Not that this company ever looks at their Yelp listing, or even cares much, but I have an axe to grind with, People's Escrow.
To put things into perspective let's look at my distribution when it comes to my reviews on Yelp. As of today I sit at 954 total reviews since 2012. My track record shows that I've tallied 416 five-star reviews, 350 four-star reviews, 148 three-star reviews, 29 two-star reviews, and 11 one-star reviews demonstrating a very lopsided distribution of overly positive feedback with just over 1% of my reviews being one-star worthy.
I've dealt with three different people at some point in time with People's Escrow. Lori, Priscilla and Carolina.
Priscilla seems to be day to day operations while Lori is the "muscle" and Carolina simply spoke to me like a child and referred to my real estate agent as "some guy." All three of these women are cold as ice both over the phone and via email. Did I choose to use this company? Heck no! While recently trying to buy a home the selling agent picked them as the escrow company to act as the third party. My advice to any other future home buyers: If you see People's Escrow on the docs when moving forward with your purchase, ask for another company to handle their duties.
The best way to sum up my interaction is by displaying my emails...
On 11/29 I emailed Lori:
"Hi there,
The wire for $XX,XXX.XX has been sent for escrow number XXXX-XX from my Bank Of America checking account. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you,
Brad"
NO REPLY. The deal eventually fell through after appraisal
On 12/6 my agent emailed Priscilla:
"Please send out cancellation instructions for the buyer. Also the release of the EMD. As the value came below purchase price and inspection report."
NO REPLY
On 12/7 after not hearing back from the previous email I sent one to Lori and Priscilla:
"Hello there,
In regards to escrow number: XXXX-XX
Unfortunately the appraisal for the property we were attempting to purchase under appraised and our request for a reduction due to the appraisal and repairs detailed in the property inspection was denied.
Please let me know what I'll need to do in order to have my EMD returned. Please contact me ASAP.
Thank you,
Brad"
Priscilla replied:
"Good Morning Brad,
The escrow officer is in a meeting right now, and I will have her contact you as soon as she becomes available. Can you please provide a contact number as well?"
I had already provided my phone number but replied with it again.
After no call back, I called, Pricilla answered and then handed me over to Carolina who deemed my agent as "some guy" and told me what he'd need to do to get the process rolling. I thanked her, called my agent and started to get the paperwork together.
Later on 12/7 I emailed:
"Attached you'll find the signed document for escrow number: XXXX-XX"
NO REPLY
On 12/7 my agent emailed:
"Please see the cancellation agreement. Also, please note the buyers are still in there contingency period. Please make sure your EMD fullest refunded to the buyers. Per CA purchase contract agreement item 3 and under inspection contingency. One the appraisal did not come in with value and inspection report."
On 12/7 Priscilla replied:
"The cancelling party needs to sign section 1, and section 2 needs to be marked."
On 12/8 my agent provided the revised contract with no body in the email.
To follow up on 12/8 I chimed into the email:
"Hey Pricilla,
Do you have everything that you need to process the refund of my EMD? Thank you.
Brad"
NO REPLY
This morning I decided to call since our emails were clearly being ignored or given low priority. When Lori "The Muscle" jumped on the phone with her bad attitude I'd had enough. She claimed they never received the contract with the signatures populating the correct fields so I quickly resent it over to her. Keep in mind, Pricilla already had this in her email but either didn't care or chose to ignore it. Lori tried to find anything to give her a leg to stand on and that came down to my "signature." She said, "that's not a signature, those are initials." I replied "that is my f#cking signature" as I've reached the end of my rope trying to get my money back from this chop shop of an operation. Explaining that one signature auto-populated through Docusign on my computer and the other was a result of my phone asking me to manually sign was going to get me nowhere so why argue any further? Keep in mind, any or all of this could have been conveyed via email or with proactive phone calls TO ME, not by me hunting them down.
So now the paperwork is done (correctly) and I've been instructed to either pick up the check or it can be mailed to me. Uhhhhh... I'm not trusting these hacks with getting a check in the mail so I'll pay them a visit to pick up my EMD. Question for you all out there? How long does it take you to write a check? A minute? Hell, ah hour? These "professionals" need until day's end to do it. read more