"I'm tellin' ya, dat Trucoat's reeeely good stuff, dere, ya know, jeez"
Posted on 12/24/2008 10:36:03 AM PST by big black dog
Sitting at home minding my own business when I get a call from a Home Investor (we buy ugly houses, etc) wanting to buy our home! I said why would you call us...he says, because court records show your home in foreclosure!!!
We were shocked, checked the clerk of courts website, and sure enough, our name, address, and GMAC starting foreclosure proceedings!!
Calling GMAC got us nowhere..call Mr Stern (foreclosure mill attorney in South Fla). We call there, leave voicemails, FINALLY get ahold of someone who says 'we won't have your file until the end of next week, call back then!!!
We call GMAC back and FINALLY get ahold of someone who tells us what happened. About 6 months earlier, we had made a .30 CENT error when we sent in a payment. Because we were .30 short, our payment went into a 'suspense file.' Of course, the following month, after interest, penalties, etc, same thing...suspense file. During those 6 months my wife even called at least one payment in...they said NOTHING!!! We seldom received monthly statements, and never any during this period.
When we FINALLY go ahold of 'Daniel' at Stern's office, he was like most people we had talked to...the 'your just another deadbeat' attitude. No one would listen to what happened, and didn't care. However, they would settle for $6,000 in penalty and interest...and lawyer fees, etc. When we attempted to get a break down of all costs, we were put off, promised them, etc..to this day, almost a year later, we haven't received it although they had been ordered to provide them twice by a judge.
We checked with some laywers, and were basically told, 'your screwed' but would take our case, which would have probably cost us thousands more. So we decided to fight it ourselves.
My wife searched the internet, got all the information and laws, kept a close eye on the clerk of the court website. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!! Twice the lawyer filed for 'summery judgements' that we found out about on the website...we were NEVER notifed by them!!!!
Several months into this of figuting, trying to work a settlement and begging for a breakdown of charges and fees, the lawyers office FINALLY told us to call the Loss Midigation Office!! We were never told about them!! GMAC would only refer us to the attorney! Guess when they figured we would not just roll over, they gave us the number.
We contacted them, again very 'you deadbeats' attitude, and set up payments they KNEW we couldn't afford (over twice what our regular payment should have been). We were able to make those payments for 5 of the 6th scheduled months, but were 2 days late on the last one. They returned it, added several more thousands in fees, and wanted to set up another of their so called 'payment' plans.
We finally got a settlement figure from them (GMAC) (although to this day STILL don't know what all the fees were for) then the lawyers office gave us another settlement figure for about $2500 MORE than GMAC. They were trying to charge us for lawyer fees TWICE!!!!
I finally got the settlement money together, taking money from a retirement fund (taxes will kill me next year for that)!!! We sent the money to GMAC and assumed it was over. My wife kept checking the Clerk of Courts website waiting to see a dismissal.
A month after they received our check, she checked the website and again, Stern had filed another summary judgement for 2 days later, and we found that GMAC added $1600 in 'fees' to the next months payment!!! We went to court and the lawyer called in moments befoe the scheduled time to say they were dismissing the case. The judge was NOT AMUSED by GMAC or the lawyers!! He told us it was the worst case of abuse and incompetence he had ever seen, and would never had issued the summary judgment after reading our file, but would have scheduled it for trial.
After almost 2 weeks, we STILL can't find out what the $1600 in 'fees' is for, although the judge did tell us to let him know if they didn't drop it. We have been told there is apparently one person who knows, and several messages to her voice mail had been ignored, although she has our home and both cell phone numbers.
Yep, the 30 cents was our mistake. There was a time when the company would have called or send a letter saying 'ooops...you made a mistake, please sent us 30 cents!!! Not GMAC!!! They are our to destroy people. It will take years to get my credit report fixed (they reported 'foreclosure' to the credit agencies). I would have happily paid the 30 cents plus 100 bucks in late fees, had they bothered to notify us.
We are like some others here. I'd refinance with another company in a second but first, with my credit report, the interest rate would be through the roof, and second, there is not guarantee that the company won't sell our note back to GMAC!!
First to call BS.
Instead of working with customers to the benefit of both, banks have turned into thugs, trying to maximize quarterly profits. That this behavior destroys their customer base and lower housing prices is not accounted for. It is suicidal.
You hear about this stuff happening and are usually incredulous that it does happen.
Is it any wonder that consumer faith in lending institutions is in the crapper?
I would be posting this on elance.com for legal help offering a hefty bonus collected on punitive damages.
You win something for that?
Nightmare!!
I wish.
You should have bought the Trucoat!
>>First to call BS.<<
I agree. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Thanks to the internet, now more than ever this is true.
Modality zero
I, too, wonder about this story.
I’ve had mortgages with GMAC and they have always been great to deal with. Perhaps there is more to this story.
It's all fun and games until someone puts an eye out . . . in other words, it's all fun and games until one gets served with a summons to appear and blows it off. Thus the "summery" judgment motions.
This is very simple. Without official documents crossing your doorstep you are not liable. Personally, once they told me of the 30 cent error, I would have sent them a check for 30 cents and if they wanted more, immediately gone to small claims court for the maximum amount AGAINST THEM for harrassment.
The fact that they were told by “unbiased” lawyers that they were screwed means one of three things: 1. the lawyers were lazy incompetents. 2. the case was not worth their time. 3. This case is not what is described in this post.
I’ve been on Jury duty during two long and complicated trials. The most important take-away from both of those experiences was that you NEVER make up your mind until you have heard both sides make their case.
This one is one sided. That makes it an interesting read but, then, so is a lot of fiction.
“... it’s all fun and games until one gets served with a summons to appear and blows it off.”
Yup. One thing I have learned about court is that it is a game and you have to play by the rules. I learned first hand that it is the number one secret to winning. Crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s, and doing it at the right time with the propper form of notification to the propper people is where it’s at.
And when you are the one notified properly, you had better, by God, respond properly!
Out of curiosity, CAN they set things right?
Either this is fake, or they had a law firm seriously trying to steamroll them with no regard for the consequences. Motions for summary judgment are supposed to served to the opposing party, usually weeks in advance of any court date to allow for a response time. Upon learning this a judge should just deny the motion on those grounds, maybe do something to the law firm for trying to pull one over on him. A complaint to the state bar for this might result in sanction for the firm.
Grotesgue as it seems, the story sounds entirely too plausible to me.
You must live in a state of grace, or a hermits cave if you have not experienced something similar.
These things happen, the guy did not even need to make the 30 cent error to experience something like this.
He was lucky he found a judge willing hear the facts instead of copping a “this must be BS, pay the upstanding GMAC (or Countrywide or your choice of financial institution), as they could neither err nor cheat”.
Multiply the problem by how many different people/computers are involved and you end up with total chaos.
JMHO
FMCDH(BITS)
"I'm tellin' ya, dat Trucoat's reeeely good stuff, dere, ya know, jeez"
Granted, there is the possibility that the subject was improperly served, but I hold that to be less likely than the alternative.
The subject blew the bank off. The subject is an idiot. The dollar amount of the dispute is irrelevant. Funny thing is, I don't even get the impression that the lesson was learned.
HAHAHA.
Someone got it!
Unbelieveable. Come on up and collect your prize!
I read an article earlier today on just this thing. The service companies are predatory and out to soak the owners for every dime they can get.
If you think this kind of crap doesn’t happen, and you think it can’t happen to you. You better think again.
http://householdwatch.com/logic/yourmoney.php
I love that movie. You betcha.
I would guess this probably happens a lot more than you may realize.
I have used Ditech (owned by GMAC) for years. I am a repeat customer due to what used to be great service.
Something has changed over the last several months. I have been sent a certified letter from their collections department when I am not late on a payment. My wife’s call to correct this issue lasted over 2.5 hours, involved getting transferred 8 times and then ended by being hung up on during a transfer. My follow up call was much more fortunate and only took 45 minutes and two transfers.
I am wondering if the GM cash issue is leading to a panic inside GMAC. I’m currently NOT a happy customer and not likely to go back again if they don’t get their act together.
My wife and I finally bought it two weeks ago and watched it twice. Having spent a lot of time in Minneapolis (the airport and Eden Prarie) and our daughter and grandkids live in northeastern SD, we seriously enjoyed it.
And then my sister in law in Woodstock Ill. calls me not two days ago and her dialect sounds EXACTLY like the kidnapped wife. It was hard not to laugh as she talked. :)
A case in point.
A lady I know was very recently stopped for whatever reason and admonished for going five mph over the limit or going to slow, whatever, there was no citation issued.
However she could not present the most current copy of her auto insurance.
She produced that to the court within days and got verification of its submission.
Many weeks later she was, arrested at her home, handcuffed and incarcerated, for failing to produce that document.
She was fortunate to find someone in the middle of the night with cash to bail her out.
The court admitted their mistake, big whoops, but the County jail would not refund the bail , and a mugshot of her is forever on the internet.
If you don’t think the court system is incompetent and capable of gross error, you are not just rude, you are foolish.
My mortgage servicer, Wells Fargo, did not accept a periodic payment from me as it was short a few dollars (they had re-figured escrow due, I had payments on auto pay from bank, and missed their recalculations), no notice from WFC, I only noticed because my bank balance was more than it should have been later in the month. I called them and found out the problem - of course even tho 99% of the amount due was in their hands on the due date, and the escrow balance was considerably positive, they charged me a 10% late fee. Sharp practice at best. Slimy banker practice at the human level.
Since there was no notice, you could probably get it reversed, eventually through small claims if they balked. But is it worth it. At least they were not being OVERLY punitive.
I can see why you want to springboard from a discussion of this story to one about our court system. If so, you need to find someone else to call foolish.
Looking at the "facts" as they are presented here, the only incompetent fools are the subjects themselves. And not without a considerable amount of irony, I should add. They couldn't waste their precious time over a thirty cent discrepancy. The judge couldn't waste his or her precious time over it, so summary judgment was granted (twice!). The lawyer told them that the case isn't worth wasting his or her precious time over. So they're screwed because no one wants to waste their precious time. As I stated, there's a lesson to be learned.
No sir.
It is you who relies upon the notion that there was notification of a summary judgement by the court.
It is upon that assumption you have determined this story is BS.
The abuse, probably. The SCO v. IBM case over the last few years has shown me what abuse companies and lawyers can get away with. But then the Jack Thompson disbarrment gave me hope.
There are a lot of FR members who would say that all this is perfectly all right, since everything was done in accordance with the law.
I know mortgage companies make mistakes, have idiots answering the phones, have endless phone menus, etc....
but, I just don’t believe this story, without more proof.
Although I must admit the image of the incredulous look on the attorney's face when this moron asked for a consultation cracks me up. And the fact that the attorney blew him off simply adds credence to my hypothesis.
"You blew what off? How many times?" LOL
It is not worth my time or worry. That is the scandal. People are often scammed by these institutions simply because it is more trouble and expense to fight than to hand them up the $.
Merry Christmas, my friend.
Depends on what "is" is.
One can easily deal with the existing loan - it was his son that let it default.
The other; if "right" is an adjustment in value, yes. If "right" is extending a 20 year loan to 40 years, no, because that's only worsening the burden. He's most likely going to step away from the house and accept the onus while the bank trades a write down today for another empty building in a recently upscale neighborhood. A house they might sell a year from now for about one third.
(Point is, he's trying to do whatever he does in proper fashion - before a default - while the bank can't even use the same alibi twice in a row)
I agree that this story is utter BS.
“First to call BS.”
It’s possible.
I originate mortgages for a very large entity. A month or so ago we had someone walk into our bank where I am located.
He said that he just found out his home had been foreclosed on and that was the first thing he had heard about any problems with anything with his mortgage.
After spending an hour calling loan servicing and the law firm who was handling the foreclosure, we found out that yes the property had gone all the way through the foreclosure process and had been sold at a sheriffs sale. The process would take at least a year and multiple notices would of course be sent out out to the mortgage holder..
They left and went home and I saw some emails the next day from our loss mitigation people.
It turns out that they had spoke with this guy multiple times and had given him options of what to do. He just didn’t do what was needed to stop the foreclosure process and could have.
I get a bit cynical with some of these stories. For every case a lender does something stupid; there are 10 cases where a BS artist just won’t pay their bills and wants to blame someone else.
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