At a recent business dinner in New York City, Rosalie Berg said she was wondering what had become of service in the mortgage sector. Seemed like too many loan officers had forgotten what the word meant.

Berg, who runs Stategic Vantage, a housing finance-centric public relations and advertising firm, had cold-called five lenders when she wanted to refinance her South Florida home. She was shocked at the response -- or worse yet, the lack thereof.

Of the five, three never returned her call, and the other two took more than a day to reply.

“People were not very responsive,” Berg told me. “It really surprised me.”

Our dinner host was Sue Woodard, chief customer officer at Total Expert, a marketing and sales software system for lenders. And she had had a similar experience. When she called to close out her equity line of credit, the lender’s representative didn’t ask why; he just said he’d send over the paperwork without any follow-up at all.

That, says Woodard, who has been in the mortgage business for 30 years, was a “big opportunity missed in a very competitive market.”

Worse, perhaps, she says she has a thousand similar stories. Most recently, her lawn service canceled her contract because it wants to focus solely on commercial work. So she called eight other services that do work in her neighborhood. Not one called back.

“I guess the economy is doing too well,” she commented. “No one seems to want more business.”

Also at dinner was Woodard’s colleague at Total Expert, Brett Cadogan, the firm’s director of strategic alliances. He had his own story about a lack of service. He had listed his house for sale with the wife of the guy who was building his new house. But after five months, he cut her loose, along with her builder-husband, calling the whole thing “a terrible experience.”

When he attempted to start the process all over again a few months later, Cadogan called five agents. Two were “very responsive,” he said. But of the other three, one never returned his call and two didn’t get back to him for a week to 10 days.

Noting that listings are “the lifeblood” of realty agents -- “That’s how they get paid,” he said -- he was really surprised by the response rate. “The level of urgency was pretty much nonexistent.”

The fourth at this dinner was yours truly, and boy, did I have a few stories of my own. Most recently, I have been going round and round with a home warranty company I won’t name directly -- it used to have a fellow named Roebuck in its handle -- but with which I will not do business again. Ever!

When our double oven stopped working, I called this company to repair it, not knowing that it no longer has its own crews, but farms the work out. After several attempts to fix my machine, I still don’t have an oven. But finally, some four months later, the warranty company has agreed to replace it. After all the stalling so far, though, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Then there’s my experience with an insurance company in Florida after Hurricane Irma, as well as my dealings with a big-box retailer that sells all kinds of home-related materials. To this day, the insurance company has yet to return my phone calls, even though I explain in my message that I have letters from two different roofers saying that I have enough damage from the big storm to warrant an entirely new roof.

The company has already closed out my claim, something I didn’t think it would until someone called to say they had received some information from one of the aforementioned roofers. They sent out an engineer weeks ago and I have heard nothing since.

I suppose the next step is to call the insurance commissioner in Florida to complain. I am told that insurers don’t want to be on the bad side of the Florida regulator, so we will see.

The big-box store where I bought new flooring was very slow on the uptake -- that is, once it had my money and the floor was installed. I called several times to complain that the installer had used someone else’s materials, even though they were told not to, and that my contractor was back-charging me.

I wanted the store to cover the charge, which was the installer’s fault, not mine. Once I was actually able to talk with a human being, that person said she would get back to me. Two weeks later, nothing. So I called again and spoke with her associate, who told me he would check it out. Two more weeks, and nothing.

Finally, a month or so later, a representative called to say they would be processing my refund. That’s great, but it shouldn’t have taken so long and so many calls. It has left nothing but a bad taste in my mouth, so much so that I don’t think I will ever buy another thing at this chain, even if I have to drive out of my way to go elsewhere.

Spending your money with a competitor is certainly one way to fight back. But it’s better to keep copious notes about your conversations with customer service people, including their names, identification numbers, the date and the time of day. Never, ever be nasty. Always remain calm. You can express your anger or disappointment without cursing or screaming.

If you get no satisfaction, escalate your beef to a supervisor or manager, either on the phone, in writing or directly at the store or office in question. And if that doesn’t work, take your issue higher and higher up the corporate ladder.

Twice I’ve written a letter to the chairman of Comcast, and both times, the response was swift and favorable.

Everyone knows tenants gripe about their landlords. But landlords have their shares of complaints, too.

According to a recent poll by ManageGo, a property management software company, property owners’ and managers’ biggest bugaboo is tenants who complain about things they should or could do themselves: changing a lightbulb, for example, or repairing a running toilet.

Changing a lightbulb? Come on, people.

And about those cantankerous toilets: How about jiggling the handle a few times to see if that stops the thing from running? Or lift the lid off the tank and adjust the float. If none of that fixes it, then it becomes the landlord’s problem. By all means, give him or her a holler.

But just one call should suffice. Another pet peeve, say the 100 New York City-area landlords surveyed: Multiple repair requests from the same tenant, with repeated emails and/or phone calls about the same problem.

This response indicates landlords think there’s often too much communication, but tenants say there’s not enough to suit them. Half the tenants polled said their landlords fail to keep them up-to-date on progress related to their calls for help.

Obviously, says ManageGo’s Chaim Lowenstein, there’s a need for better communication between landlords and their tenants. And it goes both ways.

Surprisingly, only 10 percent of tenants polled wanted repairs made right away. That’s a good thing, because fixes often become an issue of contractor availability. Some places have a stable of repair techs on duty, but most mom-and-pop landlords don’t have electricians, plumbers and appliance people at their beck and call.

And the more complicated the fix, the longer the wait is likely to be. If an elevator needs replacing in your building, for example, service is going to be down until the old one can be removed and the new one is ordered, installed and tested. So be prepared to take the stairs for as long as that process takes. And if you rent from a part-time landlord, they’ll have to call around until they find someone who won’t break the bank.

“It’s tricky,” says Lowenstein. “Most landlords want to get (a repair) done. But sometimes, they have to revert to their second or third choices. And sometimes they have to make temporary fixes until their first choice can get there.”

Much has been said about how student debt is hurting the ability of many millennials to qualify for a mortgage. But lenders may be starting to take a harder look at the amount of money would-be borrowers are paying every month for their fancy BMWs, Mercedes and Ram trucks.

Why? Because while homeowners overall are getting better at paying their house loans without missing a beat, the overall performance of auto loans has been slowly worsening, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The deteriorating picture is masked somewhat by their strong payback records among borrowers with the highest credit scores. But among those with scores at 620 or below, the delinquency rate, as of last year’s fourth quarter, exceeded 8 percent -- “a development that is surprising,” said economists at the Fed, especially when considering the strength of the economy and labor market.

Although rising delinquency rates remain below the 2010 peak, the economists said, there are still more than 7 million people with auto loans who were 90 days or more late at the end of 2018. That’s a million more than at the end of 2010, when delinquency rates were at their worst.

Their advice to lenders: The situation warrants continued monitoring. Meanwhile, if you are in the market for a house, or just recently bought one, stay away from high-priced vehicles. The payments -- an average of $556 a month for a nearly six-year loan, according to Edmunds.com -- can be killers.

If families were considered mortgage companies, they’d be the seventh-largest lender in the country, according to Legal & General, a multinational financial services firm. The proverbial “Bank of Mom and Dad” is “a hugely influential force in the U.S. housing market,” says L&G’s Nigel Wilson.

Nationally, parents and grandparents supported the purchase of $317 billion worth of property -- some 1.2 million houses -- last year, L&G reports. One in 5 buyers received gifts or interest-free loans from family members so they could buy a house, according to the study. The average amount: $39,000.

Half of all wannabe homeowners under age 35 say they need help from family to make the deal work. And those young buyers who went before them said that without help from the old folks, they would have had to delay their purchases for at least three years.

Just as some people look for love in all the wrong places, some homebuyers and sellers look for advice in all the wrong places.

Rather than seek the counsel of their real estate agents, they ask practically everyone else how they should proceed.

Among the questions they pose to anyone within earshot: “Should I offer above the asking price?” “Should I hire an attorney?” “Should I forgo a home inspection?” “Do I really need to offer a warranty?” “Can I make a lowball offer?” “Can’t I just sell my house myself?”

But ask yourself this: How much is free advice worth?

The topic was raised recently on the ActiveRain online real estate community by agent Scott Godzyk of New Hampshire’s Godzyk Real Estate Services.

Admittedly, Godzyk was having a bad day. A client of his had sought advice from numerous sources, but not from Godzyk -- the agent with whom he had listed his property for sale. The place was priced at the highest end of the market, but needed some work, and had been for sale longer than neighboring houses listed at more reasonable prices.

“The seller solicited advice from everyone but the listing agent,” said the broker-agent, who just happens to have 30 years’ experience in the field. In situations like this, he said, “the seller ignores the listing agent’s value and ignores the listing agent’s advice.”

So before you think about taking someone else’s advice over that of your agent, ask yourself: Do you really want to take the word of someone who last sold a house 20 years ago? Or should you, instead, trust someone who bought or sold 11 houses in a single year?

Why 11? That’s the number of deals the typical realty agent handled in 2017, according to the latest member profile published by the National Association of Realtors.

Some other profile stats worth noting: The average agent works 40 hours a week. She (52 percent of all agents are women) gets 17 percent of her business from referrals and 12 percent from repeat clients, so she must be doing something right.

Many agents bring broad experience to the real estate world: About 32 percent had previous careers in fields like management, finance, retail or sales. And they work at real estate day in, day out -- often day and night.

Sure, there are agents out there who don’t have this kind of experience or success. But you won’t be saddled with one if you do the homework necessary to find a good, qualified agent. And once you do find an agent you trust, listen to him or her -- not the peanut gallery.

“Sometimes sellers shoot themselves in the foot,” says Anna “Banana” Kruchten of the Phoenix Property Shoppe. “Even though they’ve been given expert advice, (they) decide to do it their way, or somebody else’s way that has no clue.”

Myrl Jeffcoat of GreatWest Realty in Sacramento once listed a house for a seller whose two sets of in-laws “almost got into a fist-fight over how to proceed with a sale. Yet, neither had thoughts that were sound, or based on professional knowledge.”

Similarly, Francine Viola of Washington’s Coldwell Banker Evergreen Olympic Realty worked with a buyer whose neighbor told her she should offer $10,000 over the asking price, even though the house had been languishing on the market for months with no nearby competition.

Some other examples of really, really bad advice:

-- “You can sell your house as-is. You don’t need to disclose or fix anything.” Wrong. An owner is obligated by law in most places to divulge anything and everything regarding the home’s condition. You don’t have to repair what’s wrong -- but of course, you should. Otherwise, you will almost certainly get lowball offers, if any at all.

-- “Where I come from, the seller doesn’t have to pay the buyer-broker’s fee.” Incorrect. In most places, the buyer-broker, who is working solely on behalf of the buyer, is paid half the commission paid by the seller to the listing agent.

-- “It’s a seller’s market, so you can ask whatever price you want.” Sure, you can ask for the moon. But if the market is starting to turn -- as it is now, in some places -- you won’t get any offers. And if you do get a contract, it will be for well below what you’re asking.

-- “Pick an agent who promises to obtain the highest price possible.” Nah. Overpricing a property is one of the oldest scams used by agents to secure listings. Better to base your choice on his or her past performance, expertise in your specific market and marketing plan for your home. Price is a separate issue.

So, the next time someone offers you an opinion, ask yourself this: Just how much is free advice really worth?