Complaint Review: ABN-Amro

So you think you've been screwed by ABN-Amro? Wait til you read this one.

My current house was, unbeknownst to me, financed by ABN-Amro. In September of 1994 we signed mortgage papers in a small friendly office in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, for a loan to buy a little bungalow in Mullan, Idaho. The house only cost us $42,000. No one ever said a word about ABN-Amro, and not a word about them appeared in the documents we signed. Had advance warning come to me about ABN-Amro, I would have gotten up from the table and walked away during closing.

The company, ABN-Amro, is actually a Dutch Banking Company from Amsterdam, Holland. Its predecessor was formed in Amsterdam in the late 1600s, and according to my research had an active role in the Triangle Trade with Africa and America. They have apparently not lost their slave/master nature, only now they enslave people with debt rather than chains.

Are they profitable? They are the world's sixth largest bank weighing in with some $6.2 Billion (that's right, spelled with a B) in assets. In America, they are affiliated with LaSalle Bank in Chicago, as well as a myriad number of financial institutions too numerous to name here.

One notable exception is the ABN-Amro Bank USA, which claims it's parentage to a U.S. Navy Captain (Retired) who started ABN-Amro for his retirement. Yeah. Right!

For eight years we paid our mortgage payment of $255.74 without a miss in payments. Then came 1966, and a 500-year flood on the side of a mountain in northern, Idaho. The fast rising water did nothing to our home because we were on the lea side of the flow through the canyon. Across the street there was a different scene. The asphalted street on which we live was uprooted and pieces of it tumbled down the right of way like giant unhinged boulders on their way to h**l.

Next came my city who had decided this would make a wonderful time to install new sanitary sewer and surface sewer lines. Without asking permission, having an LID vote or in any way garnering the permission to take my property, the city removed my sidewalk, curb and driveway. For virtually two years we were forced to park on a torn up street. So when the bill came to replace my sidewalk, curbing and driveway, I baulked and refused to pay, opting to hire an attorney. They added the amount of the mechanic's lien onto my taxes.

I called the Escrow Department of ABN-Amro and instructed them not to pay that portion of my taxes until and if the matter was adjudicated by the district court.

Then, suddenly, I received a letter from ABN-Amro indicating that a) my taxes had been paid in full, including the disputed portion for the curb work, and b) that my payment amount had been increased by some $58 a month. Now that may seem particularly petty to those still making a living/ but when you are retired and on disability, it's the difference between feeding ourselves or feeding ABN-Amro.

I told ABN-Amro that they'd have to wait until I got back the tax money from my lawsuit, to get back the money that they had decided unilaterally to pay out.

I started receiving threatening letters which suggested that I'd be hauled into court and out of my home. I rather unpolitely told them to take a flying you know what at a rolling donut. I'm not a man to p***y foot around in a dramatic situation. never have been.

Over the next few months things got hotter and hostile until they finally mentioned the word foreclosure and I filed and delivered to them a summons to the local district court.

That was four years ago. In the meantime they have added everything possible to the bill. I am, in fact, surprised that they haven't included an additional charge to get rid of the palmetto bugs in their hallways.

They hired a $140 an hour attorney's firm to defend them. The lawsuit was on. When I asked for discovery, they sent me a 7-inch pile of papers to go through. I think they emptied out a file cabinet. That made things easier for a blind man who was using a magnifying glass to see anything.

I am suing them for quiet title to the land and home and various other remedies which could add to several millions of dollars. I'm still alive in court. And they are still screwing people.

We need some justice, and if there's no other way to get some, dish it out yourself. If you can read and understand logic, go and visit you friendly neighborhood law library (likely at the county courthouse) and flip out the red flag in the nose of the bull. You'll never know. Things could just work out to your satisfaction. What the h**l, could they get any worse?

Paul
Mullan, Idaho
U.S.A.