JimsOffice.ORG

So, we’re now into March and here is where things stand with Bank of America..

Our loan modification paperwork from September ‘09 is still not applied (but Bank of America has it), and I am still getting the run around of “I will send an email, please call me back and follow up in a few days” with nothing actually happening. My negotiator has been missing in action for the last few weeks and calls to her voicemail yield “This voicemail box is full, please wait while I forward your call to an attendant” which basically gets me stuck in a loop. During her absence I have been taking to another person who has “tried” to be helpful, but frankly, I stick him in the same “false hope” group with the rest of the BofA folks. While speaking to him yesterday, I informed him that I have been awaiting a call back from some other department and when I asked for their direct #, I was informed that he was unable to transfer me because he didn’t have the number for them. After I hung up, I fired up Safari and was able to spend less than 5 minutes finding the number for myself.

I still find it amazing (and at certain times) frustrating that no one in BofA land can provide any useful information. My patience level is running thin and frankly, my next step is to start filing complaints with the Department of Real Estate. For everyone out there, this August will be year #2 of trying to get this modification done.

I truly feel for these people who have had their lives disturbed, but on the other hand, I find it funny that Bank of America continues to lack homework skills to make sure that the property they take is actually theirs.

Read here.

Haha, came across this earlier, groovy..

“The situation is prompting speculation that the Bank of America site has fallen victim to a cyber attack, but so far nothing has been confirmed.”

CyberAttack? Who would waste their time attacking a bunch of morons?

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/story/10670471/1/bank-of-americas-web-site-down.html?cm_ven=YAHOO&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

Here is some light reading, brought a smile to my face this morning, is this company really that screwed up??

http://consumerist.com/2010/01/bank-of-america-seizes-wrong-house-causes-big-stink-no-really.html

Well, it’s been awhile since I have updated this (thanks to Chris for the reminder) thread about our BofA woes.

So, as of September 2009 we received acceptable paperwork and as requested we signed it and sent it back to Bank of America (we sent it back 9/7 and they received it 9/9). As usual, I make a phone call to them every other day or so to find out where things are at and come to find out, our paperwork got “lost” between the Hope Team and Bank of America. During this period of time, I placed several calls and spoke to several people who basically gave me the “I will look into it, call me back tomorrow” line.

Well, we’re now into October and I find out on the 13th that our paperwork had been found and was in the process of being finalized. This process should take 30-90 days (so, until 1/13 at the latest). During this process, we were still receiving phone calls wanting to collect money and were also told that they needed updated financials. (obviously, that department wasn’t aware that we were almost done with our modification). The threats of foreclosure continued even though we had something going.

We even started making our new loan payment as of November 1. So, as of today, they have 3 payments that are sitting in a holding account somewhere instead of actually being applied to our account.

During the holidays, my normal representative was out and another gentleman called and attempted to help, but in the end nothing happened (well, it prompted me to send a not-so-nice email into Bank of America that went a little something like this:

Subject: Very Disappointed

I am becoming very frustrated with how our Loan Modification is being handled. We are now past the 90 day time frame (which is the time frame that Jasmine promised that it would be completed) and still have no finalized paperwork. Yet, Bank of America still continues to receive our payments (we have sent in 3 months now) and puts them in a holding account somewhere instead of applying them to our account. We still continue to receive collection calls that start out with “What are your intentions with this property?” and normally have a “the intent to foreclose expired March of 2009″ line stuck in there somewhere. My intentions are obvious, I am trying to get something in place that will allow me to keep my home, but it seems that no matter where I turn, I hit another wall, and I talk to someone who has every intention of helping me, but gets me nowhere.

So, again, my question to you is “What are your intentions with my signed paperwork?” Last time I spoke to Berchman, I was asked to fax my copy of the paperwork (2nd time) because my first copy that I previously faxed was lost. I am confused as to why I need to provide you a copy of my paperwork when my signed copy is sitting somewhere in your organization. I am not sending you guys anything else, I am tired of playing this game. All I ask is that someone tracks down my paperwork and gets it finalized. If you guys have lost our paperwork and need us to start over again, please tell us that instead of dragging us along in the mud (as time goes on we continue to stack up more late fees and our past due balance is going up – which Jasmine promised would go away once the papework is done, I cant see how that is possible when it continues to rise). Either way, we need to get this done, because we have been at this with you guys since September of 2008.

We are holding up our terms of our loan modification agreement, how come Bank of America can’t get things together and get our paperwork finished? You guys say you are here to help, so help me.

Thank You.

Jim Nessen

So, this prompted a call from our representative last Friday (1/8) and she basically told us that since things were taking so long, we should start over from scratch. This is OK with us since Marnie has taken a cut in pay (after going part time).

Bank of America, I have a suggestion for you.. Get your head out of your ass and start helping customers, oh my god, this is soooo frustrating. I can’t believe that you are stringing customers along like this. If anyone from Bank of America reads this that actually any power to do anything (and I mean actual powers, not Super “Call us back tomorrow” powers) please look me up and call me, we really could use your help.

Well, in the time between my first post today and this post today, I have learned that my Loan Modification has been cancelled. Their reason:

Borrower Did not Return Information

Funny thing is that this morning the person I spoke with on the phone told me that my modification was in the Negotiation stage and that I should hear something shortly, but in all reality (according to my.countrywide.com), my loan was cancelled as of yesterday (8/16/2009).

So, at this stage in the game, it appears that Bank of America is not going to help me unless I get a 2nd job or rent out a room.

How do you tell a 4 year old that you’re going to start collecting rent from him??

Well, we are now officially 1 year into the loan modification and some things have actually happened since my last post in June:

1. We *finally* got a set of paperwork…

The interest rate was dropped 1/8th of a percent and the new payment was actually higher than what we are supposed to be paying now. My wife called in and we told them that their “loan modification” was pathetic and if we couldn’t afford a 3,000/month loan payment, how could we afford a 3,200/month loan payment??

The person we spoke to (some supervisor’ish person) told us that we after we paid our bills, we showed a positive cash balance of $1,000 (which we never provided them that info – frankly because no one asked), and since we showed that positive cash flow, that’s all they could do to help us out. After providing them a more realistic value, he ran off and said that he would open yet another loan modification to see if a better modification could be made.

So, for those of you keeping score, 6 months for a set of paperwork.

2. The information coming from Bank of America/Countrywide has slooooooowed down

No big surprise here, but it seems that even though I call in on a regular basis, the information trickles down slowly. For example, during my daily collections call, I was informed that I needed to send in the following forms (and that they should’ve been in already):

* IRS Form 4506T
* Income Tax Information
* Affidavit of hardship

When I asked about the need for these forms, I was given an answer of “When you do a Making Home Affordable request, you need to have these forms”, and then when I asked why I was just now informed, the response was “I don’t know why no one has told you in the past, but I am informing you now” Classic example of “slow to no information”

3. The loan modification process..

So, it seems that Bank of America loves to run people through the MHA (Making Home Affordable) process, which is ok, I understand that that is a good first option for most people. In my particular case, I have been told on several occasions that I don’t qualify for this plan and I have accepted that, but please quit re-running me through that again when all you’re going to do is disqualify me. It makes this process drag out and gives me a bigger headache.

During one of my many calls, I was informed that the whole process has been given an overhaul and now it takes 45 BUSINESS days for an answer, and if 45 days passes and nothing has been done, it’s re-opened for another 45 BUSINESS days.

4. Inconsistent information

It seems that Bank of America can’t give me the same answer twice, its frustrating, I can literally call them twice in a 30 minute period with the same question and get 2 different answers. Seriously, BofA, train your customer service people to read the notes on the account before opening their mouths, it can save them from me unloading on them (and when I say read the notes, read ALL THE NOTES!)

The only thing that seems to be consistent is:

“This call is from a debt collector”. and “The letter of intent to foreclose expired on March 12th”

Anything beyond that is a crap shoot.

This link about sums it up:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32281959/ns/business-real_estate/

Next time they call, I am going to ask them how the money they got for their bailout (my tax money) is working out for them. They seem to be pretty damn quick giving out bonuses to execs, but slow doing anything else.

And lastly:

Anyone from Bank of America who reads this and is actually in a position to do anything, or take a complaint, please call me, I would love to talk to you.

I can’t say enough about this company. They have been in business for around 6 years now and are located in New Jersey. They have servers located in 5 datacenters around the WORLD! (Fremont, CA – Dallas, TX – Atlanta, GA, Newark, NJ and now London). I personally have 2 linodes.

VPS stand for Virtual Private Server, it has all the offerings of a dedicated server (full root access, freedom to customize your OS to meet YOUR needs), but is inexpensive! Linode uses the Xen virtualization technology to carve up resources of a server into smaller “virtual” chunks, so those of you familiar with Xen will fit right in. They also have a kick ass control panel that allows you to carve up your disks images, or even install a new OS!

Since I mentioned OS, let’s dig into that, Linode currently offers 15 different flavors of Linux for you to choose from (Debian, CentOS 4, CentOS 5, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, Gentoo, Slackware and OpenSUSE are some of them) and you can get some of them in 32 bit flavors or even 64 bit flavors. You can also carve out your disk images how you see fit, you can choose to keep everything on a single disk image, or choose to seperate things out. Their control panel makes things a snap.

If you get stuck anywhere along the way, they offer support via their ticketing system (which can be reached through the control panel). All of the tickets I have opened have been resolved within 24 hours! They also have a community support system (through their online forums, or via irc).

There are too many features to list here in this post, so I encourage everyone to go visit them http://www.linode.com (and I get a referral bonus if you sign up – my code is embedded in the link) and see what they have to offer! You won’t be disappointed!

Well, it’s been a few months since I posted my long rant regarding my experience with getting a loan modification from my lender.

Since then…

• Countrywide is now called Bank of America
• I still have no modification
• I am still getting the standard “We have escalated your request and please call back within 7-14 business days”
• The 7-14 business day call backs yield nothing
• We are entering the 5th month waiting for the 2nd set of paperwork (The 9th month of the overall ordeal)

Sooo, a whole lot of waiting is going on.

Being a ham radio operator has made me into somewhat of a scanner junkie. I have one on my desk that is always providing me background noise (monitoring County Sheriff, CHP, Fire, Aircraft, Railroad, etc). I was curious if there was an app for the iPhone, so after searching the App Store, I found this little gem.

It’s called Emergency Radio. There are 2 versions available in the App Store, Lite (which is free) and non-lite (which is only .99). The lite version allows you to listen to 4 different streams and the paid version boasts the ability to monitor hundreds of different feeds (and I saw a NASA feed or two). I currently have the lite version installed, but I plan on going back for the full thing!

You can select a stream to listen to, or it appears to have a feature where it will list feeds near to your current location (the streams in the lite version are nowhere near to me, so I haven’t tried this). You can also create a ‘favorites’ list to quickly find your most listened to streams.

The stream page (you’ll see it in the screenshots I included) have a list of police 10 and 11 codes for reference while listening. I have been listening to the 4 feeds included for a few days now and I am very impressed with this little app. Enjoy!

Author’s Website: http://www.edgerift.com/products/emergencyradio

Screenshots:

Stream Listing Page

Live Stream Page