My spouse is a contractor, so work isn't a guaranteed thing week in & week out. There's been numerous times they'll go 2-3 weeks without a job. Now that the economy is in such horrendous shape, that's affected his work even more so. Now sometimes they can go a month without anything to do. I work full time for a national health insurance company. Granted, I'm guaranteed 40 hours a week, I've been off work for 3 1/2 months because I was lucky & had to have back surgery a week before Christmas. So, while off on FMLA leave I did draw Short Term Disability. A whopping 60% of my normal pay. Not even enough to blink at in other words. Now that I've got through that part, let me give you my horror story with Vanderbilt:
I've been a customer with Vanderbilt since July. I pay my mortgage every month. It might not get to them by the 1st of that month, but they almost always get it within that month (example - October payment due 10/1, they get it 10/14). Not a big deal, I don't think because my credit report shows it's paid on time, every month we've had our place. Well, my short term disability gets cut off on 3/16, my Dr. Doesn't release me to go back to work.
Finally on 3/31 I get the go ahead & return to work. I had just went 2 weeks without working and no short term benefits, so obviously, I don't get a paycheck. My husband had just went 3 weeks with no job to do, there's NO money coming in at all. I have to make my March mortgage payment wait. I get a call yesterday (4/8/09) from my dear friend Susan with Vanderbilt. She'd just got off the phone with my mother (who is nowhere on my loan, it's just me & my spouse) for the 3rd time in 2 days. I tell her all that's happened & assure her that I will be making my March payment on 4/24 (when I'll finally get a paycheck), then in May I will be making 2 payments to get caught up (now that I'm working again, I can swing that). She tells me okay, then all of a sudden I get, "Hang On.." and she blind transfers me to Venetta (for anyone who works in a call center of any sort, you know what that is. To those of you who don't, a blind transfer is the absolute rudest thing you can do to someone other than hanging up on them. You don't tell them you're transferring them to someone else, you just do it.) So anyways, Venetta answers & I have no clue what's going on. I'm just like, "Okay, I was just talking to Susan - I don't know what happened".
By the time I get that last word out, Venetta starts ripping into me telling me that I have to pay my March payment by 4/15 or they're gonna foreclose and blah blah blah. I again explain what all has been going on. She doesn't even let me finish before she rudely starts talking over me & cuts me off saying she doesn't care what happened, that my contract with them states that I have to pay on time every month or they can foreclose when you're 30 days late. I'm starting to get angry, because every time I try to say anything she just cuts me off. I tell her there's no way I can come up with over $400 in a week, that we won't have any money until 4/24. She states she doesn't care, it has to be there by the 15th. I tell her about my other loans (we're currently behind on EVERYTHING because of the economy & my surgery). I explain to her I just had my car payment go 3 payments behind on 4/6 because I don't have the money to pay that either, and my spouse's car payment will be 3 behind on 4/15. She tells me that I shouldn't care about that, that it would be in my best interest to let one of my cars be repossed so that I can get Vanderbilt caught up.
Now, the reason my car payments are behind is due to Vanderbilt. I don't think that's gonna work. How in the heck am I going to get to work if we only have 1 car & I work 45 minutes away from where my spouse works? She doesn't respond. She asks me why I think the housing industry is in the shape that it's in. I tell her because the lenders are not willing to work with the consumers. She tells me no, it's because people like myself are responsible for it because we're not making our payments. Hello, in my area alone the unemployment rate is a staggering 15%. I think you have to take into consideration, there's not a lot of money flowing around anymore. I tell her again, I won't have any money until 4/24. Do you know what this idiot tells me I need to do. She tells me to go get a cash advance so I can pay by the 15th. I'm highly PO'd now. I tell her that I'm not getting a cash advance with a 700% interest rate, just to have something else to worry about as I've recently just been diagnosed as a diabetic, I have extremely high blood pressure, and really high cholesterol as it is. If I kept getting more in debt, I'm eventually going to have a heart attack. She just keeps going on, telling me I have until the 15th or they're going to foreclose. I finally snap, I tell her in quite a few choice words that I CANNOT repeat on here, where she can go & what she can do. She hangs up on me.
I start bawling my eyes out, thinking I'm going to lose my home. I have nowhere else to go. So, I hand the phone to my husband. I tell him to call back & talk to Venetta and tell her I'm just stressed and I didn't mean to go off on her. So, he calls back & sure enough Venetta answers (I think they've got a phone system that when your # pops up it transfers you to your rep, because every time I've had to call - I always get the devil (Venetta) or the devil's helper (Susan). So, Venetta answers & he says his name. That's all he gets out in their entire 5 minute conversation. She goes off on him, reiterating that we have until the 15th. So, they hang up. I'm beyond PO'd now. I'm honestly at the point that if I lived in Knoxville instead of 2 hours away from Knoxville, I would go there & fight this woman.
So, I call back and of course the devil herself answers yet again. I don't want to fool with this idiot anymore because she's likely going to cause me to die of a heart attack if I talk to her again. I ask to speak with her supervisor (since she always insists she's a supervisor, but I've never heard of supervisors answering incoming calls. I've never worked in a call center where they have.). She tells me her supervisor, Michael, has already left the office for the day & that he's going to be out until Monday (4/13- 2 days before my "foreclosure" starts). She tells me that she can have him call me Monday. I politely tell her no, that I would much rather leave him a message. So, I leave my message about the way I've been treated by this incompetent idiot, and tell him I expect a call on Monday. Now, the wait begins.
the only thing i can say after all this is that i will never again in my lifetime do business with this company again, nor would i recommend this company to anyone in the entire world considering buying a clayton home. You're better off going any other route. The sad thing is, the lot owner of our park is doing rent to own on most of the homes in here & they're cheaper (about $200/month compared to our mortgage lot rent, since lot rent is included in their payment), and you have the option of paying it off in 5 years. We still owe 17 years on our home, 17 more years of hell with Vanderbilt.
Do these people not realize that if it weren't for us, their customers - that they would NOT have a job? That's what my employer always tells us. I would never in my life dream of being as rude as the people I've dealt with at Vanderbilt. I was raised better than that.
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