Tuesday, March 30, 2010

early morning

The Fun of Losing Your House To Foreclosure - Part (too numerous to keep track of)

Last week, I received an email from the realtor who has been trying to sell our (former) house for the outrageous price of $194k (we’ve had one person look at the house in two months), telling me that the house was going up for auction on April 24th.  Great, another auction for the house.  They really want to get rid of us, I guess.  The fun part of that was that they were insisting on three open houses (12- 4p) before the auction date.  Yes, four hour open houses with an animal sanctuary in the house.  It sounded like tons of fun.  Obviously, it was just stressful finding out about the auction, but adding the open houses to the stress was above & beyond.  I received an email a couple of days later saying that a Fannie Mae inspector was in the area and needed to inspect the house that afternoon for the auction.  Well, since I don’t usually pick up my email until the middle of the night, he was out of luck.  Several days later, I received another email from the realtor telling me that the auction had been cancelled.  Could we really have been that lucky that I pick up my email so late and that the house wasn’t able to be inspected on that particular day?  Did they cancel the auction because it wasn’t inspected with a certain group of houses?

Our goal has always (well, almost always, I guess) to attempt to buy our house back with the help of an investor, and to then rent it back from them.  Or, we were hoping to be able to figure out some things to sell or to maybe possibly hopefully get my disability case finally settled (after about 9 months of waiting for them to get all the records they wanted, my case has finally gone to the medical examiner) and use the backpay as down payment on the house.  There is NO way that in this market that this house is worth almost $200k.  Not even close.  Fannie Mae paid $135k for it, and with broken pool pumps, flooring that needs to be replaced for someone else to live here (unless, they too, have a parrot room where they want linoleum), a leaking sprinkler system, a collapsed cabinet in the garage, and our big (granted, broken) hot water heater that was replaced with a tiny one w/o the recirculating pump that we used to have, etc.  Geez, I didn’t realize how long it took to get hot water without the recirculating pump - man, what a waste of water.  Anyway, for someone else to live here, the house is a big fixer-upper.  There are lots of extras that we paid for to upgrade the house, but those will just be our little secret.  They’re things that aren’t immediately obvious, and we’re not about to make the house more appealing to someone else.

We’ve been looking at houses in AZ, in an area that looks like it’s on its way to becoming what our area of Las Vegas is now.  Right now, it’s the semi-boonies in a suburb not far from Phoenix, where the houses are a decent size with large yards, and the prices are currently 85k-95k for a single story, which would be our preference now.  It would cost less than moving across the country, we’d still be able to avoid winter, my disability lawyer practices there in case I need to appeal (in general, most people are turned down on their first try for disability, but I’m hoping that my lawyer’s good reputation will help, so that the SSA won’t want to spend money on an appeal), we have a possible roommate set up to help with the rent, and we also would have help finding new doctors.  It’s not as cheap (housing-wise - although it’s not far off for non fixer-uppers, as we’re currently not in any condition to work on a house) as moving to the Mid-West, but it’s also not as expensive to move our stuff, nor would our aching bodies have to deal with freezing winters.  And hey, it’s cheaper to clothe yourself in t-shirts, shorts, and Crocs, than buying winter clothing and shoes.  Although, it blows my chances of fireflies in my back yard.  Oh, you laugh - I once almost moved to Georgia mostly because of fireflies.  Well, and it was pretty there, but mostly….the fireflies.

Our goal is to eventually move closer to Leigh-Ann’s family (it’s her turn to see the little ones grow up), and we didn’t want to get there in two moves, but if we can have an intermediate move to a place with an airport, an NHL team (that is actually doing well this season!), an NFL team, a MLB team, and some colleges nearby, that’s not too bad.  That’s one thing I dislike about Las Vegas - no professional sports teams.  Yes, we have some minor league teams, but it just isn’t the same…and they’re not televised either.  So, there are good reasons to stay (although, fewer and fewer these days) and good reasons to move.

Stay tuned for a zillion “30 Second Book Reviews”.  We’ve kept our library busy.  When you’re feeling crappy, books are not only handy when you’re in bed, but they’re a nice escape.  Then again, I’m not sure that I could call “Lovely Bones” a nice escape.  I prefer my fiction with less child rape & murder.

Monday, February 08, 2010

early evening

Daily Rituals

Aw, isn’t it sweet, someone checks my blog almost every single morning around 8 am.  Nothing says “time to wake up” like a cup of coffee and a dose of Flippy.  Keep checking, I still have some blog entries in mind for you.  In the meantime, why don’t you get started reading here and see if you can find yourself.  For those of you who are less obsessive about me, you should check out the link, too, but only for pure entertainment value.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

terribly early in the morning

Glass Houses?

There’s “someone” (apparently they’ve been sitting and waiting for months for me to come back - it’s nice to be missed!) commenting on a couple of posts on my blog who thinks that I haven’t posted enough about my own personal financial problems and they think that if they reveal them here, in my comments (that are moderated, DUH! - it should only take ONE comment to figure that out, no?), it’ll be a big surprise to all of you what’s been going on with me.  Let’s see, first there were my health problems (back surgery, et al), then I lost my job due to my health problems, then I followed that with the loss of my car and my house.  So, for “Barbara Wellington” (don’t make me reveal your real name here, mister…because that would be a lot worse than what’s already on my blog, wouldn’t it?), I hereby publicly declare that I filed for bankruptcy and I’m currently waiting for the Social Security Administration to make their first (and final, I hope, but most people do have to appeal) decision regarding my disability case.

These threats of revealing my “personal” issues are pretty funny considering everything is here, on my blog (AND on HuffPo!), for the whole world to read.  And honestly, what more could I lose?  In the past several years, I’ve lost my health, my job, my car, my home, and my siblings.  What does MISTER DBA, MBA, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda think I have left to lose?  So, dude, learn how to use an apostrophe and quit writing as a woman on my blog.  I don’t intend to run for public office, so no one is in danger of having me be in charge of public funds…nor even private funds.

Wow, it’s astonishingly lame to threaten a disabled chick who has lost pretty much everything, don’t ya think?

 

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

the wee hours

My blog, it’s back

I can’t believe my last post was in July.  A whole mess of stuff has happened since then and not a single bit of it is good.  More soon.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

early morning

SeattleCoffeeDirect.com, UrbanCoffeeDirect.com, WorldBeanCafe.com’s $2 or $5 trial is a SCAM!

I signed up for the $2 trial offer from SeattleCoffeeDirect.com to get godfather points for Mafia Wars on Facebook.  Yeah, that was stupid, but only in hindsight.  I assumed that Zynga, the company that owns Mafia Wars, wouldn’t associate themselves with downright thieves.  The $2 offer for two stainless steel mugs and two pounds of coffee, plus however many “godfather points” WAS a good deal.  I didn’t expect the company to outright lie in their terms & conditions: * Program Membership Terms and Conditions:   We want you to be happy with your order. As a customer of SeattleCoffeeDirect, you control your membership. You determine your semimonthly coffee selections and the frequency of your shipments. You may also opt out of our membership program at any time after you place your initial order. Feel free to contact us online by logging into your account at SeattleCoffeeDirect.com or by simply calling 866-794-2030.

You cannot “control your membership” by “logging into your account” because they don’t GIVE you an account to log into.  And, before you even GET your trial offer, they start charging away on your credit card, using MULTIPLE business names!!!  PayPal has been so slow to react that it’s caused overdraft charges on the bank account that I had attached to my Paypal card, even though I deleted the bank account info.  They’ve saved it, just so they can charge THIS FRAUD over and over and over again.  I’m now at 4 charges in a week, only one of them approved by me, the $2 charge.

July 12th, $2 charged by WorldBeanCafe.com but signed up supposedly with SeattleCoffeeDirect.com (I thought it would be a nice inexpensive give for someone) - authorized July 13th, $38.95 charged by WorldBeanCafe.com - NOT authorized July 17th, $38.95 charged by UrbanCoffeeDirect.com - NOT authorized July 18th, $38.95 charged by Urban Coffee Direct Evanston IL - NOT authorized

Conveniently, they’re charging these on weekends, when they’re supposedly closed.  Also, conveniently enough, they don’t have ANY email support.  There is no way to log “into your account” on their website, because their website doesn’t have accounts.  Their domains are registered with DomainsByProxy.com.  What are they hiding?  Who are they hiding?  Why are they going by so many different names?  Oh wait, I know the answer to that, so they can keep trying to charge people’s accounts, so that when one name is blocked, they can charge using another.

Hindsight is 20/20, but just look at all of these complaints, there are 395 just HERE, just under ONE name, and the BBB rates them an “F”.  If I don’t receive a full refund and refunds of my overdraft fees, I think this situation finally calls for an actual criminal charge.  They are knowingly overcharging & fraudulently charging customers before they even receive their trial offers.  No company who believes in their product would need to charge their customers numerous times before they even get the damned coffee ONCE.  Clearly, the product must royally suck.

All I’m saying is…I had BETTER get my REFUND or every single time someone does a search for one of their company names, there’s going to be a website or a number of blogs telling them EXACTLY how this “company” does “business”.  It’s clear they’re out to steal as much money as they can until someone finally shuts them down.  That time is LONG overdue.