This started last year with my mortgage company.It illustrates how screwed up these compainies are and how easy it is to get on the bad side of things with your mortgage.
Last fall I had a run of bad luck, my wife wrecked my car and Ive posted in here the nightmare thats followed with the insurance companies and that resulting in having to hire a lawyer.What I didnt realize at the time was the other nightmare that was just starting.She lost a lot of time at work and I lost some myself due to her not being able to drive and scheduling doctors visits and surgery and such.Our income that month was crap and my savings went to pay for a car expecting a half assed decent turn around time on a check from the insurance company or the bank.
Money was tight so I called my mortgage company and set up a arrangement.Id skip one payment, tack it onto the next 3 payments and stay current, on thier end theyd charge no fees or extras for the time frame given.Sounds simple enough doesnt it.Two months later I started getting messages from them on the machine when Id get home at night, the payments had been made so I couldnt figure out what they wanted, call them back Id get transferred between departments and nobody seemed to know WTF was going on.Finally after several round of phone calls I wound up getting transfered to thier collections dept, where I was informed I was now owing them 1300$ instead of 200$.Why is that I asked, they said Id missed two payments.A long and increasingly aggrevating series of phone calls ensued with everyone we spoke to coming up with a different figure I owed them, seriously, no two people could come up with the same amount more than once, estimates ranged between me owing them around 2000$ and them owning me money depending on who we spoke with.
Finally we got a sypathetic sounding manager on the phone who said to let them make a new payment arrangement and just make the extra couple hundred dollars a month payments untill he could get it sorted out, then the exta money could just be credited towards the account.Ok, Im easy to work with, we got his name and dept he was in and set it up not knowing we would never hear from him again.
The phone calls from them started again almost immediately despite now having yet another payment agreement in thier computers.Now theyre threatening forclosure if I dont contact them, Ive paid them well over what I was behind at this point and almost made another full payment on top of that plus the regular payments.If Ive confused you yet dont feel bad as Im still confused myself.This has drug on for 6 months now.
Last week my wife finally got pissed off and started calling people, same thing, she would get someone on the phone, they would come up with one number I owed and then transer her to another dept where the person would give her a totally different amount.She stayed on the phone for almost 3 hours getting transferred from one person to another and worked her way up through the ranks untill someone answered that actually had thier computer turned on apparently.
He couldnt figure out what he was looking at so he got his supervisor and they started going through it.There were 1300$ in fees Id been charged with, but they didnt know how or why, or even what some of them were but they agreed they shouldnt be on there.Then they started finding accounts I had with them, accounts they opened for me without my knowledge with odd amounts of money in them, one had a little over 500$ in it, one had over a thousand.Wheres this money coming from and why is it in these accounts I asked.Its money Ive paid in but theyre not sure why its been set aside or why its not being used to pay on my account.They think maybe since the amounts being trickled into them are small it wasnt enough to make a full monthly payment so theyve been set aside.WTF do you mean set aside, Ive been paying extra every month to get this caught up, are you people retarded.They apologize but cant seem to figure out what to do with itThey say theyll get thier reserach dept on it and track it down but it appears Im getting overcharged and paying fees that arent applicable to my mortgage, ok, fine, were getting somewhere.I agree to make this months payment while they look into it, they promise to get back to me in a couple days.
Couple days, then a couple more go by and nothing from them.The wife calls back and it starts all over, transfers, amount differences, one manager actually hanging up on her, and they keep telling me there is no research dept.2 hours later someone that knows of a research dept is on the line, he actually has the research dept on the other line and is talking to a guy named Monty who seems to know whats up with my account.He tells my wife he will connect her, transfers the call and a lady answers, she doesnt know a Monty and has no idea whats going on, never heard of our case[:@]My wife snaps, she wants thier corporate office number and the name of a CEO to talk to, they wont give her that information, but while theyre arguing the wife finds the number on the internet and hangs up.
She calls thier corporate office and works her way up the line through it till she gets someone with an important sounding title on the phone.She goes off on him, tells him the story and about the months of run arounds, extra accounts, and BS fees were being charged and how everyone shes spoken with has a different number they give her that we supposedly owe and he takes it all down.Then she asks him a simple question, whats 600 divided by 3, he says 200, so she asks what 200 time 6 is, he says 1200.She asks him according to his computer how many months behind I am, he says I missed one payment.She asks why Ive payed twice that and theyre still saying I owe thousands of dollars, he says from what hes looking at someone has royally screwed up our account, we should be payed off and then some plus have an extra couple thousand on top of it in different accounts we never heard of till now.But he cant fix it, he will get someone to look into it.
The wife informs him shes just about ready to have our lawyer look into this account and if he doesnt get someone on it they will be hearing from him.Not only does he give us someone, he gives us our own case worker, not from the disaster area they call accounting or collections but from his own office and we now can now call just one number and talk to the same person each time to see how this is going.She contacted my wife the following day to let her know she would get to the bottome of this and not to even try talking to anyone else utill she had a chance to sort it out.She also told her to immediately quit paying the extra money on top of the monthly paymernt untill they figured out who and where this got so screwed up by and could fix it for us.Im not holding my breathe at this point but theres a look inside of a major mortgage companies interworking for you all.
Looking at my wifes notes she took, missing one payment but having a repayment plan place has taken over 12 hours on the phone, contacting over two dozen different people in at least 4 different departments, being given well over 30 different dollars amounts owed/not owed, taken almost 6 months, resulting in no answers, no explanations, and no communication between the different departments, weve gotten a grand total of 2 people in this time to even call us back, and its still not fixed.
Almost makes me wonder how many people actually do lose thier homes to these places through incompotence on the lenders part as opposed to mistakes made by the borrower.[:'(]
Entering into an "arrangement" that required your payments be handled in a different manner than usual was your downfall. Things like mortgage payments are highly automated and the computer expects to see the same thing every month. You were dealing with people who did not design the system and did not understand how it works. The chances that they would do all the things required to make it do what you wanted it to do and they would foresee all the possible things that could go wrong were pretty remote. I have never had something this bad happen to me but I have learned that when dealing with automated systems with human operators, entering into "arrangements" with people who appear to be operating the system, but really do not understand it, is fraught with danger.
I feel your pain Pita, I am amazed you actually found someone to help...I often wonder if it is this sort of thing that has spread like a desease throughtout industry and "biznizz"...and the economy is doing great because?....lol
Maybe the great and powerful 'Bama-man can fix this too?
Kudos to your wife Peta. She sounds like somebody who knows how to get things done.
I know this is a little of topic, but about 10 years ago I made the mistake of buying the extra insurance the school offered when our kid started playing football. I already had insurance through my work, but what could it hurt to pay the extra $85 at the beginning of the school year for a supplement, Right?
That was the dumbest mistake I could have ever made. He broke a bone in his wrist that year wrestling around after school had let out, and while sitting in the emergency room I made the mistake of listing both insurances on the paperwork. Anyway both insurances said they would pay what the other didn't pay. It was the biggest mess.After numerous calls trying to be rational, I became irrational,and told the billing office that if they wanted their money they had two different insurance companies in which to figure out how to get it.Eventually they quit sending bills.
Of course it was easy for me. I was not facing foreclosure.
C. Davis
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or
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We recently watched "2001 - A Space Odyssey" and I think it gave me a clue into your problem. Had you simply skipped a payment, the computer would have sent you a notice chastising you and demanding payment together with any penalties and interest. But you attempted to involve humans, which as you now realize, was a huge mistake.
Had you been able to speak with the techies down in the basement who are friends with the computer, they could probably have solved your problem in between gaming sessions with other techies in Uzbekistan or whatever. But those people are not normally allowed to interact with normal humans because they don't speak the same language.
I hope you have your problem resolved, but be wary. Remember H.A.L.? You may have offended the computer by attempting to bypass its authority by speaking with humans. It may seek revenge by attempting to show you who is really in charge of your life.
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I heard Jesus He drank wine and I bet we'd get along just fine.
ORIGINAL: daddyslittlegirl
Had you been able to speak with the techies down in the basement who are friends with the computer, they could probably have solved your problem in between gaming sessions with other techies in Uzbekistan or whatever.Â* But those people are not normally allowed to interact with normal humans because they don't speak the same language.
Bank of America techs have a highly-ranked Warcraft team. Kind of explains where their stock is trading right now.
OK, I have a problem
