Sitting at home minding my own business when I get a call from a Home Investor (we buy ugly houses, etc) wanting to buy our home! I said why would you call us... He says, because court records show your home in foreclosure!!!
We were shocked, checked the clerk of courts website, and sure enough, our name, address, and GMAC starting foreclosure proceedings!
Calling GMAC got us nowhere. Call Mr Stern (foreclosure mill attorney in South Fla). We call there, leave voicemails, FINALLY get ahold of someone who says "we won't have your file until the end of next week, call back then!!!
We call GMAC back and FINALLY get ahold of someone who tells us what happened. About 6 months earlier, we had made a. 30 CENT error when we sent in a payment. Because we were. 30 short, our payment went into a "suspense file." Of course, the following month, after interest, penalties, etc, same thing... Suspense file. During those 6 months my wife even called at least one payment in... They said NOTHING!!! We seldom received monthly statements, and never any during this period.
When we FINALLY go ahold of "Daniel" at Stern's office, he was like most people we had talked to... The "your just another deadbeat" attitude. No one would listen to what happened, and didn't care. However, they would settle for $6,000 in penalty and interest... And lawyer fees, etc. When we attempted to get a break down of all costs, we were put off, promised them, etc. To this day, almost a year later, we haven't received it although they had been ordered to provide them twice by a judge.
We checked with some laywers, and were basically told, "your screwed" but would take our case, which would have probably cost us thousands more. So we decided to fight it ourselves.
My wife searched the internet, got all the information and laws, kept a close eye on the clerk of the court website. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!! Twice the lawyer filed for "summery judgements" that we found out about on the website... We were NEVER notifed by them!!!
Several months into this of figuting, trying to work a settlement and begging for a breakdown of charges and fees, the lawyers office FINALLY told us to call the Loss Midigation Office! We were never told about them! GMAC would only refer us to the attorney! Guess when they figured we would not just roll over, they gave us the number.
We contacted them, again very "you deadbeats" attitude, and set up payments they KNEW we couldn't afford (over twice what our regular payment should have been). We were able to make those payments for 5 of the 6th scheduled months, but were 2 days late on the last one. They returned it, added several more thousands in fees, and wanted to set up another of their so called "payment" plans.
We finally got a settlement figure from them (GMAC) (although to this day STILL don't know what all the fees were for) then the lawyers office gave us another settlement figure for about $2500 MORE than GMAC. They were trying to charge us for lawyer fees TWICE!!!
I finally got the settlement money together, taking money from a retirement fund (taxes will kill me next year for that)!!! We sent the money to GMAC and assumed it was over. My wife kept checking the Clerk of Courts website waiting to see a dismissal.
A month after they received our check, she checked the website and again, Stern had filed another summary judgement for 2 days later, and we found that GMAC added $1600 in "fees" to the next months payment!!! We went to court and the lawyer called in moments befoe the scheduled time to say they were dismissing the case. The judge was NOT AMUSED by GMAC or the lawyers! He told us it was the worst case of abuse and incompetence he had ever seen, and would never had issued the summary judgement after reading our file, but would have scheduled it for trial.
After almost 2 weeks, we STILL can't find out what the $1600 in "fees" is for, although the judge did tell us to let him know if they didn't drop it. We have been told there is apparently one person who knows, and several messages to her voice mail had been ignored, although she has our home and both cell phone numbers.
Yep, the 30 cents was our mistake. There was a time when the company would have called or send a letter saying "ooops... You made a mistake, please sent us 30 cents!!! Not gmac!!! They are our to destroy people. It will take years to get my credit report fixed (they reported "foreclosure" to the credit agencies). I would have happily paid the 30 cents plus 100 bucks in late fees, had they bothered to notify us.
We are like some others here. I'd refinance with another company in a second but first, with my credit report, the interest rate would be through the roof, and second, there is not guarentee that the company won't sell our note back to GMAC!
John
Deltona, Florida
U.S.A.
0 comments