Battling the Banks: Dory Ann Unglesbee-Tallent

Introducing Dory Ann Unglesbee-Tallent. I met her in one of the ANTI-BofA groups I’m involved in on Facebook. This is her personal horror story with Bank of America/BAC Home Loans Servicng, LP:
My husband Henry Tallent and I purchased our home located at 5068 County Road 28, Crossville, AL 35962 on May 21, 2007. Our credit wasn’t perfect, but we were ready to leave our current city of residence and move to the country in Alabama to be closer to my only remaining relatives. We hired a mortgage broker, at the prompting of our real estate agent, to help us obtain a loan through whatever lender would lend to us. Since we were considered subprime we were required to come up with a very sizeable downpayment (to the tune of $38,000.00). We used every bit of the profit off of the sale of our current home to provide the downpayment on our new home in Crossville. We used a mortgage broker by the name of Jim Baty at Preferred Mortgage in Rainbow City, AL to get us the “best rate” on a new home loan. With a sizeable downpayment, Jim led us to believe we could pick and choose from several different lenders. When it all boiled down, we got a loan through Countrywide Home Loans at a 7.5% interest rate for 30 years. Jim told us this was the ONLY lender he could get to loan us money because our credit wasn’t stellar. We paid Jim Baty approximately $2300.00 at closing for his “broker fee” for obtaining the loan for us. We didn’t receive the HUD-1 statement on this home we purchased until 3 hours before the closing when we did our final walk through. I believe by law you are supposed to have that in hand a full 24 hours before closing, and we had 3 hours to review it. Everything seemed okay on the HUD1 so we didn’t think anything of it and just signed off on the document. At closing we received blank copies of all our closing documents, and the notary kept getting up from the closing table and walking away when my husband and I were signing documents that she was supposed to witness us signing. Waldrup and Smith in Gadsden, AL is where we performed this closing on our home. And because we trusted attorneys and our mortgage broker and real estate agent to do the right thing and not deceive us, we signed our lives away on the dotted line.
We began making our monthly payments of $859.19 to Countrywide Home Loans every month from July 2007 up through May 2009 with ZERO issues. If we got behind a month, Countrywide Home Loans was willing to work out payment arrangements with us that were feasible for both us as homeowners and the bank. We never had an issue with our Countrywide Home Loans loan, that is, not until Bank of America aquired Countrywide in 2008. Our loan didn’t receive any attention from Bank of America until May 2009 when they happened to realize via their computer records that we were behind four payments. We, of course, got a nasty little computer generated letter letting us know that the full amount on our loan had been Accelerated at that point, and that we now owed close to $6900 to reinstate our loan. Bank of America had tacked on foreclosure expense fees, a property inspection fee, foreclosure attorneys fees, and late charges to what they purported we were behind. To my calculations and having my bank statements in front of me I could only see where we had missed two payments. I tried, on May 20, 2009 to send in those two payments that we were behind by my calculation, and proof of previous payments to Bank of America, and they rejected the payment and the proof.
June 1, 2009 we get a letter from Bank of America letting us know our home is indeed in foreclosure. On the same day, we get another letter from Sirote and Permutt, LLC out of Birmingham, AL letting us know that they received our file on May 25, 2009 for foreclosure. Ginny Rutledge from Sirote and Permutt was our point of contact at the foreclosure attorney firm. Both my husband and myself tried on several different occasions to contact Mrs. Rutledge, but all calls went to either an automated message system or to her voicemail. We also tried during this time to contact Bank of America to see what we could possibly do to keep our home out of foreclosure. We had two choices, as per BofA (or BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP as they were then): pay the full amount due on the house of $123,000.00 or apply for a loan modification. We were told that our Lender would not accept any kind of payment arrangement since the home itself was already in the foreclosure process. We immediately began working with BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP to obtain a loan modification. They demanded over the telephone to know how much our income was, what expenses we had, any additional income or anything other than normal household bills we paid for each month, how much we owed in medical bills, etc. and were asked to send in hard copies of our last 2 years w-2s, copies of our bills, copies of an entire months worth of pay stubs for both my husband and myself, 2 months worth of bank statements, a hardship letter outlining why we were applying for a modification, and the letter from the HOPE for Homeowners company we were working with for our credit counselling.
We sent all of the above documentation to BAC on three separate occasions. BAC would say they received all documentation they needed, but then four days later would need us to send it again. Once they admitted they had all the necessary documents they needed it took them 30 days to come up with a determination that we did in fact qualify for a loan modification. While in this REVIEW process, the workout negotiator assgined to the modification changed three times. At first it was assigned to a lady known as Wilma, then a lady by the name of Linda, and thirdly got handed over to a gentleman named Tom Willetts. On July 25, 2009 we received a telephone call from BAC Home Loans Servicing stating that they were sending us a final loan modification agreement via FedEx and to expect it in 48 hours. They would not disclose to us over the telephone the terms of this modification, but did inform us that we had exactly 10 days to have it signed/notarized, and to send with it $855.17 as up-front funds to process the modification. We did receive the loan modification package 48 hours later. The modification said “Final Loan Modification Agreement (fixed interest rate)”. There were two copies of this agreement in the envelope. When we read it it kept us at our current interest rate of 7.5%, hiked up our payments from $859.19 a month to $931.83 and tacked an entire year onto the back end of our mortgage. What they did, basically was disguise a repayment plan as a loan modification. They moved the funds that they had tacked on for foreclosure fees and expenses onto the monthly payment amount, and added an additional $6900 to the balance of Principle and Interest on the loan. Not having much of a choice, and not wanting to lose our home, we signed/notarized this loan modification agreement, got a cashiers check for the $855.17 they wanted for up front funds, and overnighted the package back to BAC Home Loans Servicing, but with only one of the two copies of the agreement. We kept one copy for our records and I’m so glad we did. I called three days later to make sure that they had received the package, and was told that they hadn’t received it. I called my bank to see if the cashiers check had cleared and in fact, it had. It was odd to me how they had obtained the check that was in the same envelope with the loan mod agreement but ONLY got the check.
We went on and made our first payment of $931.83 in Sept. 2009 as instructed to do as per the Loan Modification Agreement. We were never instructed nor prompted to do anything otherwise. We continued to make subsequent payments as per this loan modification agreement for the remainder of 2009 and four months of 2010 (a total of 8 months). We continued to get monthly mortgage statements during these months, and we couldn’t help but notice that the past due payment amount kept getting larger and larger, and that on the back of the statements there was nothing reflecting they were applying our payments to our balance. In all honesty, we were now in the hole for several hundreds of dollars in late fees as well. We contacted BAC about this, and were told, on several different occasions that “if we have entered into an agreement with BAC as per our monthly home loan, to please keep making payments as per that agreement.” We were told by several different customer care representatives to disregard our monthly mortgage statements and just make our payments as per the Loan Modification Agreement we signed in July 2009. In the latter part of April 2010 we received a telephone call from a representative at BAC Home Loans Servicing (BAC), stating that she needed to obtain updated financial information over the telephone from my husband and myself. Since my husband was the only one listed on the Note to the house, they would only speak with him. I had to contact my husband at work and tell him what they needed. He had to take time off his job, contact BAC, and tell them that it was perfectly alright for them to speak with me regarding this account. He faxed them over a written letter of authorization in order for them to do just this. He faxed that letter a total of 18 times in a year. BAC claims to this day to have never gotten the first one. BAC on this particular date allowed me 24 hour authorization to speak on the account, and I called BAC back and gave updated financial information over the telephone. Once the representative had finished taking the information over the telephone, she tells me “oh by the way there’s a note here on the computer, the workout negotiator assigned to your modification needs for you and your husband to send in all new proof of hardship letter, your last 2 years tax filings, 2 months bank statements, an entire months pay stubs for the both of you, and new copies of all of your bills.” I told her, very plainly that day, to send an inter-office email to Tom Willetts, workout negotiator, and tell him IF HE NEEDED ALL NEW PROOF, to please send us written correspondence requesting this new information, and WHY he needed it. Because, as I informed her, we had already been paying on a Loan Modification for 8 months, and this seemed a little to me like they were trying to qualify us all over again. We never received any written correspondence asking us for this new information, so we went about paying our monthly mortgage as per the Loan Modification terms we agreed to 8 months prior.
August 2010, we get a Notice of Intent To Accelerate in the mail. I have my husband call and give me 24 hour authorization on the account, again, because BAC still didn’t have the letter my husband wrote them authorizing me on the account on file. I had to be the one to try to find answers, because anyone who has ever tried contacting these people is aware of one thing….you are kept on the phone, transferred from department to department, and deluded for up to an hour, even more. Upon contacting BAC I was transferred to at LEAST four different departments (Home Retention Division which is nothing more than a debt collection dept., their Payment Research Dept., their Advocacy Dept., and back to Home Retention Division). Upon being transferred multiple times, one representative finally told me that BAC had just cancelled the Loan Modification out from underneath us, but could not see any Notes in the system as to why. This issue was “Escalated” via email to a supervisor in the Loan Modification Dept. for an answer. I was instructed that it would take 7-14 business days for a response, and to call back then. In August, I immediately mailed in an $1800 payment to BAC. That was enough for two payments under our original loan terms of $859.19, plus extra funds for late fees, since at this point it was obvious we no longer had a loan modification. At this point, according to the Notice of Intent, we were 17 payments behind!!! Payment Research could not tell me where the payments were going that we were sending in, other than they were being held in a “suspense account” for “fees due”. Another issue I learned from Payment Research was that BAC had taken it upon themselves to begin escrowing our property taxes. We were not informed that they would do this on the Loan Modification Agreement. It took me two months worth of calling weekly and speaking to representative after representative to find out that they take it upon themselves to do this on behalf of their customers. BAC feels if you’re in need of a loan modification that you automatically need assistance paying your property taxes as well, and they do this as a courtesy to you, the customer, without written notification.

We continued to send in $1800 to $2000 payments every month for September 2010, October 2010, November 2010, and December 2010. We kept receiving Notices of Intent to Accelerate in the mail each month. Instead of the balance going down on these Notices for a full payment amount from the month prior, the balance was only going down by increments of between $400-$600, not $1800 to $2000.00 that we were sending in. BAC, by their own admission, was holding these monies in that same “suspense account” and only releasing one payment at a time, in 30-45 day increments. Which, that was enough for them to be able to report a delinquency on my husbands’ credit report. They had shown delinquent/non payments on our mortgage for 19 months by December 2010.

Both my husband and myself kept calling and trying to find out an answer as to why BAC just cancelled a loan modification out from underneath us without any notice or warning. We never got an answer from August 2010 up through December. On December 14, 2010 we finally got an answer after being transferred around from department to department at BAC. We were told, by the representative we finally got on the line out of their Advocacy Dept. that there was a note in the system dated for 12/14/09 (an entire year prior) that stated “errors on loan modification document. workout negotiator to send out updated loan mod for customers review/signature.” This note in their system was apparently from their Underwriting Dept. to the Workout Negotiator at that time, Tom Willetts. Well, Tom Willetts never sent out that updated Loan Mod Agreement for our review/signature. They can’t even show where the updated Loan Mod was ever drafted, nor could they show where it had ever left their building!
It is a curiosity to me, to this day, why none of the other countless customer care reps could NOT find this note in their own system for close to 5 months anywhere in the system, but yet here it was, magically in front of this young woman on the telephone! I can only speculate to say that maybe it “magically appeared” since we were harassing them and hounding them for an answer WHY.
When we arrived in January 2011, I knew we could not keep riding out these Notices of Intent to Accelerate, and called in after making another $1800 payment to BAC for that month, to try to make payment arrangements on what they purported we now owed them in arrears. I was transferred from Home Retention to the Advocacy Dept., after being informed that Advocacy Dept. was the ones now handling this account. I spoke with a lady in the Advocacy Dept. about setting up payment arrangements on the arrearage. She then began to take financial information over the telephone from me as to what my husband makes per hour and what our bills were totalling up each month. She put me on hold for 10 minutes and came back and said they could work with us for 6 months only because that’s all our lender would allow on a repayment plan was 6 months. We were informed that they could set up payment arrangement, but that it had to be done by automatic draft out of our checking account. I gave the lady my checking account routing number and account number, and instructed them that ONLY the $2500 per month was to come out of this account, not a penny more. This was going to absolutely break us to have to do this for 6 months, but it had to be done to save our home. She entered my checking account information into their system, and immediately began flustering about on the telephone. She put me on hold for 10 minutes, came back and informed me she was having “computer issues” and could not get the transaction to process. She would contact me back by the end of the day to finish setting up these payment arrangments. I waited 8 hours for this representative to call me back, or perhaps maybe another one in her same department, but received no return call.
I called in the next day, after my husband got me through all the prompts to be able to speak on the account, and tried yet again to set up payment arrangements. I spoke with a young man this time who saw the note in the system that showed where Cathy in Advocacy tried to set up the arrangements and she had issues with computer, and would call customer back at a later date. This gentleman did not want to go over Cathy’s head and possibly redo anything she may or may not have done at this point, so he sent Cathy an inter-office email instructing her that we had called in and tried to reach her to finalize the payment arrangements. I was instructed that it could take Cathy up to 7-14 days to respond to the email!!! This would put is in mid-February. When I hadn’t received a call back from anyone at BAC regarding these payment arrangements I had previously agreed to and given my banking account information for, I mailed them in a check for $2000.00 on Feb. 4, 2011, and another $800 on Feb. 14, 2011. This should have more than fulfilled the payment arrangement agreed to by Cathy and myself, and payment arrangements that were entered into a note on the file in their computer system. Well, it didn’t. February 28, 2011, BAC Home Loans Servicing puts my home into foreclosure.

We hired legal counsel on March 8, 2011 who immediately sent BAC Home Loans Servicing LP a Cease and Desist letter. They also sent BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP a QWR demanding to see loan level accounting on this entire account, copies of the entire loan package, and a few other items. BAC Home Loans Servicing’s response to the Cease and Desist and the QWR floored us both. BAC sent written correspondence to my legal counsel letting them know that there was no way possible that they could be representing us in a legal dispute because the signatures that were provided by Vulcan Legal Group, LLC to BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP did NOT MATCH what BAC had on file for Henry L. Tallent and Dory A. Tallent. My husband and myself had to type up a well written letter to BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP informing them that yes, we had hired Vulcan Legal Group, LLC as our legal counsel and that any signatures that BAC had on file for us that didn’t match what we had provided the attorneys were in fact Fraudulent. We signed our names on this letter using every available alias we had ever used (Henry Tallent, Henry L. Tallent, Louis Tallent, Dory A. Unglesbee, Dory Ann Unglesbee-Tallent, Dory U. Tallent and Dory A. Tallent) and had a notary notarize this letter. We sent it to BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP and also a copy went to their Corporate office in Charlotte, NC. It took them almost a full 30 days before they acknowledged our legal counsel (thus putting us 30 days behind on a 60 day QWR). So what should have taken us by law 60 days to obtain from BAC took 90, and they only sent in half the documentation demanded in the QWR.
BAC Home Loans Servicing, LP and now as of July 1, 2011 Bank of America, N.A, have done nothing more than divert us, deceive us, misinterpret information to us, withhold information from us, misappropriate 19 payments totalling over $20,000.00 on our mortgage account, and deny us any right to privacy. We have countless numbers of collection calls that took place from August 2010 up through May 2011 (yes, they continued to call us even after acknowledgement of legal counsel). We were getting anywhere between 4-11 calls per day, 7 days per week. I changed the voicemail on my phone to reflect that yes, we had hired legal counsel as of March 8, 2011 and that their collection calls were no longer going to be accepted and that they needed to contact our attorneys. I provided both the address and the telephone number to our attorneys on this voicemail. BAC got to hear this message multiple times per day, for several months. They didn’t care; they still persisted at calling us and harassing us and thereby invading our privacy. When they did decide to try to leave a message, it was always an automated message that we would only get half of. We never got an actual message from them from an actual living, breathing person. There were times during those months that we would be speaking with one collection representative and another would be calling in on our other line! We were getting two at a time on more than a few occasions.
Since our attorneys have taken this case on, they also have bore the brunt of the runaround with Bank of America, N.A. Our single point of contact when the office of the ceo/president got involved (a gentleman by the name of Steven Boyd has sent several letters to my attorneys) was Diana Flores. Now, it has changed hands two more times in 6 months. These Single Points of Contact are less than pleasant to the attorneys. Three times my attorneys have informed me that they have been promised documents from this SPC and all three times they have affixed the wrong address for delivery to the FedEx package. The packages have been going to addresses in Birmingham, AL other than to my attorneys street address. Three times now.
Bank of America’s Office of the CEO/President has informed my legal counsel that they do not want this matter to go to court. However, with the above actions taken by the bank, one could speculate that they are doing everything they possibly can to deceive and delude even legal counsel.
I have complained to the Attorney General of Alabama. The Attorney General in AL is less than helpful in this regard. He “investigated” the complaint for a few months, and has recently sent me a nice letter informing us that he is dropping his investigation into this matter.

We also have a written letter from Bank of America, N.A. informing us that they do not possess the original wet ink note to our home, and that further “research” is going to be required to find it’s whereabouts.
We have a written letter from Freddie Mac, our purported Lender (as per Bank of America and the MERS website) informing us that THEY do not possess the original wet ink note to our home, and that Bank of America as Servicer of the loan should be able to locate it.
The Tricks and Lies Never End….to be continued.

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