What’s In Your Wallet
Have you seen those television commercials for Capital One credit cards, where David Spade plays a man working for a credit card company that won’t let anyone use their bonus airline miles? When he asks the audience, “What’s in your wallet? ” I’m relieved to reply, “Not Capital One!” I’m relieved because it has taken me over two years to get rid of them, and in the end I was forced to pay them $850.00 I didn’t owe just to come by them out of my life. And as a footnote: I never received any bonus airline miles from the company, in the three years I faded the card and paid it in full every month.
started to receive bills from Capital One again. They had re-charged me for the second mistake Southwest Airlines made. When I contacted Southwest Airlines, they claimed all errors had been rectified. I spent the next year attempting to get Capital One to catch care of the problem; there were endless telephone calls, letters, and forms filled out. The result was that they never did anything — and they finally stopped sending me bills.
But when I renegotiated the mortgage on my house, I discovered the Capital One account was listed with the three major credit bureaus as being in-effect. They had never cancelled my card, and new charges kept appearing on the anecdote, even though I had cancelled it over a year before. Contacting the credit bureaus was completely useless; each of them wrote me a letter saying there was nothing they could do benefit me. If anyone ever tells you credit bureaus can or will be of any assistance to you, don’t beget it. There is no profit margin to them in assisting anyone in rectifying mistakes on their record — and credit bureaus are simply businesses for profit.
I had attractive much reconciled myself to having Capital One hanging around my neck for life, like a dead albatross, when the house refinance hit me in the face. And the problems I encountered with a company called Homefield Finance brought Capital One back into my life.
My company, Lost Myths Ink LLC, had been awaiting film development money in the amount of $750,000 since July of 2004. In September I realized if there was more delay, we didn’t have the money to function after the middle of October. I decided to refinance my house mortgage, and Homefield Finance offered me a great deal, with a very rude interest rate. Carl Wren, the loan officer who first contacted me regarding the re-fi, assured me I could have at least a $20,000 payout. He continued to whine me of this through the entire loan process.
As it turned out, our money was further delayed. We were fragment of a 2 billion euro loan package, and the investor suffered a heart attack and then had a bypass operation. When I received a copy of the loan documents in the mail, they listed a payout of $21,650.00. When the notary came to my house to sign the final documents, he was far more interested in talking than in going over the documents, which are always extensive in the extreme. The following morning Carl Wren telephoned me and told me that a number of documents hadn’t been signed, which meant I hadn’t seen them. Another notary came, but she was in a hasten to score to San Francisco to a party, and she assured me the documents were ones I’d seen the day before, just hadn’t signed completely.
Well, that was wrong. It was so wrong that one of the documents I never read turned out to be a revision in the payout amount. The day after signing I left for San Jose, and when I returned five days later, there was a check waiting for me — in the amount of $10,650. I’d been shorted more than $11,000. OK, I went into a panic. I knew I’d closely calculated how much money we would need to function until those Euros arrived in our myth, and this wouldn’t do it.
The following day I telephoned Homefield Finance and left a message for Carl Wren. Then I asked to speak to his supervisor, and that’s how I arrived at Brian Jensen. He insisted the company never promised me a obvious amount in the payout, and once the papers were signed there was nothing that could be done about it. I asked him for an explanation, and he didn’t have one, but promised to investigate.
By this time it was almost the middle of October. I know we could function at least until the beginning of November on the money already received. Brian Jensen telephoned me two days later, and told me the company ‘inadvertently’ charged me for the money lost over the notary’s mistakes — more than $2,500! He promised a check by overnight assure, which he delivered.
The second predicament amount involved $1,705. A check in this amount came with the payout check, made out to Capital One! Two years after I cancelled the card, Washington Mutual, the funder of my mortgage renegotiation, had insisted the escrow company use some of my money to pay Capital One. And heres the kicker — they can legally do this! If I didn’t send the check to Capital One, the Escrow company representative told me, they would have it in the escrow anecdote for six years then send it to the state, who would pass it on to Capital One. It makes you think they’re all in business together, doesn’t it?
I called Capital One and agreed to pay them $850.00 (don’t forget I didn’t owe them anything!) to close the account. I then telephoned Brian Jensen and told him I’d taken care of the Capital One account — his response was that I should have called him first, because now he couldn’t get the escrow company to release my money until they received written proof from Capital One that the debt (?!) had been discharged. And Capital One said that would take about 30 days.
That was when I decided I’d had enough. I wrote letters to three of the executives at Washington Mutual, Brian Jensen, the Commissioner of Corporations for California, the Attorney General, and several other government representatives. Are you wondering why I didn’t write to any of the executives at Homefield Finance? I did send a letter to the co-owner of the company, but it took my assistant, Amanda, two hours to locate him on the internet. That company hides their executives better than any I’ve ever seen before. For good reason, as it turned out.
I was contacted by the Commissioner of Corporations, who sent the papers to file a grievance against Homefield Finance. I did so, and we were solvent for a few weeks — through November, anyway. Our colleague, Frank Cmero, left home in Perth and flew to Germany, then on to London to join his business partner. As of the first of November we were waiting for word on our money.
I thought about a small second mortgage, which sent a shiver of dismay up my spine. I knew the company was the most important thing in my life, but I loved my little house. Quiet, I thought it was better to investigate that near up short if there was a further delay in our funds, so I wrote to one of those internet services that send mortgage brokers to your e-mail address.
The first one didn’t work out, but the second one was a wonderful British woman in Sacramento, about two hours from my town. When she started to investigate my re-fi, she discovered it was a lot more screwed-up than I’d even imagined. Her name was Suzanna, she works at a company called U.S. Loan Service, and she informed me that the fees charged by Homefield Finance were so steep they verged on the illegal. There was no reason they shorted me on my payout, but the logical answer was that Washington Mutual wouldn’t have approved such high fees if they’d been tacked onto the loan at the beginning, so Homefield Finance could change the numbers later, short me by $6,000 and charge me $12,000 in fees. But lately I discovered that she could be wrong, that it could simply be the blueprint the industry works — that they are always dishonest about how things will work because, because they want people to sign with them. My friend Tawnya had the same experience recently, and wound up with no payout at all, after borrowing $2,000 from her mother to build a new deck on her house.
Would my wonderful British lady be different? So far, hard to tell. But I discovered after paying Capital One their blood money, that they listed the remainder of what they claimed I owed them as a ‘bad debt’ with the credit bureaus. And this was after they claimed it would be listed as paid-off.
The refinance with Washington Mutual turned out to be so screwed-up that Suzanna, the new broker, advised me to have the whole thing redone again. It would mean another pre-payment fee, nothing like the one charged by Homefield Finance, however, but a second mortgage would carry a fee of approximately $1,500. anyway, and this way I wouldn’t have a second mortgage. In order not to pay another appraisal fee, I contacted Washington Mutual and was assisted by a man named James Singleton, who sent me the appraisal information the same day. When I told him about the Homefield Finance situation, he asked me to forward all my information to him and he would see what he could do about it. By the time he did it would be too late for me, but I advised him that Washington Mutual should really rethink their contract with Homefield Finance — doing business with such unscrupulous brokers made them peer dreadful.
So I started the whole nightmarish process again. Retain in mind that I hadn’t made even one payment to Washington Mutual, and now probably wouldn’t make even one. Suzanna planned for the new loan to be finished and ready to sign on the 19th of November. It went fairly smoothly, there were a few documents I had to send, and my colleagues sent the same letters they’d sent the previous month. Because the Washington Mutual loan hadn’t even registered yet, I faxed the HUD statement to Suzanna.
In the middle of November I realized Capital One hadn’t ever charged me for the pay-off on the MasterCard. At this point in time I’m waiting, to ogle if they ever do. Could there be a more messed-up situation or company? They hounded me for two years after I closed the card, forced me to pay them money I never owed them, then didn’t charge me for it!
If you encounter a residence similar to the one with Capital One, there isn’t a lot that can be done about it. Credit card companies can report their accounts to the credit bureaus any way they want to; they can charge as much interest as the public will allow, and even though they claim that their customers are their first consideration, merchants are far more important to them. The internet now provides a wealth of information on all companies, and there are websites where people post their experiences with various companies — some are devoted specifically to credit card providers. There are also some complaints you can make. Try these:
The National Credit Union Administration
1776 G Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20456
The Office of Consumer Programs
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
550 Seventeenth Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20429
Consumer Affairs Program
Office of Thrift Supervision
1700 G Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20552
Division of Credit Practices
Bureau of Consumer Protection
Federal Trade Commission
Washington, DC 20580
Consumer and Community Affairs
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
20th & C Streets N.W.
Washington, DC 20551
When it comes to mortgage lenders, the rules are stricter. My assistant Amanda discovered that Homefield Finance has been fined by the state of California for deceptive advertising. There are procedures for filing a grievance against a broker or lender. I wrote to the California Location Commissioner for Corporations, and he sent me encourage a form to file a grievance. I also wrote to the State Controller, and the Dwelling Attorney General. As of the middle of November I hadn’t received a reply from either of these, but that doesn’t mean I won’t, or that they haven’t taken action. Sometimes these entities will contact the company in question to see if they are prepared to rectify the situation before contacting the consumer.
A website called Consumeraffairs.com keeps a characterize of complaints against mortgage companies. Their list includes Ameriquest, Washington Mutual, Household Finance…all the major companies and probably some you’re dealing with. Since I had my problems with a broker working for Washington Mutual, I checked out what other people said about the company. Nightmarish doesn’t even begin to describe the stories listed; they were horrifying. Payments lost, never recorded, escrow accounts screwed-up. I was feeling better about never having to make a payment to them. I never had any problems with Ameriquest, but others have — there are some apprehension stories at ConsumerAffairs.com regarding this company as well.
One thing I discovered with Ameriquest was to never sign up for automatic payments. I know that means the company could possibly behave in a less than ethical way in order to assess a late payment, but many of the stories at ConsumerAffairs.com had to do with automatically deducted payments. When the mortgage was sold, payments became lost and screwed-up, never posted, etc. At least if you send your check every month or pay by telephone you know you’ve done it and on what date it was done.
The Federal Reserve Board is in charge of credit card regulation. Send a letter to them at:
Division of Consumer and Community Affairs
Mail Conclude 801
Washington, DC 20551
For all credit cards issued by banks with ‘national’ in the name or ‘N.A.’ after the name: www.occ.treas.gov
For credit cards issued by state that are not member of the Federal Reserve System: www.fdic.gov
For credit cards issued by federal savings and loan associations and federal savings banks: www.ots.treas.gov
For credit cards associated with federal credit unions: www.neua.gov
For credit cards issued by finance companies or stores, and matters related to auto dealers, mortgage companies and credit bureaus: www.ftc.gov
In August of 2002 I went to San Diego with my friend Jan. I charged both our trip packages on the card, and when I received my statement it said I’d gone over the limit, and a fee had been assessed for this. But instead of charging me for two trip packages, a glitch at Southwest Airlines charged me for four trips, at $1200. each. Then they credited me for one of the mistakes, which left one extra charge on my account. The overcharge was reversed, but the draw of getting Capital One to remove the extra mistaken charge was so difficult and time-consuming that when they finally agreed to reverse the charge, I cancelled the card.
I understanding that was the end of it, but two months later I
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