Why sometimes the boogey man Government is good
I don't make idle threats. I've learned that it serves no purpose so when I talked to my mortgage company about my insurance claim, I told them I'd done some research online and that maybe I wasn't the guy to be difficult with. I told them I had a bad taste in my mouth over the loan modification process where it took them three months to tell me I didn't qualify. In the mean time, I had to fax paperwork, refax paperwork and get around a system that would not allow me to return the phone calls of the person that called me. This really happened to me: Their phone system would transfer me to the person's extension every time I called and then hang up if that person didn't answer. No chance to leave a voicemail, no chance to talk to someone else. As soon as I entered my loan number into their automated system, this happened to me.
So I read online that my mortgage company has a tendency to do the same thing with insurance claims. I called them the day I got the insurance check and asked about the process. They told me I had to send the check to them before they would even send out the claims paperwork I needed. I overnighted the check. The packet showed up ten days later. I asked if they could e-mail me the paperwork. They said no. They only send it out by standard mail. With the check, I had to send the insurance adjuster's estimate of repairs. OK, that's fair. I get that if we're spending our collective money, they want to ensure that I'm not gonna go buy that shiny red Mustang and I don't blame them. I mailed the estimate along with the check. But... as I said, I also told them I wasn't in the mood to play this lose paperwork, delay, delay, delay game. I told them what I'd do if they did this stuff. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so on with what's happened so far.
It takes two days for my mortgage company (to be fair, they're using an outside company to represent them, but I believe that company is also owned by them) to upload originals into their system and that's when I had my first bad experience with them.
In the estimate, my insurance company guy forgot to label one of the pages, 2 of 10. So naturally, they're missing page 2. And mysteriously, they're missing page 10, which I sent.
OK, I had the insurance guy send me the whole thing again because I didn't have page two either, and even the contractor I chose asked me about page two. I found out that I did have page two, it just didn't say page two. So I wrote across the bottom, this is page two, and signed and dated the statement. And I sent page ten in again. I don't have a home phone so faxing something costs me $1.50 a page. Naturally this fax number isn't toll free, either which is partially why the cost is so high. But I wanted to get the ball rolling.
So, we get the contract signed and fill out all their paperwork. This added some time to the process because I'm not the only job this guy has. I get the paperwork and send it in. Priority mail. Mailed on a Saturday, received on a Monday. I call on the next day, which is a Tuesday, to make sure they got it. It's not in their system. Call back tomorrow. So I do. And they have it and it all looks good and they put it in for review. That takes us to Monday of last week. They call. I miss the call so I call right back. They can't read one of the forms the contractor fills out. It's the tax form and they have to have it. OK, I have to go to work in like an hour so it'll have to wait. I download the form and then decide to call them back. It's just his address they can't read so I think to myself, well, maybe this is something we can just take care of over the phone. I call back and the lady tells me that the form has been accepted and she's going to request a check and I should have it by Wednesday of this week. I call back on Monday because I've learned to follow up with these folks. And I get told we're back to the we have to have the tax form redone because they can't quite make out the address. The have the tax number they need but they're being sticklers and then I'm informed that once they get the form it takes from three to five days for the IRS to verify the information.
I ask, you can't e-verify? I'm dealing with a too big to fail bank and they don't use e-mail, apparently have never heard of a PDF, and can't e-verify a tax ID number with the government. Wow!
I tried to explain again the frustration and tried to understand why we couldn't just clarify the address with a phone call. I was told that then it would be altering a signed document and thus making it void. I get the process isn't going forward without it and that simple explanation would have been good enough a week ago when I was told everything was OK when it wasn't.
So I told the lady on the phone, and I apologized profusely for sounding difficult, that I'm very frustrated with their process and I was going to ask the VA to step in on my behalf to make sure we don't have any more issues. I'm also going to file a complaint with the State.
I get why they do this. They make money holding onto the money. And I really do understand why they have this program in place. Given my track record with them, I wouldn't give me all the money either, so I'm not trying to throw them under the bus. But what I'm doing is trying to get them to streamline their process. There is no reason this shouldn't have been taken care of two weeks ago, except that by using the techniques they do, it builds delay after delay into their process. And each delay keeps them making money.
The next challenge is that once they "verify" the contractor's information, then it takes them another three to five business days to cut a check. Why? Then another day to overnight it. They charged me $30 to pay for overnight delivery of the checks. I'm two weeks out from having a check. I finally had to clean one of the furnaces the best I could just so we could have heat in this joint. The money to clean the furnaces is built into the contract. So is hauling off the junk and if not for the goodness of heart of my contractor who was willing to front that expense, all that stuff would be still sitting on my lawn.
Today, I leaned on the big bad old boogey man of Government. For my conservative friends, the free market ain't working so good today, so I reached out to the VA who guarantees my loan to intercede on my behalf with the mortgage company. The guy from the VA told me, sadly, that it's not just my mortgage company that does this stuff. What I'm experiencing is common to all of them.
It's in the VA's interest to see my basement is repaired. They're the mortgage guarantor and that fact alone is probably a lot of why I couldn't get a mortgage modification. Nobody has an interest in modifying a loan that is 100% guaranteed by the US Government. Why should they? They get paid no matter what. But the VA, I have to say, really cares about Veterans. They've been more than helpful to me, and today is no exception. Neither of us knows what good it will do, but they're going to call the mortgage company and see what they can do to resolve the problem I'm having.
And I have to call them in just under an hour to see they received the new document they asked for.
Sometimes, friends, it's good to remember that there's a reason we have government regulation and usually its because someone did something so outrageous to some other group of people. Greed, it turns out, isn't always good.
So I read online that my mortgage company has a tendency to do the same thing with insurance claims. I called them the day I got the insurance check and asked about the process. They told me I had to send the check to them before they would even send out the claims paperwork I needed. I overnighted the check. The packet showed up ten days later. I asked if they could e-mail me the paperwork. They said no. They only send it out by standard mail. With the check, I had to send the insurance adjuster's estimate of repairs. OK, that's fair. I get that if we're spending our collective money, they want to ensure that I'm not gonna go buy that shiny red Mustang and I don't blame them. I mailed the estimate along with the check. But... as I said, I also told them I wasn't in the mood to play this lose paperwork, delay, delay, delay game. I told them what I'd do if they did this stuff. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so on with what's happened so far.
It takes two days for my mortgage company (to be fair, they're using an outside company to represent them, but I believe that company is also owned by them) to upload originals into their system and that's when I had my first bad experience with them.
In the estimate, my insurance company guy forgot to label one of the pages, 2 of 10. So naturally, they're missing page 2. And mysteriously, they're missing page 10, which I sent.
OK, I had the insurance guy send me the whole thing again because I didn't have page two either, and even the contractor I chose asked me about page two. I found out that I did have page two, it just didn't say page two. So I wrote across the bottom, this is page two, and signed and dated the statement. And I sent page ten in again. I don't have a home phone so faxing something costs me $1.50 a page. Naturally this fax number isn't toll free, either which is partially why the cost is so high. But I wanted to get the ball rolling.
So, we get the contract signed and fill out all their paperwork. This added some time to the process because I'm not the only job this guy has. I get the paperwork and send it in. Priority mail. Mailed on a Saturday, received on a Monday. I call on the next day, which is a Tuesday, to make sure they got it. It's not in their system. Call back tomorrow. So I do. And they have it and it all looks good and they put it in for review. That takes us to Monday of last week. They call. I miss the call so I call right back. They can't read one of the forms the contractor fills out. It's the tax form and they have to have it. OK, I have to go to work in like an hour so it'll have to wait. I download the form and then decide to call them back. It's just his address they can't read so I think to myself, well, maybe this is something we can just take care of over the phone. I call back and the lady tells me that the form has been accepted and she's going to request a check and I should have it by Wednesday of this week. I call back on Monday because I've learned to follow up with these folks. And I get told we're back to the we have to have the tax form redone because they can't quite make out the address. The have the tax number they need but they're being sticklers and then I'm informed that once they get the form it takes from three to five days for the IRS to verify the information.
I ask, you can't e-verify? I'm dealing with a too big to fail bank and they don't use e-mail, apparently have never heard of a PDF, and can't e-verify a tax ID number with the government. Wow!
I tried to explain again the frustration and tried to understand why we couldn't just clarify the address with a phone call. I was told that then it would be altering a signed document and thus making it void. I get the process isn't going forward without it and that simple explanation would have been good enough a week ago when I was told everything was OK when it wasn't.
So I told the lady on the phone, and I apologized profusely for sounding difficult, that I'm very frustrated with their process and I was going to ask the VA to step in on my behalf to make sure we don't have any more issues. I'm also going to file a complaint with the State.
I get why they do this. They make money holding onto the money. And I really do understand why they have this program in place. Given my track record with them, I wouldn't give me all the money either, so I'm not trying to throw them under the bus. But what I'm doing is trying to get them to streamline their process. There is no reason this shouldn't have been taken care of two weeks ago, except that by using the techniques they do, it builds delay after delay into their process. And each delay keeps them making money.
The next challenge is that once they "verify" the contractor's information, then it takes them another three to five business days to cut a check. Why? Then another day to overnight it. They charged me $30 to pay for overnight delivery of the checks. I'm two weeks out from having a check. I finally had to clean one of the furnaces the best I could just so we could have heat in this joint. The money to clean the furnaces is built into the contract. So is hauling off the junk and if not for the goodness of heart of my contractor who was willing to front that expense, all that stuff would be still sitting on my lawn.
Today, I leaned on the big bad old boogey man of Government. For my conservative friends, the free market ain't working so good today, so I reached out to the VA who guarantees my loan to intercede on my behalf with the mortgage company. The guy from the VA told me, sadly, that it's not just my mortgage company that does this stuff. What I'm experiencing is common to all of them.
It's in the VA's interest to see my basement is repaired. They're the mortgage guarantor and that fact alone is probably a lot of why I couldn't get a mortgage modification. Nobody has an interest in modifying a loan that is 100% guaranteed by the US Government. Why should they? They get paid no matter what. But the VA, I have to say, really cares about Veterans. They've been more than helpful to me, and today is no exception. Neither of us knows what good it will do, but they're going to call the mortgage company and see what they can do to resolve the problem I'm having.
And I have to call them in just under an hour to see they received the new document they asked for.
Sometimes, friends, it's good to remember that there's a reason we have government regulation and usually its because someone did something so outrageous to some other group of people. Greed, it turns out, isn't always good.
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