via a letter. Now that the charge has finally been reversed, I was told the $25 annual charge cannot be reversed. I would like to get the $25 annual fee charged on 4/20 refunded back to me as I have not been able to use the card at all and the card is now cancelled.

I began the loan process with Penfed at the beginning of May with plans to close on our new home on June 5th. My husband is a union worker, and upon speaking with the loan officer I inquired if this would be an issue with calculating his income, as it can look confusing on paper. I was assure this would not be an issue. Throughout the process there was no indication of any issue with income from either the loan officer or processor, however I had difficulty at various times getting in touch with them to get a status update on the loan as our commitment date drew closer. We had to extend our loan commitment day but I was assured by the processor we would have no issue getting a commitment letter as all the numbers had been run many times and checked out fine. On the day we were supposed to have loan commitment, a week out from closing, we were denied the loan because of “insufficient income”, which my loan officer texted me to tell me. I have since spent hours reaching out to a number of different people at Penfed to clarify how this happened, as we had no idea this would be an issue. My loan officer has been almost impossible to reach, outside of texting me, and the loan processor will not respond. At no point did anyone reach out to discuss options, such as adding a co borrower, or paying down debt, or any kind of explanation as to why the numbers all of a sudden didn’t add up, a week before we were set to close. It is my belief that my husband’s income was miscalculated by the underwriter, as I have no other explanation for how this could have happened, and despite multiple attempts to contact a number of departments at penfed to ask for our loan to be reconsidered or reviewed by another underwriter, I have not heard back from anyone. This is severely frustrating as we have had to request yet another extension on our contract for our new home and are risking losing the house if we are not able to get financing in time. The customer service has been some of the worst I have ever received in my life, with a complete lack of caring about the serious effects that this situation is having on me and my family. It also screams incompetence, as my husband makes well within the debt to income ratio, and our application was considered strong and up until the very end had no discernible reason to be denied.

I used a PenFed auto loan to buy out my leased vehicle. The title was sent to PenFed. PenFed did not take care of filing the lien, instead sent me a clean title. Told me that I had to take it to DMV and file the lien info for them. The DMV has been closed, as has the economy in general. Since I was not able to take the title to the DMV and do what they should have taken care of when they had the title, they jacked up my interest rate by 10 percentage points, added $100 to my monthly payment, using a pandemic to their advantage and penalizing me during a very difficult time. All this without one phone call or email to check in, ask for an update, or see if there was a way they could help...

Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) charged me 18 days (about $40 per day) to extend a rate lock on a mortgage refinance loan. The justification is based on PenFed requesting an action on my part (lien subordination). My complaint has two parts: 1) I was not told I would be responsible for each day's delay in taking that action (yes, I did sign loan docs locking in my rate); 2) The actual action/request required for the lien subordination (as stated by ***) is normally done by the mortgage company and not by (or the responsibility of) the individual. PenFed says they "typically" don't deal directly with a 3rd Party. However, the 3rd Party (***) states they "normally" don't deal directly with the customer for these requests. The action/request was resolved by a PenFed employee directly with ***.

PenFed added CPI to my loan. I emailed proof of insurance to [email protected]. I get a response from Ashley stating “ Thank you for sending in the coverage today! Everything has been updated!“ 10 days go by and CPI is still on my account. I decide to call PenFed directly, wait over half hour to reach a rep, and that rep said I have to call back when the CPI department is open. He was extremely rude and condescending. I ask to speak with a manager. Wait a few more minutes and manager (I believe McKenzie was her name) comes on the line. I go over the issue and she states that department is closed but she will reach out to them the following day and then get back to me no later than Wednesday the following week. Wednesday comes and goes, no contact from the manager and CPI is still on my account. I call Pendfed Thursday and we get in touch with the CPI department and the CPI rep reaches out to my insurance company to get the proof. CPI rep states they will send a letter in the mail and it will take 10-15 business days to be removed from my account. My payment is due in 5 business days with the CPI amount. I spent hours of my own personal time for an issue that was not mine. Horrible customer service by PenFed.

PenFed is the most unprofessional and disorganized financing institution I have dealt with. Was expecting to close on a house at 10 am and did not find out until 9:50 am that our closing was being delayed solely because of PenFed. I had been asking for weeks prior and the day before close if we were on track to close on time. I was continuously told that this would close on tine by PenFed representatives. Would not recommend this organization to anyone.