Gulf Coast Bank & Trust Company

We worked with them on a mortgage. We’ve never in our lives dealt with such incompetence. We don’t understand how they stay in business. It took 3 weeks them to figure out how to open a pdf file. We had multiple reps lie to us and our real estate agent on multiple occurrences. When I called to file a complaint and work with someone else, they did nothing. I didn’t even get the promised return phone call. It would take too long to comment on each ridiculous issue we’ve had with them. The bottom line is that you would be better off working with any but this bank. It saddens us to say this as we learned the hard way.
In short: they are incompetent, they lie, and they have each other’s backs.

The service at this branch is terrible. I am a young woman with my own business and it seems to be that I’m not taken seriously when I’m withdrawing and depositing here. No one in the drive through ever seems to know what is going on. I’ll tell multiple people the same thing and then proceed to sit here for up to 30 minutes. It has taken 20 minutes to count and deposit $ 500. My fiancé is a bank teller in the drive through, and from what he tells me… These people must be idiots. I’d go to another branch than waste your time here.

I’ve heard that getting a mortgage through ANY bank leaves a lot to be desired, but do they all do arbitrary things like *prevent* your seller from covering the closing costs as agreed upon in your initial contract? Enter Gulf Coast Bank.
Before this travesty, there were also the various dealings with them where they didn’t even check their fax machine for the documents they demand, I knew that come hell or high water, I’d never recommend this bank to anyone.
Then there was the estimate being so grossly different from the final HUD. I got an apology from the main loan officer, Joe Uzee. That didn’t help much, but he’s a pretty smooth talker (aren’t they all?)
And finally, they waited until closing to
1. Not show up.
BUT… in their paperwork, they saw fit to
2. Not allow my seller to cover closing costs (did allow a percentage). It would have been nice if they had told me this AT ANY POINT during our 2 month time period of getting this mortgage in place.
Not surprising that they didn’t show up to closing, is it? I think everyone’s mouth in the room was hanging open at that point. When I contacted Joe to ask about this, he emailed me that he would get back to me and surprise, surprise, never did. I was so aggravated that I did my own research and saw that some banks do prevent sellers from covering entire closing fees due to their fear of stuff going on under the table. I really don’t care. It’s shady as F$#%.
I do have Gulf Coast to thank for one thing: I’ll be better prepared next time to ask questions up front.
And if at all possible, buy a house in cash rather than go through a damned bank. They all are nightmares to deal with and when you consider how much money they make in the end, it’s enough to make you consider renting for the rest of your life.