Bank of America is Stealing my Home

3/2/2010

I would start by saying "You're not going to believe this" but sadly, this tale is all too believable. In July of 2009, Bank of America Fedexed me this package inviting me to participate in the "Making Homes Affordable" program. At the time I was unemployed but making my mortgage payments on time. After reading the package, I was dubious. It sounded creepy from the start. If I participated, I would make payments that were roughly 2/3 of my normal payment for three months while they process my loan modification. I had 2 main concerns:

1. What would happen to my credit?
   
2. How did they intend to collect the difference between my "probationary " payment and my normal one?
   

I called the phone number on the package on two different days and spoke to two different agents and the response went something like this: "If you make the probationary payment for three months, your regular payments will be short according to the terms of your original agreement. We will report those as partial payments to the credit reporting agencies. At the end of the three months, we will add the balance to the principal of the mortgage."

So I asked, "What if I make the whole mortgage payment during the three months."

The agent said "If you make the whole payment, you will be proving that you can, and we will deny your loan modification application."

So the final analysis was if I wanted to cut my mortgage payment through this program, I was going to have to live with 3 partial payments on my credit report for two years. Considering I was unemployed this was a foregone conclusion. So reluctantly we signed the papers, printed all the backup paperwork and sent it in.

Then we waited…………and…waited.

November! I get a call from a guy claiming to be from B of A needing additional information. Well actually, he just needed me to resend the same information. This call was creepy because the agent reluctantly gave me his last name and couldn't give me his direct line or email. In fact, the email address he gave me was in another state. He admitted that he had no way of confirming receipt and acceptance of the documents. I felt like I was working with the KGB on my Russian Visa.

On November 15, I got a letter stating that my trial period is up and I have failed to send in all my documentation. But by their grace, they would give me ten days to come up with the documentation. When I called and got agent X, she said that she had all the information. It was just waiting to be reviewed.

Between 11/11 and 12/2 I got three more calls, each from an agent in another corner of the country, each refusing to give last names or direct numbers, each admitting they couldn't verify receipt. Finally on 12/2, I marched into a local B of A mortgage department and demanded action. The agent there was cool and rehearsed "I'm sorry, we don't have anything to do with loan modification. There's nothing we can do to help." So I demanded that every page of my application and backup paperwork (33 pages by now) were to be faxed from a B of A fax machine to the loan office fax machine and that I receive a transmission receipt verifying that every page went through. After three tries she was successful. Kind of makes you wonder how many others assumed their documents went through on the first try.

Then we waited… and … waited…and continued to make our "probationary" payments further damaging our credit. Interestingly the documents claimed "time is of the essence". One time an agent called me at 4:40 and demanded paperwork by 5:00. I suspect he was angling for an excuse to reject the modification because the borrower refused to cooperate.

January 25^th. We are now well beyond our three months. Customer service called out of the blue to see if I wanted to pay them more money. When I explained that I was applying for the loan modification program, the agent dug a little deeper. She found that the loan processor had everything she needed but it takes three to four months to process!!! So I am supposed to sit around wondering for 4 more months wrecking my credit?

A week later, I get this cryptic letter stating that I "may not be eligible". The reason was that my loan payment was less than 31% of my income. Here's the hysterical part, according to the letter, my income was verified at $1760/month. Now I am not a banker so I ran the math several times to try to figure out how an $1100 mortgage payment was less than 31% of $1760 income. Thankfully they included an 800 number for those confused people out there. So I called.

I called on 2/2 and left a message

I called on 2/3 looking for an explanation and the agent said a "new package" was in the mail. She had no clue what was in the new package but it was coming Fedex. She also refused to comment on their fuzzy math.

2/16 still no mystery package. However I did receive a Notice of Intent to Accelerate. For the laymen out there, when you sign a mortgage, all that paperwork basically says that if you are ever late, you are in default and they can demand the whole note at once. Well this escalates things a bit doesn't it? They wanted $4200 by March 18^th or the whole note is due. So much for the terms of the loan modification agreement. But on the brighter side, I got another letter the same day stating that they are still processing my loan modification request.

Naturally, this got me on the phone ASAP. I called the number on the form and waited 40 minutes. Terrence said I need to call another number. Another 40 minutes and Winston said I need to call another number. Thirty minutes on hold and Brandon said I needed to call another number. Thirty five minutes later and Greg told me they were now sending a notice of foreclosure and that my loan modification had failed underwriting. But he didn't know why. I had to call the processor who was now being referred to as the "negotiator". He gave me her number. When I called, they originally told me to called the first number I called that morning. When I refused stating my morning's events, they told me they couldn't connect me, they wouldn't give me her email and that they would email her and request she call but they wouldn't copy me on the email.

So I carpet bombed the executives at B of A. Ken Scheller (ken.scheller@bankofamerica.com) did email me back and say that he had assigned my case to the "escalation team". That agent called on 2/17 and promised to get back to me the week of 2/21. But so far, no call, no email. I called and left messages Monday and Tuesday, still no answer.

I got an email form Steven Nielson on behalf of Joe Price claiming he was forwarded my email and that "attempts to contact me had failed. Let's see, were those attempts to call the cell phone that is attached to my hip or the email that comes straight to my Blackberry. I wonder if I can try that with my next mortgage payment. Probably not.

So in the final analysis, I went from good credit and a current mortgage to destroyed credit and a potential foreclosure by following the directions of the Making Home Affordable agreement to the letter. Thank you Mr. Obama. Thank you Bank of America for developing such a cunning scheme to steal back America one home at a time. My advice is whatever you do, vote to keep Govco out of your life. There is no program that they can conceive that they can utterly make a shambles of. And second, do business with the little local guy. BofA is so big, they don't know if they are coming or going. Too bad they didn't take some time to learn how Countrywide treated their customers before they fired everybody. They might have learned something.