Key Bank Dropped the Ball and cost us over $9000

Key Bank of Oregon mishandled our loan application for a commercial real estate transaction and not only cost us over two months of delay, emotional upheaval and over $9000 in earnest money, appraisal and environmental inspection fees, it forced us to restart the process with another lender all over again.

Key Bank advertises heavily for all kind of services including commercial real estate loans targeting thriving women owned businesses. We were referred to Mike H. Miller, Vice President, Relationship Manager in Griffith Park Dr in Beaverton, Oregon nearly two months ago. Since the very start he looked over the financial statements, tax returns and other financial documents and told us that everything looks great and approval will be easy. One week went by, two weeks went by, despite our repeated attempts to get an answer one way or another he was evasive. Finally, he told us that it might be better if we go through an SBA loan, he introduces us to an independent SBA specialist and tells us that we must get a Limited Commercial appraisal right away and a Level One Environmental Assessment, and we must pay the $2800 and $1400 fees immediately in order for the process to go through faster and if done so, he sees no problem completing our application in a timely manner, needless to say that by this time we had to beg and plead with the real estate and seller for an extension. After three more weeks went by, and all the required paper work were done and copies sent to Mike Miller, he was still evasive and non-committal. Finally, after we found out that he has taken a week off without telling us of his plans and despite of our daily contacts with him, we asked other bank officials to intervene. To our surprise, Mike Miller had not even submitted an application for us and as far as bank was concerned we had to start at the first level. Our repeated calls to Ohio (headquarters), bank president, western states' Relationship Managers, etc has not resulted any answer as to what happened and why. The best case scenario is incompetence and worst is some kind of illegal back room deal that we have not discovered yet.

We are now scrambling to salvage our investment, and trying to find another lender to close the deal in order not to lose even more.

So, if you are dealing with Key Bank in Oregon, watch out for incompetent managers and so called Relationship Managers, and do not let what happened to us happen to you.