Saturday, January 16, 2010

Was I wrong to respond?

Hey all its Nate. As you know we recently lost our home and were forced to move. Towards the end we payed a company a lot of money to assist us with the lender in renegotiating our loan. This loan mod company promised us a 50% reduction in our payment and a loan remodification to current value. Naturally we signed the papers and they took our limited cash and ran. We constantly called to find out what was going on...nothing was usually the response. We eventually received a modification that would have RAISED our payments, naturally we declined, and this angered our rep to no end. In the end, this same rep came to our home, told us his company had done all they could for us, yelled at my wife when she reminded him of his promises (I wasnt there or he wouldnt have a face anymore), then pulled out the papers which we signed which ended up having none of the guarantees he had promised us. He basically took our money and ran. Today I received this email.


Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:20:00 -0800
Subject: Choice Loan Consulting Info
From: freedomteamjason@gmail.com

I am contacting you about your loan modification with Choice Loan Consulting. Here is what is going on. Please respond and let me know what you want to do. If you would like to be contacted by phone please email the best phone number and times to call and I will contact you as soon as possible.


Choice was doing a great job, up until 6 months ago. They were doing their banking with M&I Bank, and M&I was also doing their credit card processing. Choice’s volume went up from 100 deals a month to 1,000 deals a month within a 3-4 month period. M&I got scared of the possibility of future charge backs, so they seized $700,000 from Choice’s savings account, and told them they would release the funds 6 months after the loan modifications were completed.Choice was not able to make payroll and almost all of the sales offices immediately quit turning in new files. Freedom Team Financial was the largest sales organization for Choice, and since they had hundreds of clients in the middle of their modifications, they chose to try to work together with Choice to try to save the company. But for the last 6 months, customer service has been horrible, and since Choice had 2,300 homes in the middle of the modification process, they just couldn’t afford enough staff to keep up. For the last 6 weeks, I and the rest of the negotiating staff have worked without pay to make sure no one lost their home. Finally, last week, Choice shut their doors and is filing for bankruptcy. Freedom Team Financial pulled all of our own files, to modify them for free. They also purchased all of Choice’s data and intellectual properties, and hired me and 10 other top processors and negotiators from Choice to try to clean up this mess. So, at this point, we are trying to help as many Choice clients as we can.

Remind me of these things if you could:

What was the latest status on your modification?
How much is your home worth?
How much do you owe?
Credit card debt?
Lender?
Interest rate?
Monthly payment?
Gross monthly income?

If you don’t want to keep your home there is a short sale option:
Many of our clients that have had their homes decrease in value as much as yours have had Freedom Team Financial negotiate a short sale agreement with their lender in order to get out from under so much debt. Most experts believe that home prices will continue to fall over the next 2 years or so because the foreclosure rate is still increasing. The advantage of short selling is that you avoid having a foreclosure on your credit. A foreclosure can make it impossible to buy a new home for anywhere from 4 to 7 years or more. If you short sale, FTF will negotiate with your lender and they will agree to sell your home for less than what you owe and with the new FHA guidelines you could have perfect credit again in 2 years or less. Would you like to get more information on this option?

OR

Freedom Team Financial is doing the negotiations on their own files for free but they also want to help as many of Choice’s other clients as well so they will be putting on an educational forum that covers the “frequently asked questions “ about loan modifications to try to help people finish their negotiations on their own. Most clients have had a lot of problems with attempting this on their own so FTF is taking on Choice clients for just $500 to finish the negotiation process. They are only taking files on that they are confident that they can finish so if you are interested in that, I will have to dig into your file and call your lender to find out the status and have our underwriting team look it over to decide if the will take it or not. Is that something that you are interested in?

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to call me...

-Jason Schumacher
-650.291.1106


Here is my response
Jason
Well this explains the ineptitude. We lost our home and were forced to move. The promises made to us by your company were fantastic and your negligence on our behalf criminal. Your rep, hiding behind legal jargon at the end, was ridiculously lost and completely incompetent, yelling at my wife and reducing her to tears because he could not keep his promises. We lost our dream house, we put our souls into that home and tried everything we could to keep it. I have no home for you to try and salvage, but if I did, what in the world would make me want to try anything with what is left of your shambled company? Your excuses below do not make up for the misery your company brought into our lives. Unless you plan on giving us our money back for all the "nothing" you did for us please dont send me emails like this again.
Nathan Gresko

Too nice? Too mean? What do you think? Should I have responded at all? I thought I was ready to move on..getting this email REALLY upset me. Opinions ya'll opinions.

5 comments:

Heather said...

I think you responded appropriately. I would have been a little more forceful but you did well.

sgresko said...

I think your response was great. You have every right to be disgusted with the e-mail they sent. In my opinion you should have told them about having less than 10 days (not exactly sure of the number of days but it was a ridiculously short amount of time) to find a new place and move out. I'm cheering your response!!

JAMIE said...

I think they needed to hear it, But I doubt they will try to make it right, unfortunately.

Lisa Payne said...

that was the BEST! seriously!Not too angry and definitely not too nice...it was exactly what they should've been expecting!

DeAnna said...

Go Nathan! I think it was perfect! Seriously people!