Going on 11 months now of fighting with Wells Fargo for a mortgage modification and I have sure learned a whole lot. And most of it does not reflect well on the Obama administration, Congress, the justice system or corporate America.
I realize quite a few people who know me wonder why in the world I’m still beating my head against this wall of greed and lies. At first it was because I was afraid about losing my home. Not so much anymore. I have accepted the fact that the bank execs and their cronies have so thoroughly stacked the decks against the average homeowner that I will probably become one of the estimated 13 million Americans who will lose our houses in this debacle.
In yoga class, the instructor has us draw a "self help card" as a focus for our practice some days. I recently drew a doozy, the "Courage" card. This is the image I'd like to project to Wells Fargo, especially those women in the president's office who keep lying to the Arizona attorney general's investigator saying I didn't send this and I didn't do that. Kathleen, Wanita and Angela, for you I am a fierce nordic warrior woman with a big knife. Now, bring it!
So, if I have no hope of keeping my home, why am I still blogging, updating my website and telling everyone who will listen the truth about what is happening in this country? Simple. Because what the banks are doing is wrong. And if everyone who is experiencing the the lies and ridiculous misdirection and outright fraud just rolls over and lets it happen, this government-sanctioned corporate assault on the citizens of this country will go on and on and it will get worse.
Also, because I’m just downright stubborn. One of my friends who is great for my morale on those days when I’m tired and sick of the hypocrisy and evil corporate policy disguised as fake ineptness keeps saying things like “that bank has no idea who they’re messing with.” Because she has seen my sheer bloody cussedness in action and she has listened to the story about my first experience tilting at corporate windmills.
I’m the crazy woman who fought with a now-defunct Denver department store, May D&F, for three years over $10.60. That was back in the mid-80s when I was a recent college grad doing what we were told to back then to establish credit – get a credit card, make one purchase and pay it off right away. That was the beginning of the era when banks were practically throwing themselves at the feet of college students trying to get them hooked on buying things they couldn’t afford on credit, so a student could sign up for and get as many cards as she wanted. I got one for this upscale department store, where I purchased a bottle of Lauren perfume for $10.60. I paid the bill as soon as I got it and filed away the credit card, which I never used again. Simple. Except, when I got a second bill for the same item.
Now, this was back in the days when banks mailed you your canceled checks along with your statement each month. So, I pulled out the check showing clearly that I had paid the credit card bill, made a photocopy, typed (yes, on an electric typewriter) a properly formatted and worded business letter to whom it may concern and sent in proof that I did not, indeed, owe May D&F $10.60. If it were just a billing mistake, this would surely have been enough to get it corrected. But, then, I got another bill for $10.60. I sent another copy of the check with another politely worded letter.
This went on for three years, with their letters eventually threatening to refer me to collections and my replies getting ever more business-communication-101 scathing. I even called the company several times. Still, several times a year with no rhyme or reason to the timing, I would get another bill from May D&F for $10.60. Finally I got an accounts receivable manager on the phone one day and she had me send a copy of my canceled check directly to her. I never heard from May D&F again. I never spent another dime there, either. And I have probably told my story a couple hundred times over the years. Including right here, to all of you. (The May Co., the store’s parent company, disappeared into a bunch of mergers that ended with the company being swallowed up by Macy’s sometime in 2005. I don’t shop there, either.)
In yoga class, the instructor has us draw a "self help card" as a focus for our practice some days. I recently drew a doozy, the "Courage" card. This is the image I'd like to project to Wells Fargo, especially those women in the president's office who keep lying to the Arizona attorney general's investigator saying I didn't send this and I didn't do that. Kathleen, Wanita and Angela, for you I am a fierce nordic warrior woman with a big knife. Now, bring it!
Over the three years I battled with May D&F, it became painfully clear this was no simple billing mistake. It was, I believe, an established-but-no-doubt-secret corporate policy to bill customers multiple times for small amounts in the hopes they wouldn’t notice they had already paid. It was a pretty common practice in the ’80s and I believe a few companies actually got hauled into court for it. They must have made billions bilking their customers like this.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to have just paid another $10.60 instead of banging out all those letters on my trusty typewriter? Sure. But what they were doing was not right. If everyone who got double billed like that had called the companies on it and refused to pay, they wouldn’t have kept doing it. I felt like if I let them do it to me, I was saying it was okay for them to do it to everyone else, too.
And it is not okay. Not any more okay than what Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is doing to me and thousands of other customers, jerking us around with “lost” paperwork, endless phone queues and made-up processing “rules” instead of behaving like ethical, professional grown-ups and performing timely, honest and accurate reviews of our home loans and providing appropriate modifications to those who qualify.
That’s why I fight. Wells Fargo and Freddie Mac will probably take my home. But I will not go quietly. I fought for three years over a measly $10.60 and the principle involved. They had better know I’ll fight a whole lot longer and harder for a house and to say “NO WAY” to mortgage modification fraud and foreclosure fraud.
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