The closing went easy with most of it doen online. I choose to do final closing at my house which went well.

Payments are every 2 weeks. I set up a principal only payment for once a month. Everything is running like clock work. I came from a 30 year mort with 6.125 interest rate at the cred union. Ive had the load since 2002 so have been paying on it (with extra to prin) for about 9 years. Im taking the difference between payments and putting that directly to principal so I should have the mortgage paid off as of month 60.

Rally glad I did this.

BE CAREFUL the current low interest rates are not worth the fact that you have to deal with them by phone and their onerous policies. All their correspondence to me basically said TS.

Although ING has very competitive rates, they should not be used for mortgages. They set a variety of tricks and traps for unwary consumers to capture bogus fees. Many comments on this website will attest to this problem, I will describe our issue.

We refinanced our home, starting in October 2010. It took nearly five months to complete the refinancing, which was irritating, but not the focus of this note. In May of 2011 we decided to move for reasons unrelated to the mortgage. I knew that we had agreed to a 1% pre-payment penalty, but asked, and was told, that this penalty would be waived if we financed the new purchase with ING.

We got contract on a new house prior to selling our first property. When we went to finance our new purchase with ING, we were rejected. The reason given was that we were attempting to hold two primary residences. ING insisted that this was our intention even though we had contracted with a realtor to list the home, and the homes were approximately five miles apart. ING would not accept that we were trying to sell the house. When we asked for a waiver of prepayment penalty, since we had attempted to purchase the new home from ING they refused, again claiming that we were trying to own two primary residences. When we pointed out that if we wanted to hold both homes, we wouldn’t care about prepayment they sent the following message:

Hi XXXX,

We will review the 1% penalty if/when you decide to sell your current home. If you have additional questions, please give us a call at 1-877-464-2151.

Thanks,

Justen

ING DIRECT USA
Member FDIC
Equal Housing Lender

Less than a month later, we received an offer on our existing home (the one financed by ING). At this time, we had already gone through financing with another institution, one that realized that we probably weren’t trying to own two primary residences in the same city.

However, when I called to check on the waiver of the prepayment penalty I was refused. Crystal (Employee number 701590) told me that regardless of what I had been told, or what had been written previously, they would not waive the prepayment penalty. She instructed me to apply again. When I told her that ING was not trustworthy enough for me to reapply, and that we had furthermore already paid some fees to arrange our new mortgage, she told me that ING would enforce the penalties. She did promise that Justen would get a slap on the wrist for what he had written us, I’m not sure how that will help me.

$1800 is certainly not enough for me to ever trust ING again. They are a very poorly run operation. Hold times for any discussion or decision are eternal. In our case, instead of financing our new purchase, they decided to grab our money and run with it. This bank neither wants nor deserves new customers. Do not be fooled by their rates. Do not finance your loan with ING. I have learned my lesson.

Right now I think American Express SAVINGS is paying the best interest and that is only 1.15%. Also, ING offering to help us save our money, is offering higher interest rates on checking than they do savings accounts.

“Dear Miles,

This email will confirm that we have removed your online access, and also removed you from our marketing distribution lists. Keep in mind that you will not be able to open any additional ING DIRECT accounts in the future.

Thanks,

Mike Wynne
ING DIRECT”

And here is the preceeding warning.

“Dear Miles,

Since you agreed to the Electronic Delivery Disclosure Notice (EDDN), you will receive all communications including statements and tax forms electronically. As a result, your 2011 tax form won’t be mailed to you.

Please know that we keep your personal information so that you can retrieve your statements, tax forms and open accounts in the future. We’re unable to make an exception and remove this information from our records even though you have no open accounts with us.

However, we’re able to disable your online access. This will also result in your 2011 1099 being mailed to your address on file. If you’d like to take advantage of this option, please respond to this email. Please keep in mind that disabling your access online will result in no other person including you, accessing your information online or on the phone. This will also prohibit you from opening any accounts with ING DIRECT in the future

Thanks,

Danielle Delgrego
ING DIRECT”

Also, is there a way to use ING to purchase something online? We are saving for a camera and are using ING to save the money until we have enough. We are planning on purchasing one from Amazon and want to pay online. I’d like to be able to do that directly from ING instead of having to xfer the money to Chase first and then waiting on it to clear and then paying from there… any thoughts?

Thx

I’m sure they could have given options for how to go about it since dissatisfaction and unhappy customers are not their goal.