When my husband accepted his new job in Midland, TX – 500 miles from our Houston home – his new company provided us with a relocation company, which in turn assigned to us a relocation agent.
Debbie’s full-time job was to coordinate with us the sale of our Houston home, purchase of our Midland home, logistics of packing and transport of household items, and assignment or suggestion of realtors and lenders throughout our transition.
The first time my husband Matthew and I spoke with Debbie, she talked us through our benefits. We discussed up-front coverage versus reimbursement of closing costs, realtor’s fees, and all nature of financial considerations. Multiple times during the conversation, I asked for clarification on items like whether closing costs were covered for both our home sale and home purchase, and whether we were required to use their preferred vendors in order to receive certain benefits. Debbie often seemed confused by my questions and answered a question other than the one that I asked. I had to circle back around, rephrasing multiple times before I got a straight answer to some of my inquiries.
Matthew and I made decisions about our realtor, our lender, and whether to sell or lease our Houston home based on Debbie’s responses to our questions. And then I read through the actual relocation benefits package. Much of what we had learned from Debbie did not align with what I read in the typed-up documentation. For instance, we have a lender we have enjoyed using in the past due to not only the customer service but also preferred customer interest rates in consideration of our investments and military status. But we didn’t give this lender the opportunity to give us a quote because Debbie had informed us that we only had closing costs covered if we went with a preferred lender. This turned out to be false.
When I met with the realtor for our home sale, she asked lots of great questions, like if we had the benefit of loss prevention. I passed along these questions to Debbie, who had yet to get back to me on the discrepancy between what she had told us and what we read in the paperwork. These differences were valued at thousands of dollars!
After a few days with no response – which I initially attributed to the holidays – Matthew and I finally heard back from Debbie. Only it wasn’t Debbie. Her manager contacted us through Debbie’s email account to let us know that Debbie was no longer with the company. No further details were given, but I was thankful to know why we could not locate our relocation agent. She herself had been relocated – and perhaps with due cause.
Candidly Christy 