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04:21:2001 Entry: "Insane Mortgage Company"
Insane Mortgage Company
The refinancing we were going to do on our house to incorporate Stan's student loans into the mortgage fell through. It was our decision. It's not that our credit wasn't any good or that we didn't qualify. Oh, we qualified all right, our credit immaculate. It's just that the company was a bunch of crooks.
Note to self...never trust the outcome of any "professional" service if all the following apply:
- you've been feeling depressed the entire week before for no known reason
- it's on the west side of town (eewwww the west side...politically correct eastender working class snob am I...so sue me)
- it's a dreary Friday afternoon
- you take the Monza to the appointment
- it's after a very famous rock musician has died.
It's always bad karma. The first time that happened was April 8, 1994. I had gone to I-won't-say-where on the west side to get a permanent. It was a horrible permanent...it was supposed to be a spiral and it just fell flat. I decided after that I was never ever ever going to get a permanent again and I never did. Never had a perm since and my hair has been a lot better and naturally wavy.
I had a bad feeling from the get go about the mortage brokers. First of all, they called us. Cold call. Stan took them up on the offer because we were getting rather desparate with our large student loan debt and such. He felt we had to take a chance on it. On November 30, we went to meet with them. It was in a rented office suite on the second floor of a west side bank building. We couldn't find the suite number on the door. The guy who spoke to us was only 23, and quite the little materialist. It just didn't feel right...they had us sign papers *before* the closing. They didn't give us copies. They took all our tax information, records, pay stubs, etc. All I wanted to do was go home and get out of there because I hadn't been feeling well, having those stomach/nausea/dizzy problems that whole week and knew I wasn't in my best health or state of mind to deal with it. I went along with it, went through the motions, but did point out to Stan and the little Junior Achiever that the closing costs did seem quite high. I should've just put my foot down and said no from the start. Blame it on my vulnerability at that time.
In the mean time, Stan was checking with his cousin Dave who is also a mortgage broker in another state. Dave told us that these people were taking us for a ride and that with a credit rating as good as ours, and the fact that our debt-to-income ratio wasn't as high as they had us believe, that there's no reason the closing costs should be as high. Stan went back to Junior Achiever with that information and he came down a little, but not enough. To make a long story short, we decided to let Dave do a mortgage for us instead (someone we can trust). Stan cancelled the closing yesterday, which was originally scheduled for tonight. He was unable to get ahold of Junior Achiever all day. Junior Achiever never returned his calls.
Then yesterday when Stan and I were about to leave for an art meeting, The Vice President of the company called. Now I didn't speak to this joker, but I could tell just by the way Stan's eyes were rolling around in his head he had a few screws loose (The VP...not Stan!). He was trying to salvage the deal. Stan told them they had no deal, that they couldn't come up with anything that was low enough, thank you for your time, and please return us our papers. The end. A few minutes later this clown calls back and says he can't return the papers because he doesn't know where they are! Stan asks him, "What, don't you have a file for them? Are they just lying scattered around your office?" The guy, the supposed Vice President of the Company, said, "YES!" Then he wants to know what papers of ours he has, Stan tells him to hang on a minute while he gets his information, and the guy keeps talking on the phone while Stan puts it down. Then when Stan picks up the phone again, he'd hung up.
The irony of the whole thing is that somewhere in the conversation Stan was having with The Clown, it came up that Junior Achiever had just quit that day.
Absolutely unbelievable.
And I'm out $300 that they always take to cover costs like the appraisal. I don't really care about that...I just want these people crooks to get what's coming to them. Stan's calling the Better Business Bureau to report them today.
The thing is, I feel guilty. I'm extremely grateful for the fact that Stan has a cousin "in the business." But all my life as not just an only child, but an only child of two other only children, I have had to depend on finding my own way and struggling and making my own way with no familial help (the myth of "spoiled" only children only applies if you are well off. If you are poor, you are often worse off than the siblinged). Nepotism is not a word in my vocabulary. I don't have cousins in the business of anything to give me advice or a leg up or let me in on secrets of any business, let alone mortage broking. Hell, I don't even have cousins! And despite the fact that I've led an extremely deprived life from the standpoint of extended family, I actually enjoy it. I have no commitments...I don't have to "give anyone a call" when I'm in town. I don't have to send out holiday cards. I don't have to be a role model, or be anyone's godmother (thank GOODNESS!) or help out the other women in the kitchen on Thanksgiving, or be expected to reproduce offspring to be like the rest of the family. And since we moved to Madison, 1000 miles away from Stan's family and having limited resources and time with which to see them, we've become even more hermetic in family involvement. We spend holidays alone. In fact, Stan had become more like me, distanced from familial involvement.
Until he found his biololgical families. For some reason that made him get more involved even with his adopted family (of which Dave is a part of). It's sort of strange, seeing Stan, once someone as hermetic as I am, going back to being more family-involved. It has its advantages, as in the mortgage situation. But I feel guilty because I know not everyone has an advantage like that. And but for the grace of Stan and his cousin, I'd be the same way...getting screwed up the wazoo by shifty fly-by-night crooks.
2 Comments
Wow ... bee - you - tiful site!! (Oh, and sorry about the BS with the brokers. Toads.)
Posted by jl @ 12/18/2001 01:18 PM CST
Thank you! There's still so much to do to it...
Posted by Ann @ 12/18/2001 02:14 PM CST