10/20/2010
I have been a Bank of America customer for over 30 years, now that being said the following is an outline of the events leading to up to the dilemma we now face.
Our home mortgage was serviced through Countrywide home loans which as we all know is now B of A. In November of 2008 we spoke with a loan specialist at our local B of A branch about refinancing our home to possibly lower our interest rate. We were directed to try applying for a loan modification as advertised by B of A. I called the appropriate phone number to BAC home loan servicing LP and spoke with a representative there, she took some general information and said that we likely would qualify and the process would take about 90 days to complete, also that someone would be calling to gather more information. A month went by and no call, I called back several times and finally got to talk to a person that took more information and said we would be receiving an application package in 7 to 10 days and that during the application period we were to make trial payments that were near 300 dollars less that our normal mortgage payment. The representative also noted that during this trial period there would be a note on our credit reports that indicated a less than normal payment was being made.
The application package was sent to us via FedEx, which we filled out and returned promptly. A month went by with no notice or update about the status of our application to modify. Again I called the BAC home loan servicing LP center and asked about our application, I was told they did not have an application from us in their records but they would send another one for us to fill out and return. Which we did, promptly.... We repeated this process 5 times until May of 2009 when we received a letter from BAC home loan serving LP that stated they were unable to process our request for loan modification because they had not received the necessary application forms!!!
(side note, At this time our home/auto insurances had come due and because of the notation on our credit reporting from BAC home loan servicing LP our insurance premiums increased by 300 dollars per month!! )
I had to question WHERE were all of the forms that included much of our sensitive personal information? In desperation I sent emails and faxes to every B of A corporate person I could find an address for. One day later I received phone calls and emails from B of A department heads and was given a phone number to a person that would be handling our modification. I called and spoke with that person, confirmed some of our information and was told I would receive notice of our modification status within a week, of which I did. I was told the modification was finalized with a new lower interest rate and monthly payment was now permanent, and that I would be receiving the new contract and payment coupons via mail. We did receive the new contract, which we signed and returned, but no payment coupons. As there were no payment coupons to state how the payments were to be made or mailed to, I called once again to BAC home loan servicing LP to obtain this information. Which brings us to date, we have been mailing our mortgage payments to the location we were told (called a second time to confirm) as our on-line banking has not yet been corrected so that we may make the payments on-line, additionally our on-line banking shows us delinquent. And now we are receiving notices by mail that we have not made our mortgage payments and are in danger of foreclosure. I have tried to call BAC home loan servicing LP to the same person that was handling our modification and was told our loan is being handled by someone else now and that person will call us. We are still waiting. I have called BAC home loan servicing LP in an attempt to find out what is going on only to speak to another nice lady that explained we are receiving notices because we have not been making our full mortgage payments, when I tried to explain that we had a completed modification she informed me that she showed no record of that. OK.......
We can see where this is heading, we will lose our home and maybe after a year in court we might get it straightened out but by then it will be too late.
It is bad enough that we have lost any equity we had in our home because of the housing market collapse, but to add this dilemma on top of it... all things considered we now understand why so many have chosen to just walk away, and now is they very thing that we must consider.
I have dates, times, numbers, names and copies to substantiate all that has been said here.