Countrywide is not on my side

I am about to make a leap here. A leap from being shafted by a large faceless corporation to a statement about what is wrong with this country.

Got a firm grip on my hand? Remember to bend your knees when you land hard on the other side…let’s go!

OK, our home mortgage was just sold to Countrywide. Now, I greeted this news with the hearty exclamation “Oh Fuck!” when I opened the envelope. I can’t tell you the history of our former mortgage companies, of which there have been three. But I do know that they didn’t advertise on television. It is the television advertising that pisses me off more than anything.

Perhaps Countrywide is a little more selective than I give them credit for but the sense that I get from any of these loan companies is that when you call, they check your pulse and give you scads of cash. They don’t bother to investigate you personally, they just see you as a sucker on which to force decades of interest and possible balloon payments and bankruptcy because you actually had no long term means to pay the loan back. This fact would have been evident to them IF THEY WOULD HAVE CARED TO FIND OUT.

I make it a habit of shopping where I want to because I believe in the company or avoiding shopping where I don’t want to because I see the company as being run by ignoble bastards. In the case of Countrywide, my spidey sense tells me that they just might be run by drunken monkeys.

So, I have no choice and my mortgage is sold. I get a “See ya sucker!” letter from my old company and it takes Countrywide a month to send me a “Greetings sucker!” letter. In that period of time, I called Countrywide to see what I should do with my August payment. They told me that I would have to mail it in once I got my introductory letter (which is a pleasant euphemism for “Greetings sucker!). Since I normally had my payments automatically deducted from my bank account, the auto pay option would kick in September 5th.

I got my intro letter last week. It said that my auto payments would kick in on September 5th. I mailed in my payment.

And then the payment was automatically deducted from my bank account.

Hmmm. Not even close to being September 5th. And funnily enough, I really can’t afford to pay two house payments in one month. Stop payment on my check you say? That’s probably where I’ll end up but I will not go down without having my $25 stop payment fee taken out of someone’s ass.

So, you may ask how we reached the land of conclusions in this little story. Where did our leap take us?

It comes down to companies making their living off of people that are being taken to the cleaners with the company’s whole hearted endorsement. Now, this I know is the law of capitalism. Screw as many people as possible, make as much money as possible, and get out as soon as possible before you get your head handed to you. (And yes, there are companies that do noble things blah blah blah…there are exceptions to every rule. Don’t be bumming my stone man!)

Throughout the history of this system of government, people have been trying to screw other people. It’s just that with the advent of the internets, people have access to this 24/7 system of tubes filled with people willing to test the Darwinian Theory of survival of the fittest. Too stupid to realize that you can’t afford this home loan? Tough shit. Too stupid to understand balloon payments, interest rates, desperate to go to college and poor as dirt but too rich to qualify for financial assistance? We can give you a wonderful college loan of up to $40,000 a year. Pay no attention to the interest rates or payment plans please.

It’s lending companies that have given the hearty kick to the nads in today’s economy and it’s one of those companies that has purchased my loan and it’s that same company that has screwed me over due to their incompetence and this of course, hearkens the coming of the antichrist and subsequent apocalypse.

Or at least just really pisses me off.

I haven’t quite worked out that last part yet.