If We Go by Latin Roots....

[kaasirpent]

According to several dictionaries

in-, prefix from Latin. 1) not

surance, (obs) variant of assurance from Old French asseurance (11c., Modern French assurance) "assurance, promise, truce, certainty."

So..."insurance" should mean "lack of assurance, promise, truce, or certainty."

[Yes, you etymology geeks, I'm fully aware that this is incomplete and contrived only to prove my dubious point, like any propaganda. Now back off. :)]

Got a call from "Meredith" at ALFA this morning. She completed her research and here is what she found mixed in with information I have gleaned from my own records. This is a compilation of information from my private journal, this LiveJournal, and a couple of Google searches.

Note: This post is mostly for compiling everything I have in disparate records into one spot in preparation for the letter I'm going to write ALFA. As such it may change as I narrow uncertain dates down and remember details and make more connections. This also represents one of the rare positive uses of my overactive pattern-matching ability, which usually just plants stuck songs in my head, but on rare occasion, let's me connect important dots. But if you choose to, feel free to continue reading.

• 8/22/2006: Wachovia approves my home equity line of credit which I opened specifically for the purpose of having my house re-sided in HardiePlank instead of the rotting Masonite it was then sided with. I now believe (as of writing this LiveJournal post) that this was the catalyst that kicked off everything that later happened. When I opened this home equity line, it eventually appeared on my financial records as a second mortgage. I suspect that it is this that caused ALFA to flag my account as refinanced in the next bullet below.



• 5/7/2007 (private journal): I receive a call from my local ALFA office (then located just blocks from my home) saying that my mortgage lender (HSBC Mortgage Corporation, at the time) had not paid my premium, and wanted me to pay up, deadbeat. Oh, and they thoughtfully canceled my policy. Upon further investigation, we determined that although the computer did show the correct mortgage lender, they had the wrong account number (like, really wrong, not just a digit off, and not even the correct number of digits) and had flagged my account as having been recently refinanced. (See above.) I explained that this was utterly and completely incorrect. I had never refinanced, had no idea where they got this, and had never authorized or initiated a change to my account number with HSBC, which was and had always been the same 7-digit number. The lady at the local office claimed¹ that she fixed the whole thing.² I was told that my insurance record would show a gap in spite of the fact that it was all ALFA's fault.³ I got HSBC and the local ALFA lady on the line together to hash it out, and everything was copacetic. I thought.



• SUPPOSITION: If it wasn't my home equity line of credit that kick-started all this, then I'm guessing someone, somewhere else in Lawrenceville, Georgia refinanced and changed their account number. By luck or happenstance or fat-fingered typing, their policy number or SSN or name or whatever ended up being mistyped as mine, and the data entry person didn't bother checking to make sure, and changed my information instead of the nameless individual who actually did refinance. If so, I wonder if s/he is still having problems with ALFA?



• SUPPOSITION: Because the computer systems are not necessarily linked, the home office probably had me down as having HSBC as a primary mortgage lender the entire time, although later, they did show me as having a "second mortgage."



• 5/9/2008: I received a letter from HSBC saying that they had no record of me having home owner's insurance. Well, this was kind of odd, because...well, I did. Remembering that exactly one year previous, we had dealt with this same issue, I called HSBC and explained. HSBC actually called my local ALFA agent and dealt with this while I was on the phone listening. They got it all cleared up, and this time without canceling my policy. Or...



• 5/21/2008 (private journal): I get two letters on the same day from HSBC saying that my insurance has been canceled. So much for ALFA not canceling it. When I call, HSBC tells me not to worry, because they already sent the payment, and it had cleared. On the same day, I also get mail from Wachovia saying that my insurance was canceled. When I call, they tell me that ALFA informed them of the cancellation. I must have gotten it straightened out because I find no subsequent entries about the topic.



• 1/1/2009: Wells Fargo purchases Wachovia, which means that my home equity line of credit at Wachovia is now converted to a second mortgage with Wells Fargo. Somehow, this makes it into ALFA's records (the name change).



• [1/9/2009] (private journal): I find out my local ALFA agent has closed shop because I am unable to get through to the phone number I have stored in my cell phone.



• 5/7-9/2009: Surprisingly, nothing happens. Neither HSBC nor ALFA call me with any problems. I assume—perhaps even correctly—that it's all fixed.



• 7/30/2009 (private journal): Was charged $295 by Wachovia on my prime equity line because they claimed I had no insurance. I called ALFA and they assured me that I did still have insurance. Straightened it out with Wachovia and they removed the $295 charge. Question: Was this because ALFA screwed up again back in May and notified Wachovia that I was no longer insured? Need to find this letter, if I kept it.



• 9/17/2009 (private journal): During a ferocious rain storm, my house leaked profusely, and I contacted ALFA and got the number of the local adjuster so I could get him and the roofer at my house at the same time to assess the damage.



• 11/3/2009 (personal journal): Emailed loan officer at PenFed my paycheck stubs, bank account statements, IRA statement, and got ALFA to fax him an endorsement to change the 1st mortgage to PenFed. So it is at this point that they knew the



• 12/19/2009: I actually do refinance my mortgage. I paid off my HSBC mortgage and opened a new one with Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed). As part of the deal, I had to drop the second mortgage with Wells Fargo, which was (as noted above) really an equity line of credit that was completely paid off.



• 12/19/2009: At approximately this same time, I find out that my local agent is now "Mark" and is located several suburbs distant from me.



• Jan, 2010: HSBC refunds me the remaining balance in my escrow account.
  
  
• NOTE: I know for a fact at this point that the local ALFA office had the correct mortgage company in their computer system because...



• 5/9/2010: ...PenFed sends $607 for my annual⁴ premium. What remains unclear is who initiated this transaction: PenFed or ALFA? I suspect my local ALFA office because PenFed would have no way of knowing how much to send, otherwise, right?



• 5/x/2010: ALFA's home office discovers that there is an underpayment of $131 because my premium changed. They call up my records and it shows HSBC Mortgage Corporation as my primary mortgage lender.⁵ They bill HSBC for the $131.



• 5/x+y/2010: HSBC quite rationally ignores the bill, as it references an escrow account that no longer exists.



• 6/07ish/2010: ALFA's home office sends me notice saying that HSBC failed to pay the $131, so they are canceling my policy unless I pay up, deadbeat. Date of cancellation: 6/23/2010
  
  
• 6/17ish/2010: I call ALFA. They assured me that my policy would not be canceled and that they would take care of everything.



• 6/17ish/2010: ALFA faxes an invoice for the $131 to PenFed, which is all PenFed claims they need in order to send the check.



• 6/23/2010: I call ALFA. They have not received the money. I call PenFed. Oh, they got the fax, but didn't act on it. It's been sitting on some idiot's desk for five days. I urge them to send it, because the stupid policy is supposed to expire on the 23rd. They promise they will overnight the check.



• 6/23/2010: In spite of the fact that every person I spoke to that day absolutely assured me that there would, in fact, be no cancellation, they, of course, cancel my policy.



• 6/24/2010: ALFA receives the $131 check to my local office⁶, but, golly, the policy to which it refers is canceled! So they refund $519. However, the dollar amount my agent "Mark" quotes me over the phone is $528. So $9 got lost somewhere in there. Let's do some math, here: $607 + $131 ≠ $519 in any base I tried. It, in fact, = $738. So where they got $519 I have absolutely less than no glimmer of a clue, unless they are prorating the refund.



• 6/24+x/2010: The ALFA local office calls PenFed and tells them that the refund was sent "by mistake." I know it had to be the local office, because had it been the home office, they would have called HSBC. This alerts PenFed that something squirrelly is going on.



• 6/24+y/2010: Meanwhile, since the actual refund check was issued from the home office, the refund check goes to HSBC. Just to reiterate: Local office informs PenFed that they're getting the check back, but the home office actually issues the check to HSBC. I am told later on 7/30/2010 that this is because even though by 7/30/2010 they have my correct mortgage lender listed in their system, they show that it changed, and that the lender at the time of refund would have been HSBC, so they send the check to HSBC.



• 6/24+z/2010: HSBC receives a check for a refund they didn't send the original amount for and cashes it anyway.



• 7/12/2010: HSBC issues a refund check to me for the amount of $519.



• 7/13/2010: ALFA says this is the date the check is shown as having cleared with HSBC.



• 7/13+x/2010: Envelope from HSBC arrives, and I ignore it because I no longer have a business relationship with HSBC, and at this point have no reason to suspect it might contain a check.



• 7/30/2010: I get a call from PenFed. "That check we were told to expect? We haven't seen it." I call ALFA's home office and find out what has happened with the refund (although at this time I didn't know why it had been refunded). ALFA puts a trace on the check to see if it has been cashed and assures me that everything will be taken care of by the following Monday (8/2/2010).



• 8/2/2010: I don't bother calling because I know deep down it won't do any good.



• 8/5/2010: I got a call from PenFed asking about the refund check they were told to expect, which still has not arrived. Last they heard, I was looking into it. I apologized for dropping the ball. I call ALFA. I find out that they had not touched the issue since I last spoke to them on 7/30/2010. They promise they will definitely have an answer for me the next day, which is a Friday.



• 8/6/2010: I'm out sick from work, but my local ALFA agent Mark leaves a voicemail saying that HSBC has cashed the check and could I please call him back.



• 8/9/2010: I called Mark. He explained that HSBC cashed the check for $519, but I owe $528, and maybe I could just pay that out of my own money to get this off of everyone's plates, and we'd "settle up" later. Not only "no," but Hell no. I call HSBC and find out the timeline listed above. I call PenFed and find out more of the timeline listed above. The last they heard, they were supposed to be getting a refund, and they never did. I then call ALFA's home office one more time, and speak to Meredith in the underwriter department and ask her to research this for me, which is where I filled in quite a bit of the timeline above when she called me back on 8/10/2010.

And I believe that brings us up to current.

I have the check from HSBC in my hand—it was easy to find because I had put it in a pile of mail to be shredded (I open before I shred, so I would have eventually seen it) because, as I stated above, I no longer have a business relationship with HSBC. That will be deposited in my checking account at Wachovia by the time you read this, and I will issue a check for $519 to my local ALFA agent Mark.

There will be ice skating on Venus before I pay them that extra $9. If they want to make an issue of it, they can meet me in small claims court. I'm done. If they cancel my insurance, I'm getting a lawyer. I'm done.

At no point during this have I done anything that set any of this into motion other than perhaps be less than attentive to mail than I should be. It's something I'm working on.

---

1. Lying bitch.
2. I know now that the remote offices and home office have computer systems that are completely independent of one another, and that a change in one does not affect a change in the other.
3. Somewhere in the dim recesses of what passes for a brain, deep, deep back and down toward the stem, I knew this. But something about the way this kept going from month to month confused me. More on this in a few paragraphs.
4. At no point in all of this has ALFA ever once admitted that any of this is their fault.
5. This is confusing on two fronts: 1) the local/field office had the correct information, 2) I had to get all kinds of paperwork from ALFA's home office back in November to approve my refinance. So it could be argued that both the right hand and the left hand knew this information...but the brain neglected to realize it.
6. This is a guess based on the unfolding of events.

Comments

[jost.livejournal.com]

I use your same logic to point out that "proactive" should mean "in favor of action" and most corporate bobbleheads should be using "preactive". Sometimes it works and they start using preactive. I laugh quietly having ofuscated them.

[slymongoose.livejournal.com]

http://failblog.org/2010/08/09/epic-fail-photos-business-name-sign-fail/