JimsOffice.ORG

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

So, I have finally done it, I said goodbye to my BlackBerry Storm yesterday as I dropped it off at the UPS Store. I wish it well with it’s new eBay owner and hope they show it lots of love..

Now, I finally gave up on this gem because:

It sucks!!!

Ok, there is more to it than that, but that’s a big one, here we go:

1. Leaked OS - C’mon RIM and VZW, it’s been 5 months now since the device was released, we saw a single update and that’s it. Several OS’s have been leaked out to the public, each one with their quirk (others seem to fix by making a “Hybrid”), but enough of piece-mealing OS’s together to make the uber FrankenOS.

2. More Clicks to get stuff done - I switched back to my Curve which seemed very easy to use and I was able to get the same tasks done on it quicker than I was on the Storm.

3. Click Screen - Maybe it isn’t for me, I had the iPhone and loved it’s touch screen, hard to use a click screen when the damn phone is trying to catch up to where it thinks your finger is.

So, it’s back to my beloved Curve until the next great thing comes out, I am super disappointed because I really liked the Storm. I keep hearing rumors of VZW and Apple hooking up to create a CDMA version of the iPhone in 2010-2011??

Enjoy. http://tinyurl.com/ak2mxs

Downloading it now as we speak. Guess I will have something to play with on my plane trip to Washington tomorrow!

So, my wife and I have been going through a loan modification with our mortgage lender Countrywide since September of ‘08.  So far it’s been a pretty rough ride that might end with us being foreclosed on.  So, enough of the intro, onto the story:

Our fixed rate loan was set to adjust in October of ‘08. My wife called before then because we were going to have a hard time dealing with the new payment. So, she called them and explained our situation and a week or tw later Countrywide sent us out some paperwork that we accepted, got notarized and sent back into them.  The loan modification was a 5 year extension of our current payment at our current APR.  Another part of the new agreement was to skip our October payment (which was rolled into our new principal balance) and starting with our November payment we would send them the exact amount we paid in September (again, 5 year extension of current terms). In November, my wife received an alert from the credit agency (she got free credit monitoring from Countrywide when their data was compromised) which peaked her curiosity and when she looked, she found that Countrywide had reported her 30 days late on our mortgage (because of the skipped October payment that they told us to skip).

She immediately called customer service and talked to them, and they informed us not to worry that the paperwork takes a little bit of time and that things would eventually work themselves out, not knowing any better, we said OK and hung up. December came rolling around and now she was reported as 60 days late (again, missed October payment and a partial payment for November - remember folks, new rate kicked in and raised our payment as of October).  We started worrying more when she started receiving notices from her creditors about having credit lowered and in a few cases having cards cancelled.  Also, we received another set of loan modification paperwork that had new terms (adding 6k of assorted fees and missed payments, and a higher APR).  Upon reciept of this new paperwork, we called back in and were told that the old paperwork hadn’t been received yet, but was still being processed and that we should send this new set through the shredder (which we quickly did).  Now, mind you, we had made our November and December payments according to the terms set on the 1st set of paperwork, but now we were getting fees added because we had missed payments, and partial payments, etc.  Ath this point, we got fed up and requested a supervisor and we were handed over to Chris Kagel (not sure of the spelling).  At first, he was helpful and even agreed to submit paperwork to have our credit dings reversed (which we still havent seen to this day).  Countrywide was still telling us that they weren’t sure where our paperwork was (nor did they even attempt to track it down)

We went on a nice family vacation and when we came back, our issues were still waiting for us, so we decided to dig out our original paperwork from September (kept it thank god!) and call the number listed on there (which Countrywide could’ve easily done as well.) to find out what the hold up was, we got a customer service agent there in in a matter of 5 (yes, FIVE) minutes we had an answer.  We were informed that our paperwork was rejected because the notarization was wrong and that 1 (yes, ONE) followup call to us was made to us on October 31st, and the note in our account was “Called, no answer”.  That’s it, no other calls made to us, just that one, welp folks, I can tell you that 10/31 was Halloween, I was home and on call all day and we have answering machine (and it does work), Cmon!!!  Where are your customer service skills, you would think that something this important would warrant a couple more attempts???!?!?!?!

After our little chat with the loan modification place, we called Countrywide back and were furious because:

• We wanted the loan terms from the September ‘08 paperwork.
• Countrywide knew we were in a loan modification, our account was updated to reflect that.  There was no followup from Countrywide, nor did they even attempt to track down our paperwork, WE had to do it all.
• We were basically getting the shove off from Countrywide, they didn’t seem to care that they were toying around with our home, it was just “we want, we want, we want”.  We made our intentions clear to them back in September.
• The loan modification was misleading, it came to us with Countrywide logos all over it (infact, I even got calls from a recording stating that they were Countrywide and our paperwork was being shipped to us), when in fact it was through someone else
• Countrywide told us to shred the first set of paperwork.
• We’re getting debt collection calls even though our account is tagged as loan modification.
• See #3, this is a big one for me.  When your lender doens’t care about your or your home, in today’s econmony, it’s not a good sign.
• Everything we have done has been told to us by Countrywide, we haven’t gone out and done our own thing.
• Our credit scores are dropping and we’re losing credit.

So, on 2/13, I was lucky enough to receive a call from Countrywide wanting to collect a debt, I nicely told the lady that we were in a loan modification and I was awaiting my paperwork (which I was told should be here by the 2/16 from the person I spoke to 2 days ago). She proceeded to ask me if I received the letter of intent to foreclose that was going to expire on March 12.  Intent to Foreclose?!?!?!?

So, I have been looking at my old ugly webpage and decided it was time to do something with it again.  Here is another attempt at doing so..