Here is our story. On January 23rd we had a house fire, and it was a total loss. Our children were being raised in this family house; they were the 5th generation living in the old farm house. Shortly after the fire, we reported to Citifinancial that we had lost our home to a fire and asked if there was a grace period with this company and what kind of insurance we had on the mortgage.
Their response was, "I am sorry, since you are not on the loan, we are not authorized to talk to you. Your husband has to call and speak to us." Now we were getting extremely mad. I put my husband on the phone and gave him a list of questions about insurance on the mortgage. They told him we did not have any insurance on our mortgage and that there was no grace period for stopping the payments; they had to be there on the date they were due or else.
Now we felt like we were smacking our heads against a brick wall. We settled with the homeowners insurance, and then we paid the mortgage in full in April. In May we went to the bank to get a construction loan to be able to build a new home, since we did not have the amount of homeowners insurance we thought we needed.
The bank proceeded to tell us there was a red fraud alert on our credit report: someone at Citifinancial Mortgage had reported my husband as dead to the credit bureau. I called, and they told me, "I am sorry, we cannot talk to you since you are not on the loan." I put my husband on the phone, and he was so mad he could spit nails. They told us they did not have any idea who had done it or how, but they needed proof faxed to them so they could take care of it right away. However, it would take them up to 10 days to report it to the credit bureau, and it could take up to 30, more like a year, to clear it.
By now we were so mad that it was causing so much stress. We were not eating well, not sleeping well, and yelling at everyone, even our 2 children and all of our close friends and coworkers, and this was not good for any of us. So for the whole month of May, nothing had changed.
We contacted a lawyer; he had never heard of such a thing and had no idea how to proceed. We kept looking for someone to help. I am taking Sm. Business Management college studies, and this is where I learned about the FTC (the Federal Trade Commission), which helps us consumers when people commit fraud against us, like Citifinancial has done. When we left the lawyer's office, very angry because the lawyer had no idea how to correct this mistake, I said, fine, I will just contact the governor's office in Lansing, MI, and I proceeded to tell them about all of the problems this company caused.
Boy oh boy, did they goof. They now had to clear the mistake through the credit bureaus and send us a letter saying they were sorry. But that is not all: they now have my husband reported as late on the mortgage we no longer have, and we still cannot get a construction loan to rebuild. They have damaged our credit from all of this.
How can we move on with our lives and rebuild a new home if a company like this damages our credit? We are still waiting to get a loan, and we are still told no. So we are now applying for a federal grant. These people need to wake up and smell the coffee, get their act together, and not cause so many problems.
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