Posted by Baker10 on October 08, 2004 at 22:18:17:
Thanks for your reply Peter! It’s great to hear that you took on a large company and won. I hadn’t considered small claims court before. That would definitely be an option for us. Right now, all of the paperwork it at a lawyers office. We have an appointment on Tuesday to discuss it further to see if we have any leverage. Part of the problem is that it looks as if there were mistakes by USDA and New Century. I don’t think any of it was intentional, but more or less out of carelessness and definitely a rush to close that loan on the part of New Century before they had all the correct information. Hopefully, this will have a resolution and we aren’t stuck with a refinance that is basically worthless. Thanks again and congratulations on your win in court! Baker10
Posted by Debra Baker on October 03, 2004 at 18:57:39:
We recently closed on refinancing our original home loan with USDA Rural housing service. The reason that we refinanced was to get home improvements. The only way we could get enough money was for USDA to approve a subordination of the amount of the subsidy granted. After several attempts, the subordination was approved. We had already closed the loan and were using the three day recision period to try to get the subordination. Although it was approved, it was at the last minute. My lender had trouble getting a correct payoff statement and by the time he did, The full payment had already been wired to USDA. The subordination gave us an extra 10,000 to do the work on our home. Now I am wondering if they already have the payment, will they refund the overpayment back to our lender if our lender turns in all of the requested subordination documents. The subordination has been officially approved, but they needed the documents to set up an accounts receivable for the amount, which is basically a lien. I was told by a USDA rep that they do refund overpayments, but wasn’t sure about the subordination situation. It was a nightmare just getting the subsidy off. I hope this problem is an easy fix. Thanks for any advice. Baker10
Posted by Baker10 on October 04, 2004 at 20:57:33:
Today we found out that USDA will not refund our money at all. This is because our lender sent a check to us in our name which goes against the subordination guidelines. With the subordination approval, we would have to have it in our contracting business name. Anyway, all of this could have been avoided, but we found out from the title department that our lender had given them the go ahead to fund the loan before they had received the final payoff minus the subsidy from USDA. I was shocked to know that they gave the go ahead and funded the wrong payoff after we had gone through so much to get the subordination approved. It had to have just been a mistake, but it cost us 10,000 that we could have had if they had waited just a few more hours to fund the loan with a lower payoff. If anyone has any ideas about whether or not we can do anything, please advise. Thank you! Baker10
One cheap route would be take them, whoever made the mistake, to small claims court for $5K. No attorneys allowed in Small Claims Court, you get to tell your story and they get to tell theirs. If they clearly made a mistake that cost you $10K, you can at least get $5K of it back. Usually costs around $20 to file, at least in CA, and if you are a better storyteller than the defendant, you win.
We had to take on UPS once when they refused to pay an insurance claim for damaged goods. I explained my side, showed the damaged goods to the Judge. UPS explained their side of the story, blamed someone else. The Judge asked UPS, who collected the insurance money and he said,“UPS does.” Then the Judge asked, “Why do you collect for insurance if you do not intend to pay?” and I knew we had won.