First Calgary Financial

I have been banking with First Calgary for 11 years now. I always had great service – especially from Mary Barker, who helped us with our first mortgage.
Apparently Mary has left the company, so this time we were helped by Shazia. All along it has felt like Shazia has been working against us, not with us. She asked me for three years worth of notice of assessments and tax returns just because I’m part-​time at work – despite the fact that I’m guaranteed a certain number of hours and have worked there for over 10 years. There were a bunch of forms she wanted to see which seemed petty – I don’t know how they would affect our loan application.
Not once did I get the sense that Shazia was going out of her way to help us get approved. No suggestions on how to proceed, or how things were looking, were ever made.
Twice we were told information that she later had to correct herself on. One was that we would be able to keep our current amortization of 35 years (well, 29 remaining) if we ported the mortgage (instead of transferring it elsewhere). The other was that we could increase our mortgage to a new approval amount (without being bound by the loan-​to-​value ratio that applied when we signed up for our first mortgage back in 2008). This incorrect information forced us to reconsider our purchase options, which wasted our time.
Rather than being proactive, she waited until everything was in to submit the application (without telling us that she hadn’t submitted it yet). Several days after we saw her, she inquired if a form was in yet, and said once she received it she would submit the application.
JUST SUBMIT THE APPLICATION! The form was proof of income for a very small percentage of our earnings. Don’t wait for it to come in so our application gets held up. Submit it, and we’ll assume it’s conditional on me «proving» that I make that extra couple hundred dollars per month.
She would ask silly questions like, «why do you have credit card debt?» Really? As a banker, is this the first time you’ve encountered debt? That’s reassuring.
Our mortgage has since been approved, so the sale now depends entirely on the successful financing of the guy buying our current home. That is stressful.
I should make it perfectly clear that all along, Shazia was nice and acted professionally. It was a fairly bad set of experiences that led to this low review, and for that reason I would suggest steering clear of First Calgary (or at least this First Calgary) for your mortgage needs.