Universal Title

Can’t say enough bad things about this company. During our closing we were told we would receive a home warranty as a thank you for closing with them. Post Closing I had to send 3 emails and call them 2 times and still didn’t get a response. Took my real estate agent emailing to even get them to respond to me, at which point I was told that they had no memory of promising a warranty. Not only did they conveniently forget after the closing, but it took 5 days to get any response at all. When I brought it to their attention that taking 5 days to even send any sort of response was poor customer service, I was basically told that 5 days was par for the course, and that I should have contacted someone else at the company to get a faster response, not that I had any way of knowing who else to contact.
Listen, at the end of the day, a closing company is a closing company, you’re trusting them with some pretty important paperwork, and I just didn’t get the feeling that this company really had it together, I wouldn’t trust them with anything important. For me, customer service, standing by your word, doing what’s right, even if there is no monetary benefit is what makes a company worth using. Universal title honors none of these. Maybe I’m just idealistic, but I refuse to continue to patronize companies that so obviously care so little about their customers. I’d recommend using someone else.

Dealing with this title company made the selling process more stressful than it should have been. Almost a month and a half before the settlement date, I got an email from their representative Jasmine James on the whole process. I tried sending the forms, and the fax number wasn’t working. I emailed her and asked her about the fax, and said that if not, I’d email them. She responded with a new fax number, and I quickly faxed the documents, which included getting the payoff amounts from my mortgage companies (had two loans).
Weeks passed and nothing. I knew I had to bring money to the table, so I emailed her asking for status. She responds in a nonchalant way that she never received the documents. I was infuriated, and I’ll admit that my response wasn’t very nice. She responds back with the fax number and saying that she thought that I’d email it. You wait two weeks before closing to tell me this? If I hadn’t received something, I’d email the person asking what was going on. I faxed the forms, and I also emailed them so I’d have confirmations on both ends that she received it. She responded that she had.
A week before closing I email her asking to see the final HUD. Knowing that I had to bring more than $ 10K to closing, she not once bothered to send it to me even though in their note, I have to do a wire transfer. Additionally, I let her know during the whole faxing fiasco that I had to move the money out of my investment accounts, so I needed that information. She responds back with the HUD attached, and it was more than $ 5,000 than the preliminary one my realtor sent me. I quickly called my bank to move the money, and they said that it would take 4 – 6 business days from Tuesday (due to the holiday), so they would try and expedite it. Luckily, my bank USAA is on top of things, and I got the money on Thursday.
On Monday, I emailed her asking for the wire instructions. Tuesday passes, Wednesday passes… nothing. Even my realtors called and emailed on Wednesday trying to get the information, and nothing. The day before settlement, Jasmine sends another email telling us the date, time, and location of where we will meet tomorrow. Again, I responded asking for the wire transfer instructions. Never received a response from her. Luckily, my realtor’s office had, but it was for nothing. I didn’t get the HUD until yesterday at 5PM because she had made some mistakes on it that needed to be corrected and so it was too late to do a wire transfer. I had to go all the way to Alexandria to my bank to get a certified check.
In the email she sent, she said that it would be at the Arlington location. Guess what happened when I arrived? It was in Fairfax! The guy said that she had sent an auto-​generated email and had forgotten to change the address. However, it worked out better for me because the people there seemed to know what they were doing, and I was coming from DC, so it was easier for me. I also got a Lindt chocolate, so I was good.
This woman was the most inept person I’ve ever dealt with. I plan on writing a letter to their CEO because they shouldn’t have someone like that working on something as time sensitive as real estate transactions.