My previous lender charged me a fee which I consider outrageous....it was in accordance with the contract, which I knew
....Perp....this is the old conundrum of "he who has the gold sets the rules".
1. You wanted their money.
2. They wrote the contract.
3. You read, understood and agreed fully with everything that was in the contract.
4. You executed the contract.
5. They gave you their money.
6. They charge you a fee as per the contract.
7. You now want to disagree with what you agreed to previously.
From where I sit, the only honourable course of action is to either ;
(a) Give their money back
(b) Pay the fee as agreed
Your proper chance for challenging the 'outrageousness' of the fee was at step 3, not after the event you desired at step 5 or when you change your mind at step 7.
The only reason I say this, is that I have had to jump thru many and painful hurdles solely for the reason that someone along the food chain challenged their contract wording after the fact, instead of before....then the courts found in the borrower's favour...and hence the solicitors from the Banks react from the decision by whollus bollus making it nigh on impossible for all subsequent borrowers to have a reasonably worded contract. Every clause and every sub-clause in the lengthy mortgage contract is there to cover their butts because someone decided to challenge it. There's a few.
The bank's lawyers insistence of now having a solicitor witness your signature on the mortgage contract so the borrower can't later turn around and say they didn't know what they were signing and nothing was explained to them - which a magistrate fell for - is just a royal pain, because (a) it assumes only lawyers read and understand contracts, and (b) the lawyers know their *** is in the sling and so either refuse to witness the document (ain't that fun with 1 day to go before you lose the sales contract on a magnificent property that you've been researching fighting to finance for the past 5 months) on the recommendation of their insurance / PI lawyers and / or they charge you $ 1,000.00 per hour or part thereof for the privilege of standing there for 10 minutes with the assumption that you are a numpty.
It's just one big lawyer circle jerk, each with the sole objective of dodging as much liability as possible. It's like watching 3 eels sliming around in a bucket, each trying to stay on the bottom and not poke their head up.
For the sake of everyone else's sanity, please don't pursue step 7.