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.

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.

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.

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?!?!?!?