Organizational Dispute Summary

I stated earlier this week that I did not have an opportunity to witness nor practice the principles of alternate dispute resolution (ADS) in its truest form. I may have made this comment in haste, because while settling disputes is not my current job, the job does require resolution skills. According to Lynch, "(ADS) is simply a process that will save a client money" (2005). Many of us as professionals are faced with incidents where we must make critical decisions regarding clients and I am not an exception.

During my time in the banking center there were often times when I had to approach situations with an alternate dispute resolution. One such case that comes to mind involved a client that I will call John, for the purpose of privacy and security. John, and I had established relationship. I worked with him extensively, opening new accounts, as well as adding various other products and services. At the start of the refinance "boom", I was lucky enough to work with the client again helping him refinance his home. The closing went well and the client was quite happy with the new loan, but he could not understand why the last credit report that was pulled reflected what seemed to be erroneous information. It seems that a Sear's account that had paid off some time during the previous year. I assured John, that the information may have been reported incorrectly. I advised him of the proper procedures needed to dispute the information with the three credit bureaus. He was not too happy with what we discovered, but he insisted that he would talk to his wife about the account. Needless to say, the rest of the closing went well and John called his wife as we walked out of my office.

In my normal fashion, I called John about two days later to follow-up on the conversation regarding the information discovered on his credit report. After several attempts to reach John, I decided to leave a message for him. Several weeks went by before I heard from John and when I finally did I was not prepared for what he had to tell me. He indicated to me that his wife committed suicide on the same evening as our loan closing. I was absolutely stunned, and I didn't know what to say to him. John, explained to me that he had last talked with his wife during the closing. At that time she seemed very surprised to find that the Sears' account had been reopened. He later found that she had reopened the account and that she had tried to get the credit limit increased.

A couple moths after refinancing, John wanted to sell the home that refinanced. I was happy to help him and so I went about the process of prequalifing him for the purchase of his new home. During the entire application I never had any doubt that John would qualify, but as it turned out he would not qualify due to the Sears' account that now was severely over the limit. I tried my best to assist in the matter actually far beyond what I would normally do for any of my other clients. It was to no avail, and as the process dragged on John was growing ever more impatient.

It became clear to me that in order to assist my client I would need to talk with someone of authority within our underwriting department. It took some time, but I was I actually able to reach a manager within our bank's mortgage underwriting department. The manager was not willing to help initially. She stated that she would not divert from policy. "The customer would have to rectify his situation", she said. I was not going to take no for an answer. So I asked again is there anything that we can do to assist our customer. She finally gave in and stated that if she were to approve the loan she would need to speak with our regional sales