
Gerald of Baldwyn, MS on May 30, 2009
We are behind in payments to Green tree due to unemployment from September 2008 to December 2008 both my husband and myself were laid off from work and not eligible for unemployment compensation. In September 2008 we asked Green Tree for an extension of our payments. Their collection person kept telling us if you can make it until December we you can qualify for and extenton. Thru the entire month of December we were in phone contact with the collection people and 3 times they said they would fax us the extension papers but the papers never came.
On December 31, the last day of the year, the manager, Jack Hansen, said that they would give us an extension if we paid the insurance, whiche we did check by phone. Then at 4 pm, December 31st J. Hansen called and said they could not offer us an extension due to another office went beyond their quota for extensions and therefore they were unable to extend our loan he was sorry and would put a stop payment on the insurance draft. Then he put someone on the phone that he said was the operations manager, and she said that we needed to come up with a payment by 6 pm. I said now how in the world would I do that in two hours, we have already lost our car, she said and you are about to lose your house.
The bank draft was not stopped as promised, that went thru our band and caused insufficent funds. From September to December, we had been promised an if we could just keep paying until December, we could qualify for and extention and then the last minute the manager told us we had 2 hours to come up with a payment. I called this extortion; unethical business practices and just a bald face lie.
Then the manager calls us and tells us we need to work something out. I told him he lied to us, they promised to give us an extension since September. We sold everything that we could and borrowed from everyone we knew to make those payments and for your office to lie to us like that was just senseless and unethical. The amount keeps changing from $482 now to $589 with no explaination of why.
Their collections people have threatened us with everything including coming and changing the locks on our doors to eviction notices, and bringing a bulldozer to tear down our attached porch to remove our manufactured home. Our loan originally was 68,000 15 years later the loan balance is $41,000. Something has to be down about those people. We have done our research and we know that the loan can be modified. We know that the interest rate that we are paying now (13%) is so outrageous that no one in these bad economy days can afford to pay it and with only one of us working it is impossible and the other one trying daily to gain employment.
We know that they have a Loss Mitigation office but Collection is where our calls are always directed to even though we ask for the Loss Mitigation department. I am also sending a copy of this letter to the Federal Trade Commission for the Consumer. We respectfully ask that they have their collections people put future threats in writing so that we could send those to our lawyer. If you have a choice do not use Green Tree. Our loan originally was with Bank of America and then sold to Greenpoint and then to Green Tree. And always have a tape recorder handy.