“Making Home Affordable Program” Archive
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Bank of America called this morning. I ran to answer the phone when I saw their number pop up on the caller ID. For some crazy reason, I thought maybe they’d magically approved us for the making homes affordable program.
Ha.
Apparently motherhood makes you totally delusional.
Debra Poindexter (yup, that’s what she said her name was), called to sell me a B of A insurance policy for my home appliances. Sure, she didn’t have a huge chance considering all the appliances in my home are about 20 years old, but the fact that she was selling for B of A killed any chance at all.
Midway through her pitch, I interrupted and said, ‘B of A holds my home mortgage. Considering the horrid level of customer service I’ve had for the past 4 years, there’s a better chance of… well… there’s a better chance of pretty much everything happening before I bought a policy from you folks. Don’t take it personally, but you work for a miserable company.’
Silence.
‘But have a wonderful day. I really wish you personally the best. We won’t go into what I wish for B of A’ I said.
Then she hung up on me.
What?!? I was being nice!
Over the last few weeks, I received 38 calls from Bank of America representatives. Sometimes, they would call up to three times a day. Annoyed with their constant “we lost your paperwork” and “you make too much money for program A but if you submit new paperwork for program B…”, I started ignoring their calls.
I am not an idiot and I don’t have 40 hours each week to gather paperwork for them to lose.
About a week ago, the calls stopped. They stopped leaving messages. They stopped requesting any information. It didn’t make sense. Why did they give up so suddenly? Did they finally get the hint?
Today, I received a letter from the Bank of New York Mellon…
The new owner of my home loan.
Sadly, I know absolutely nothing about the Bank of New York Mellon. What do I know? That I am no longer a B of A customer.
It’s hard to do cartwheels at 29 weeks pregnant but…
I’m going to give it a try.
I swore I’d NEVER talk about the stupid Making Homes Affordable Scam *cough* I mean, Program again since it’s been such a nightmare and we’ve given up all hope but, they CALLED ME last night. They wanted to let me know my file had been pushed to a supervisor and was currently under review.
No, I’m not going to get my hopes up and no, I’m not going to spend hours chasing paperwork they will lose over and over, but I guess we’ll see what happens?
Weird.
Over the weekend, my brother celebrated his 40th birthday by throwing a party in a suite at the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown San Diego. Between our family and his friends, the place was packed. The music was awesome, the food was delicious, and it should have been a good night. Should.
My sister and I sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi tub chatting away while enjoying the skyline views across downtown. I’m not sure how it happened, but the subject of Bank of America was brought up. My sister recently financed a car through them and of course, I ‘kindly’ told her she was an idiot to finance through them. I ‘may’ have also said I’d rather die than owe “those life sucking *%@&#%’s an ounce of my future earnings.”
My sister, who knows about my 18 month long fight with B of A, smiled an evil smile and egged me on. “Why don’t you stop paying them?”
“And further my relationship with the devil?!?! I’m not going to sink as low as those scum suckers!” I raged on.
She grinned, knowing I’d explode into a 30 minute ‘show’.
In the middle of my tirade, I happened to notice someone taking an interest in my ‘I hate B of A’ speech. Rather than shut my mouth, I ranted for a few minutes longer to my sister and we moved on to more interesting topics like gastritis, carrot cake, and cancer.
My sister excused herself to use the restroom and the person who was showing an odd interest in my tirade came up to me and said, ‘Hi, my name is Wade. That’s my wife Karen. I’ve known James for 20 years. And I work for Bank of America… in the mortgage division.’
I responded, ‘Hi, my name is Rebekah. That’s my husband Chris. James is my brother. And I enjoy putting my foot in my mouth.’
Wade is a laid back guy, but it’s a little hard to rebound from my claim that all B of A employees are ‘horrific scum suckers.’ He tried to explain that B of A is doing the best they can do and losing client forms is a common occurrence. He encouraged me to keep trying and wished me a good night.
Losing forms is common? Keep trying?
So. Sorry to my brother. Sorry to Wade – a non-scum sucker.
But I still hate Bank of America.
I called B of A again today to check the status on our application for the Making Home Affordable program. After being transferred 7 times, I was finally transferred to someone who knew what they were talking about (VERY few and VERY far between). He looked through my application and told me my 2009 tax information was not in my file.
“I’m staring at an exact copy of the information I sent. The 2009 taxes were in there.” I replied.
“Well mam, I can only tell you what I see” he said annoyed. “Also, the paycheck stubs you submitted were from September. That’s too old.”
“That’s because I submitted the application in SEPTEMBER. They were current when I sent them” I said angrily.
“No underwriter will accept old stubs and missing tax information. You’re going to have to resubmit everything” he said coolly.
“Spend hours collecting and packaging information only to have you lose it and have to retry in three months?” I asked.
“Looks that way doesn’t it” he responded.
I get it.
I finally get it.
I understand why people get so fed up, they walk away. I get why they rip apart their homes when they leave. I get why our neighbor set his house on fire when he was forced to leave. I get why there is so much anger.
We started this process a year and a half ago and I’m still sitting firmly on square one.
I have to admit, I picked up the phone immediately after slamming it down on Bank of America and dialed our bank. I was planning on closing our mortgage checking account to simply get the attention of this awful, awful bank. Miss a payment? Or two? Or ten? Yeah, maybe they’d actually get a hint that this fight has just begun and now I’m willing to play dirty.
About 20 seconds into listening to a particularly bad rendition of a Yanni song, I hung up.
Who am I kidding? As much as I dislike them and wish ill on them as a company, I refuse to change who I am. They may be the biggest group of underhanded dirty liars, but I’m not.
Thank you Bank of America for making me miserable. Thank you for reminding me that I can’t stand being under your thumb. Thank you for inspiring me to be debt free including the mortgage because every minute with you in my life is too long.
For some crazy, nonsensical reason, I’m still working with Bank of America on my loan modification. I swear, it’s like I’m in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship with them and I keep hoping there is a smidge of love somewhere, meanwhile, he’s out dating more fiscally attractive ladies and has completely forgotten about me.
I mailed the ‘Oops we’re sorry, you actually do qualify for the program and we lied to you for ten months’ paperwork they requested back in September. You may have to sit down for this shocking bit of information…
They haven’t replied.
I called them this afternoon. After five transfers, I was finally connected to the ‘Status Queue Home Retention’ line. He said, ‘It’s been more than 60 days. I’m not sure why you haven’t been assigned a staff member yet.’
I wanted to ask, ‘Maybe it’s because I haven’t called before now and you guys never get moving until someone complains?’
He ‘forwarded my application to his supervisor’ (if you believe that, I’ve got ocean front property in Arizona to sell you) and asked me to call back in a few weeks for another status update.
Funny, this is exactly the same process I went through last October. I’ll hold on until January and then make an attempt to try out the HARP program recommended by a kind reader.
Isn’t the definition of insanity – someone who repeatedly does the same thing and expects a different result?
Bank of America left a flurry of voicemail messages over the weekend.
*Beep* Rebekah, this is Bank of America calling about the HAMP program…
*Beep* Hi, this is Bank of America. We’re calling about the paperwork…
*Beep* Rebekah, please return our call at 877…
If Bank of America were an ex-boyfriend, I’d have a restraining order by now.
On Saturday, after the third phone call, I finally picked up.
“Hello Rebekah. This is Carol from Bank of America. I’d like to walk you through the application package we mailed to you last week. Have you had a chance to complete it and mail it to us?”
‘Carol’ kept me on the phone for nearly 30 minutes explaining what I had to do to get approved for the program. I find it incredibly odd that two years after my first application, they are ‘coming to my rescue’.
Did they come to my rescue when I lost my job? Did they help when I had to take a job making more than 30% less? How about when my husband lost his job and our mortgage payment was 115% of our income?
Not a peep.
The came to ‘save’ me now…two years later. Two years of not one late payment despite everything.
To add insult to injury, I received another copy of the package yesterday as a ‘back-up copy’ in case the first copy didn’t get to me.
I don’t understand why B of A is suddenly taking an interest in me – and only after I got my head above water.
I didn’t think it was possible to lose more respect for Bank of America.
Turns out…
It is.
Is Bank of America saving me? Or am I saving them?
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