Update on navigating Bank of America Purgatory

Dealing with Bank of America (BOA) continues to be a Twilight Zone nightmare. The customer service people we talk to don't document all that we talk about unless they know they're being recorded. We never get the same person twice and can't ask for the person we've talked to because we've either been given a false name or that person is in a far-away call center (many times not even in this country!).

The latest fiasco happened after we first met with Consumer Credit Counseling (CCC). We had a follow-up phone conference between CCC, us and BOA. Nothing had happened and no one had escalated our issue from the first conference call. The issue (what happened to our paperwork?) had to be escalated again.

TB and I called about five days later. At first the representative (said his name was Mike) said that everything is "taking time" and when we didn't get off the phone right away, he checked further and found that we were declined again even before our follow-up call with the CCC rep. Why weren't we told then? Of course, Mike didn't know. He said our August 2009 payment to the old mortgage company hadn't been released to BOA yet--meanwhile, we've been getting different stories from different people about it.

He did say we could pay the same amount we'd pay if we were in the Making Homes Affordable program but--(Jaws theme music)--he couldn't send us written confirmation. He said for us not to call every week anymore. Gee, wonder why? He said we should call the first week of June to see if the MHA packet could be mailed to us. That would depend on our income.

Sigh.

We were supposed to see our CCC counselor on Friday but she wasn't there and rescheduled it to this Friday.

Today I made the idiotic move to call BOA to see what progress they'd made and spoke with Brenda in the Escalation Department. I called to check on the progress and also to verify the reduced payment would be okay. I just had this nasty feeling about it all! First she said there was no record of them reviewing our information or mailing a packet or anything remotely like helping us. Mike's notes about a reduced payment weren't there.

I was not surprised. I was surprised that I was pissed off and upset. I mean, what else did I expect from these people?

I wanted to know why Mike said it would be okay to pay as if we were on the MHA plan. She said she guessed it was because any payment would be credited to our account. I said uh uh, no way are we giving you anymore money to put us out on the street. I'll save it as moving money. She said okay, fine.

She also looked some more and said oh, I found the note now. They are working on sending you a packet. I expressed some doubt because they've been "working on sending a packet" since January. They keep declining us because they don't receive the packet that they've never sent. Three times.

She apologized. Isn't that nice? They always apologize. And say that they're really backlogged. And say that they "understand your frustration". And that this is happening to a lot of other people.

BOA was one of the banks bailed out by President Obama's program. They made huge profits last year. And they can't hire people to help with this so-called backlog?

The journey through Purgatory continues, although I did suggest that they come take the house and shove it up their a$$!

So that's how we left it.