Here We Go Again

GMAC bought the mortgage on my house when I refi'd to keep the joint after the divorce. And they proceeded to earn a very special place in my heart: the place where homicidal rage comes from. When I hear financial news that GMAC is in bad shape, (and that GMAC is a large part of why General Motors, it's parent company, is so fucked up), I take a certain satisfaction.

I know, there are good people who work for GM, but they are not the people running its loan shark operation. Gitmo is too good for those assheads. Stalin's gulags come close, but no cigar.

To sum up: shortly after purchasing my note, GMAC sent me to their Default Division and proceeded to attempt a foreclosure even though I was making my payments on time. They also sent me a letter saying that since I wasn't living here anymore, they were sending people to winterize it and change the locks to protect their asset. They sent a similar notice to American Family and I got a cancellation notice and refund check for my homeowners insurance.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with their remedial customer service department (I think she was some sort of 'liaison,' but if their customer service department did it's job, she'd have been superfluous.

So at first, when Midland Mortgage bought my note a few weeks back, I figured I was in the clear. Nobody could be as bad as GMAC, who had come close to making me refi again just to get away from them. The closing costs and all that, it seemed worth it.

And then I get a letter saying that since I'm not living here, they are going to change the locks and winterize the house. The marathon hold time at Midland Mortgage rivals even GMAC, a company I'm certain systematically understaffs its call center as a cost saving measure.

I ask the Customer Service people what the fuck? I'm living there, fine. They can fix that with a keystroke apparently. But why do I get this letter? Why do I have to wait on hold for an hour to clear up something that never should have come up in the first place?

They don't know. So they pass me to the Insurance Division, who is who signed the letter. The Insurance Division tells me they don't know how the letters get generated, except someone drove by my house and saw it was vacant.

"That didn't happen," I said flatly. "I know it didn't happen this time any more than it did when I got that same weak answer from GMAC two and a half years ago. Try again."

The shithead wouldn't try again and when I asked for his boss, he said he couldn't do that, he could only send me back to Customer Service.

"That's not acceptable. You have a boss, let me talk to him. This came from the Insurance Division, not Customer Service."

After a lot of hostile back and forth, he promised to get me the Customer Service supervisor, and proceeded to put me on hold forever. I hung up after 45 minutes of listening to their hold musing on speakerphone. Nobody was ever going to pick up that line, the same nobody who drove by my house and saw it was unoccupied.

I come home last night and there's a message on my answering machine from my insurance agent: sure as shit, they notified American Family I wasn't living here.

So now Midland Mortgage is on my list, too. I hope the global economic crisis fucking sinks your whole company. You deserve to go the way of Enron. There's no excuse for systematically harassing your captive customers.