Occasionally I will get a call from someone who is rate shopping on the phone. I don&39;t spend much time with these people because they are going about it all wrong and it&39;s a waste of time.  When I ask, "Aren&39;t you concerned about who you&39;re going to do business with?" I usually get a response like, "No, just so long as I get the best deal."

Now I consider that a pretty stupid statement. EVERYONE wants the best deal he can find! The question is whether "Dialing for Dollars" is the way to do it.

I believe that there are good companies and not so good companies and down-right bad companies. And the employees they hire pretty well reflect the standards of the management. Do business with a good company and you&39;ll likely deal with good people and get good results. Conversely, if you do business with a bad company, you&39;ll likely have a bad outcome. How can you tell the difference?  By the phone number?  By what the loan officer sounds like? Not a chance!

Not a few of the current woes of borrowers who had an encounter with the sub-prime mortgage industry can be traced to people who didn&39;t research what kind of company they were about to do doing business with. Some of these companies were staffed by bad people who spent their days engaging in duplicity and deceit. You can also bet that they were better at lying than their customers were at detecting lies.

From all the stories that are circulating about sub-prime lenders, it is pretty obvious that there were some terrible practices, lying to customers, stuffing them into bad loans, charging way too much. The list goes on. Ask their customers and the list would be even longer. It is also clear that regulatory oversight in the industry is almost non-existent.

If you want protection, you&39;d better plan on protecting yourself! Start out getting an education so you can ask questions that are more intelligent than, "What are your rates?" Then you ought to talk with friends and neighbors about the company they dealt with. Some will have made poor choices and their misfortune can help you avoid following their path. Someone, perhaps more than one, will have dealt with a hero, and that&39;s who you should call.