Guardian Savings Bank

"We worked with Justin Blackburn on the purchase of our new home and we had a HORRIBLE experience. Justin had terrible communication during the whole process. Wasn’t able to reach him via phone or email. I had to drive to the office to actually get answers. We just received our tax assessment for the year. This was completed incorrectly by Justin. We now owe over $5,000 in taxes that weren’t calculated correctly by Justin during the purchase process. Our mortgage payment has now gone up $800 a month. Who can afford a mortgage that has increased 30%? Probably not many people. Guardian has no intention of making things right or any type of disciplinary action toward this. DO NOT let the lower rates and cheaper monthly rates fool you, this group has no idea what they are doing. Do yourself a favor and find yourself a more experienced company and loan officer. Do not waste your time with this company at all."

"I'm regretful to say this is the worst lender we've ever dealt with. They're incompetent on all fronts. They're rude and rarely can you get a hold of them. Requesting something as simple as a mortgage interest statement takes weeks to get back. We requested to setup escrow on our mortgage and they never completed it. When we found out we called to have it fixed and they sent us to three different people, none of whom ever had training in customer service. The loan officer was MIA as soon as the loan was approved. BEWARE!!"

"Similar to others who have shared their experience, we were pre-approved, given a rate and terms that were changed at the last minute, despite sending everything when asked, and given the run around while our closing was delayed. It was a total bait and switch. We had been customers for 4 years and paid twice our monthly payment to greatly reduce our principal, with perfect payment history and good credit. However, in the process of obtaining a new mortgage with GSB after the sale of our home, we were treated like GSB was doing us a favor throughout the process. We received very little communication and our final terms were emailed less than 24 hours from our scheduled closing and weren’t what we agreed to. Thankfully, we had a local bank that we contacted when we were concerned we were being misled, who was able to close sooner. Buyer beware as not only was this experience stressful, but also costly; rescheduled movers, costs to our sellers which we agreed to pay to keep the home under contract and lodging costs due to the delayed closing after the sale of our home. It was truly a NIGHTMARE! Please save the canned response GSB and do better. Don’t make promises you can’t or won’t keep! Call your local bank who will treat you with respect and adhere to promised timelines."

"Update:. Finally I should be free from this terrible organization, I refinanced elsewhere and today I tried to close the unwanted checking account they coersed me into opening (the only way to see the mortgage balance). There is 12 cents left in the account and the spiteful person on the phone demanded I come in during a pandemic to close out the account since it isn't empty. This is the worst bank in Cincinnati. I have been a mortgage and banking customer with Guardian Savings for a little more than 2 years. I went with Guardian Savings Bank because of their low APR but now I can see that I got what I paid for. I was initially misled out the gate. I specifically asked if I could pay bi-weekly and the mortgage adjuster told me that I could. Although technically correct that I can pay more than once a month, my payment is only applied once per month and thus I feed intentionally misled. They are also completely unable to set up an online account to see your mortgage balance unless you sign up for a mortgage checking account. So I did that, and set up that account to pay my mortgage once a month. Then they shut down the account when I didn't visit the bank in person for 12 months. They did this without attempting to contact me via phone or email. They have frequently requested that I leave work to visit them in person instead of working out a problem via the phone. I can only assume they want a friendly face to face interaction however their hours fall exclusively within my work day. Right before they suspended my banking account, I refinanced through them. The lady I worked with completely refused to work with me through email. She repeatedly did not answer questions via email and then tried to call me on the phone, interrupting me at work, to speak with me instead of answering my questions in writing. She at one point asked me to leave work to come into the office since she was unable to explain a fee over the phone, after refusing to explain via email."

"I agree with the previous reviewer. Eric was a nightmare, his "assistant" Gayle was rude and incompetent. One example is I emailed her a contact card for my previous apartment and she emailed me back that their contact was not on the card. It was a business card....its like she didn't even look. They expect you to know exactly what kinda of papers they need and what needs to be on them, and then when you send papers missing say a date they get snippy, when they did not specify what needed to be on them. I was a first time home buyer I had absolutely no idea what you needed! Eric was rude to me on more than one occasion. One example, I had someone email him financial documents and there was seven pages, they only sent the first six because the last one was blank. He requested the last one, I told him it was blank and he responded "How do you know it's blank if you haven't seen it?" I was on the phone with the woman when she was emailing them and she told me it was blank and useless!!! Unprofessional and argumentative, a better response could have been "even if it is blank we need it for the file please" or something more appropriate. My closing date actually got delayed because they did not have all the info they needed. There was a ten day span with no contact between me and that office. I'll admit I was not the best or quickest at at getting info back to them, but communication wise they were well below average. You can imagine my dismay when he threatened a delay twice and the second time emailed my realtor to "tell" on me when I had already responded with the info he needed hours before. Never met either of them face to face or had phone calls with them. Buying a property is stressful enough, you don't need bankers with an attitude. I was counting down the days until I did not have to speak to this office again. Now we will see how paying my mortgage goes, if it is also a nightmare I will be moving my mortgage ASAP."