US Bank, do they deserve that name?

US Bank seems to be a great bank right? They have good rates and returns on their checking, savings and cd's, they do a lot of lending to California state employees and to those with great credit, they have very friendly staff and do seem to have a lot of locations here in the Sacramento area. However, let's peel back the onion and take a closer look at their practices when one of those good borrowers defaults on his home loan. So our client is a state employee who had his special project and OT income cut. Since the California budget is going to be in a deficit for a long time, his income issues are clearly not short-term. We got all of his income, asset and debt figures together, ran the numbers and saw that we had a viable short sale candidate. Not only was he struggling financially, but he was upside down on his home $100k, was short $1k per month on his debt to income ratio and only had 1 month of emergency funds available to him. Like many Americans he was literally living paycheck to paycheck. So we submitted the packages to both of his lenders (Citi and US Bank) and had an approval from Citi Bank within 45 days. Great news right? Nope, we got a request from the US Bank negotiator to provide more documentation on the income and debts, as they believed the home to be affordable to our client. Also, they were not even close to issuing us an approval because our seller was current on his payments. How can that be, he stopped making payments 4 months ago? Nope again, turns out that US Bank was deducting money from all of his checking, savings and misc. other accounts to pay the second mortgage on time. To be fair, many banks will do that to get their payments and I believe they can do it legally. OK, so here we are 4 months into negotiations and US Bank has officially denied our short sale request, 3 different times! They said they did not participate in the TARP bank bailout, so they owed us and our client nothing, were not being forced to help any homeowners by the US Gov't and would make every attempt to collect on the debt, no matter what. WOW! So their official explanation for denial number 1 was that the home is affordable for our seller. Their excuse/suggestion for denial number 2 was that our seller can afford the home and should get a tenant in the home to help offset the loss and to help him pay the monthly mortgage. Excuse number 3 was that he borrowed the money and needed to pay it back, period. Needless to say, our seller is more than angry at both US bank and our team for not helping him. The home is going to foreclosure in only 12 days and US Bank will get $0 instead of the $10k we offered them. Bad business decision in my opinion, but that's why I am not a bank executive, as they must know something I don't, right? So the question remains, as a member of that bank or as an investor in that institution, how many times are they going to say no to short sale requests and then make expensive attempts to collect from the sellers before it starts costing you (the member) money? They are going to or already have, increased the monthly fees on checking and savings accounts and ATM withdrawals, and/or increase their lending rates to members, all in an effort to recoup their short sale losses! Investors do your homework before jumping in and homeowners with US Bank equity line loans, keep up with your payments and if you are struggling, be sure to seek the advice of an attorney or very skilled short sale agent who can explain your options!