Disclaimer: Still love junk food in moderation, still not looking down my nose at individual people or individual choices...but institutions are fair game.
I'm so thankful we don't have any serious, life-threatening food allergies to deal with. (Not now, anyway. With very young children, I guess I better not count that particular chicken yet.) It's hard enough getting Boy 1 through a day or two of school with simpler sensitivities.
The paperwork for Boy 1's current school, his previous preschool, and both day camps he attended over the summer all included spaces for special concerns, and I listed on all of them that he is restricted from artificial coloring. And then I (foolishly, apparently) assumed that approving and packing his lunches myself would keep those and other questionable ingredients out of his diet.
But snacks are ubiquitous where little kids are concerned. Snacks at both summer camps were light and generally pretty healthful. Where they fell apart was drinks. Kool-aid...ughh. Things were a bit more extreme at the first preschool. I packed Boy 1's lunch but did not know that the school provided a snack every afternoon also. Boy 1 was tearful, irritable, angry, unfocused, and generally out of control for two days before I put two and two together, asked a few questions, and discovered not just Kool-aid but also those gummy fruit-flavored things and cheese puffs had been on the snack menu. And of course, they're all full of dye.
By the time Boy 1 got into the pre-K, I'd learned my lesson. I put the notes on his registration paperwork but made a point of speaking to Boy 1's teachers at the very beginning also. These teachers listened. They've been vigilant about checking everything before letting him have it. If there's ever a question whether something is okay, they call me and ask or give him an alternate safe snack that I've already approved or provided myself instead.
But I continually find it irritating that this should be a problem at all. It's become clear that schools are no place to count on finding good food of any kind.
First, this pre-K program exists in part because of a Title I grant, under which breakfast is provided to students. It's not an option as it is with the K-12 programs but a regular part of the scheduled school day. All this, I did not know until several days into Boy 1's attendance. In an age where the government--the Feds, for Pete's sake!--is expressing concern over childhood obesity, this lack of notification would seem a rather large oversight. I mean, I'd been feeding him breakfast at home, not realizing he was eating a full meal again the moment he got to school. Can you say "excess"?
Doubling up wasn't the only reason I was annoyed. I know what school meals are like. It was not Boy 1's imagination talking when he spoke of chocolate milk, fruit punch, Lucky Charms, cookies, and Froot Loops. Regardless he personally is not getting in on the very worst of the junk (because his teachers intervene between him and all those dyes), I'm left wondering why is this the standard, everyday fare for ANY preschooler?
That's breakfast. A look at the school lunch menu is perplexing, too. There's a lot of focus on calorie and carb totals. I base that observation on the counts listed next to the meal each day. But there seems to be no attention to other elements like vitamins, sodium, iron, fat, fiber...the requirements don't seem to add up to a full nutritional picture. And the meals reflect that. A quarter of an orange, for example, appears to count as a full serving of fresh fruit. Fruit juice is accepted as an alternate to whole fruit. Most vegetables are fully cooked, but they also are canned first. I remember well those mushy double-processed green beans, and they haven't improved a bit in the 30+ years since they appeared in my elementary school's cafeteria. Overall, the menu gives me a sense of Eww. Boy 1 is way better off with a cold box lunch from home.
And then there's the whole afternoon snack thing. I get that lots of kids eat smaller meals, more frequently, and that makes a snack necessary. What I don't get is why we are not asked to simply provide a couple of small snacks for our own kids every day. Instead, each day a different child's parent is asked to bring a snack for the whole class to share.
I have no problem with sharing something special when you're creating an event. Pilgrims and Indians-themed food the week before Thanksgiving, say. And I have no objection to a more indulgent (i.e., junkier) treat occasionally, like cupcakes on a student's birthday. But every day?
First, it forces the teachers to spend even more time policing Boy 1's food (not to mention that of any other kid with a food issue), which is job enough just for breakfast. And beyond special diets, there's the problem of snack guidelines. According to the school handbook, snacks are to be "store-bought," "packaged," and "healthy." I understand "store-bought' and "packaged" probably are intended to ensure the snacks are not contaminated, spoiled, or undercooked, but it also leaves out many things that are "healthy" (shrink-wrapped banana, anyone?) and subs in a whole lot of salt and sugar. So, it's no surprise that about half the time, parents don't follow the "healthy" guideline and just send in little bags of barbecue potato chips.
I can only hope that this will get simpler once we're past the very young grades where snacking is a way of life. Of course, by then independence will have kicked in. I remember those complicated lunchbox trades kids engineered in elementary school....
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Friday, December 23, 2011
Food fights, Episode II
Disclaimer: Uh, rather than copying the whole thing, I refer you to the disclaimer atop my last post.
I've always been a label reader, but until I started looking for artificial dyes and a few other specific ingredients after all the food research this year, I had no idea just how messy typical grocery store fare is.
This is coming from someone with kids with relatively minor sensitivities to two classes of nonessential ingredients. For us, exposure is uncomfortable, not lethal. I can't begin to imagine how someone working around a disabling or life-threatening allergy or condition would navigate grocery aisles.
All of this together is a large part of the reason I so missed our backyard garden this past year. I'm aiming to have it back in the spring. The more I can make myself, the less I will have to worry about labels. It's also part of why I've been doing slightly out-there experiments in things like homemade yogurt, cheese, and, if I can eventually find a formula I'd like to try, soap.
Don't look now, but I think this is where to road to trading sneakers for hippie sandals begins.
I've always been a label reader, but until I started looking for artificial dyes and a few other specific ingredients after all the food research this year, I had no idea just how messy typical grocery store fare is.
Example 1: When I was shopping for snacks for Boy 1's class (more on that later), I discovered that for many brands, you can buy applesauce with no sugar or coloring added in the large, family-size jar, but not in the little single-serving cups. For other brands, just the opposite is true--cups are good, jars, not so much. Huh?I'm bugged even more by what we believe is okay to eat because the authorities appear to approve it. I'm aghast at just how little value there is in FDA approval when it comes to consumables. Sometimes it looks like oversight has been less than stringent, but I think more often it's because marketers have a limitless imagination when it comes to doing end-runs around FDA. For the most part, what's in the fine print is what's regulated. What appears on the splashy front label is...ahh...up for interpretation.
Example 2: Perhaps this has been the case for a long time, but since I never bought single-serving cups of fruit before Boy 1 started school, it was new to me. Many brands pack fruit cups in syrup only, not juice--not even the brands that do offer juice instead of syrup in the large can. Worse, some of the single-serving fruit is "in gel." That is, suspended in artificially flavored and colored gelatin. I don't think Jell-o salad in itself is a sin, but I do think there's something less than transparent about calling Jell-o salad "fruit in gel" and then stocking it in the canned fruit section, as though it's a less-artificial, less-sugary option.
Example 3: When it comes to coloring, there's a lot of senseless contradiction in packaged foods. One of our local store brands offers a frozen pink lemonade concentrate that's colored with grape skins. The same brand of grape juice concentrate, however, is chock full of Red #40 and Blue #1. So...if grape skin extract makes a color good enough for lemons, why the heck isn't it good enough for grapes?
Example 4: Another color contradiction: Some manufacturers persist in calling artificials by their alternate names (tartrazine, carmine, sunset yellow, etc.) instead of Yellow #5 or the other FD&C numbered names. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for which name is used. Within the same brand, the same color will go by both names in different products. The variation annoys me because it's a lot trickier to scan a label for names than for numbers (and I'd rather not spend hour upon hour in the aisles every trip).
Example 1: Many, many bottles of fruit juice say "100% Juice" on the front even though the ingredient list shows added water, sugar, vitamins and minerals, coloring, and/or preservatives. And yet it's perfectly legal to market it as 100%. Call me prissy, but I think it's false to label something 100% when it's actually 85%. Not even 95% is, in fact, equal to 100, whether it's legal to say so or not.My new rule of thumb: Ignore the front label. Only the ingredient list is believable...and that, only sometimes. More and more brands are getting nixed from my grocery basket because their ingredient lists are too vague to be useful. I mean, how specifically informative are phrases like "color added" or "and other added vitamins"?
Example 2: The two national brands and one store brand of baby cereal we get here are called "Single-Grain Oatmeal" and "Single-Grain Rice" on the front. But the ingredient list reveals that they each are made of two or three different grains. I fail to see what would be the marketing disadvantage to just calling it "Rice Cereal" and dropping the untrue "Single-Grain."
Example 3: Terms you might think are absolute, are not. Check out this summary from the USDA for just one example, the many ways the word "organic" may be used on a label.
Example 4: We've known for a while that Girlie's eczema, rashes, etc. are triggered in part by fragrances, so it's not just food on my label-reading agenda. Lo and behold, personal products labeled "unscented" are not necessarily free of fragrance. Check a few "unscented" items' inactive ingredient lists. Betcha you'll find at least one that contains "masking fragrance."
This is coming from someone with kids with relatively minor sensitivities to two classes of nonessential ingredients. For us, exposure is uncomfortable, not lethal. I can't begin to imagine how someone working around a disabling or life-threatening allergy or condition would navigate grocery aisles.
All of this together is a large part of the reason I so missed our backyard garden this past year. I'm aiming to have it back in the spring. The more I can make myself, the less I will have to worry about labels. It's also part of why I've been doing slightly out-there experiments in things like homemade yogurt, cheese, and, if I can eventually find a formula I'd like to try, soap.
Don't look now, but I think this is where to road to trading sneakers for hippie sandals begins.
Food fights, Episode I
DISCLAIMER: I like food. Perhaps I even love food. I enjoy cooking, serving, planning, smelling, and eating it. My kitchen is full of raw and fresh-frozen fruits and vegetables, yogurt, granola, whole wheat flour, lean meats, fish, oats, pasta, nuts, eggs...and butter, cookies, sausage, pretzels, beer...So no, I don't and won't ever claim to eat or serve a perfectly healthful spread all the time. It's about balance and moderation. Sure, I let my kids eat dessert every single day--assuming they've eaten a good round supper first.
That said, there are a few food lines I'd rather not cross. Increasingly, I'm finding ingredients that make me think Eww! Eww eww eww! And that's what these next three posts are about--where my food boundaries are lining up these days, and what food battles I'm willing to fight. I'm not here to preach or pass judgment on anyone else's food choices.
It could be just coincidence, but we've observed a real difference in Boy 1's rationality, emotional extremes, compulsive behavior, tone of voice, and ability to come out of his busy head and join us on Earth when he doesn't have any artificial coloring in his diet and when his sodium intake is carefully limited. Since discovering this, I've made a few changes in my kitchen. And now, after a good nine or ten months of experimentation and adjustment, those changes are generally a comfortable fit for everyone.
But it has been at times a frustrating process, and it necessarily happened in small steps. That surprised me. To go about purging the pantry of artificial dyes, of course I started with the obvious things. But with few exceptions, those things just weren't much in my kitchen to begin with--colorful kid cereals, candies, decorator sprinkles, and other unnaturally bright foods are things I don't buy very often. So that part was easy. Far harder were the hidden colors.
So many products that look perfectly ordinary are actually dyed. Fresh bakery bread, for instance. I'd have thought dyes would be more common in the packaged breads that come from far away and are designed to sit on shelves longer. But in fact, the only artificially colored bread I find in my usual store are the French and Italian loaves they bake fresh on-site. Yellow and red dyes are also in a surprising number of plain-looking crackers. For yogurt, Dannon is the only brand I've found in our local stores that has no artificial coloring in any flavor. Even the white yogurt varieties sometimes have color added. Same goes for ice cream--even in plain old vanilla, dyes are common.
Special days are 'specially challenging now that I've committed to artificial dye-free. Easter baskets? No Marshmallow Peeps this year. Naturally colored jelly beans are out there, but they weren't in my regular grocery stores. I got the last scoopful from the local organic food shop. You can imagine how hard it is to have an artificial coloring-free Hallowe'en. I mean, how do you censor someone else's handout treats? You don't--at least, not until later. We gave the kids each two treats from their bags, then went back through the bags after they were in bed, substituting a chocolate mini candy bar (most chocolate is not dyed) for every colorful candy I removed.
Birthday cakes? When I was a kid, I remember you could buy vegetable extract-based dyes in the baking aisle. That would have been enough to tint frosting on a simple cake. But when I went looking for vegetable dyes before Boy 2's birthday, all I could find was artificial. Next time I know better--order online a few weeks in advance.
And it feels ridiculous to me that I should have to do that, order grocery store items online. Vegetable colorings have been around for ages, and their safety has very seldom come into question at all. Artificial ones, on the other hand, are deemed "generally safe" by the FDA, while in many European nations our most common dyes are banned. Clinical studies as a whole cannot seem to come to any consensus though several of them study the dyes' "neurotoxicity effect"--which, it seems to me, is a phrase scary enough to make a person want to back away, even without a definitive answer.
And it's all over substances that just kind of look pretty. They do nothing to improve flavor, preserve shelf life, or enhance nutrition, yet they are practically ubiquitous.
Since I'm always on the lookout for food dyes now, I tend to notice label details that probably wouldn't have crossed my radar otherwise. And that brings me to my next post....
That said, there are a few food lines I'd rather not cross. Increasingly, I'm finding ingredients that make me think Eww! Eww eww eww! And that's what these next three posts are about--where my food boundaries are lining up these days, and what food battles I'm willing to fight. I'm not here to preach or pass judgment on anyone else's food choices.
It could be just coincidence, but we've observed a real difference in Boy 1's rationality, emotional extremes, compulsive behavior, tone of voice, and ability to come out of his busy head and join us on Earth when he doesn't have any artificial coloring in his diet and when his sodium intake is carefully limited. Since discovering this, I've made a few changes in my kitchen. And now, after a good nine or ten months of experimentation and adjustment, those changes are generally a comfortable fit for everyone.
But it has been at times a frustrating process, and it necessarily happened in small steps. That surprised me. To go about purging the pantry of artificial dyes, of course I started with the obvious things. But with few exceptions, those things just weren't much in my kitchen to begin with--colorful kid cereals, candies, decorator sprinkles, and other unnaturally bright foods are things I don't buy very often. So that part was easy. Far harder were the hidden colors.
So many products that look perfectly ordinary are actually dyed. Fresh bakery bread, for instance. I'd have thought dyes would be more common in the packaged breads that come from far away and are designed to sit on shelves longer. But in fact, the only artificially colored bread I find in my usual store are the French and Italian loaves they bake fresh on-site. Yellow and red dyes are also in a surprising number of plain-looking crackers. For yogurt, Dannon is the only brand I've found in our local stores that has no artificial coloring in any flavor. Even the white yogurt varieties sometimes have color added. Same goes for ice cream--even in plain old vanilla, dyes are common.
Special days are 'specially challenging now that I've committed to artificial dye-free. Easter baskets? No Marshmallow Peeps this year. Naturally colored jelly beans are out there, but they weren't in my regular grocery stores. I got the last scoopful from the local organic food shop. You can imagine how hard it is to have an artificial coloring-free Hallowe'en. I mean, how do you censor someone else's handout treats? You don't--at least, not until later. We gave the kids each two treats from their bags, then went back through the bags after they were in bed, substituting a chocolate mini candy bar (most chocolate is not dyed) for every colorful candy I removed.
Birthday cakes? When I was a kid, I remember you could buy vegetable extract-based dyes in the baking aisle. That would have been enough to tint frosting on a simple cake. But when I went looking for vegetable dyes before Boy 2's birthday, all I could find was artificial. Next time I know better--order online a few weeks in advance.
And it feels ridiculous to me that I should have to do that, order grocery store items online. Vegetable colorings have been around for ages, and their safety has very seldom come into question at all. Artificial ones, on the other hand, are deemed "generally safe" by the FDA, while in many European nations our most common dyes are banned. Clinical studies as a whole cannot seem to come to any consensus though several of them study the dyes' "neurotoxicity effect"--which, it seems to me, is a phrase scary enough to make a person want to back away, even without a definitive answer.
And it's all over substances that just kind of look pretty. They do nothing to improve flavor, preserve shelf life, or enhance nutrition, yet they are practically ubiquitous.
Since I'm always on the lookout for food dyes now, I tend to notice label details that probably wouldn't have crossed my radar otherwise. And that brings me to my next post....
Monday, November 14, 2011
We swallow this stuff
I'm constantly rolling my eyes at product labels. The marketing spin (Read: outright lies) is just incredible sometimes.
I generally don't commit my product rants to print since they're just so negative, and what's the point anyway--and we have plenty of happier things to blog about, right? But this one truly takes the cake. And I suppose it could be interpreted (loosely) as humor, so what the heck. Here goes.
This quote comes from the little marketing blurb on the back of a tube of baby toothpaste, whose well-known and generally well-respected manufacturer for some reason I'm withholding:
I'd like to know from what mystery species' mother they derived THAT formula!
I generally don't commit my product rants to print since they're just so negative, and what's the point anyway--and we have plenty of happier things to blog about, right? But this one truly takes the cake. And I suppose it could be interpreted (loosely) as humor, so what the heck. Here goes.
This quote comes from the little marketing blurb on the back of a tube of baby toothpaste, whose well-known and generally well-respected manufacturer for some reason I'm withholding:
...more natural protection for your infant's teeth with ingredients like what's found in mother's breast milk.Then farther down the label, the ingredient list begins:
Glycerin, Water, Xylitol, Sorbitol, Propylene Glycol [Wait! Isn't that the main ingredient in ANTIFREEZE?], Pectin, Xantham Gum, Colloidal Silicon Dioxide...
I'd like to know from what mystery species' mother they derived THAT formula!
Sunday, July 24, 2011
No more pencils, no more books...
Even though we're only on the waiting list and don't have any notion whether or when Boy 1 will get to start school, I thought it might be a good idea to take advantage of all these back-to-school sale prices now. So off I trotted to the website of the school he could be attending for a supply list. Here it is:
No extra-fat kids' pencil? No paper? Not even crayons? Am I crazy, or is there only ONE actual school supply item on that list? Really?
I'm trying to talk myself down. It's pre-K, not grad school. An extension of day-care, really. (In which case, Boy 1 may be disappointed. He's so beyond "What letter is this?" The kid wrote and illustrated his own original story this morning.)
And I guess not asking parents to provide the materials means the school supplies everything needed to learn to recite the alphabet, count, and maybe read and/or write.
At least I'm hoping that's what this means.
1 box of tissues
1 box of baby wipes
1 bottle of hand sanitizer
1 tote bag or book bag (no wheels)
Change of clothes (including underwear and socks)
1 small blanket or beach towel (for rest time)
4 pocket folders (plastic if possible, no prongs)
1 box each of zip lock bags, quart and gallon sizes
No extra-fat kids' pencil? No paper? Not even crayons? Am I crazy, or is there only ONE actual school supply item on that list? Really?
I'm trying to talk myself down. It's pre-K, not grad school. An extension of day-care, really. (In which case, Boy 1 may be disappointed. He's so beyond "What letter is this?" The kid wrote and illustrated his own original story this morning.)
And I guess not asking parents to provide the materials means the school supplies everything needed to learn to recite the alphabet, count, and maybe read and/or write.
At least I'm hoping that's what this means.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
And so it goes...and goes...and goes...
So here we are, January 28, and the refinance T and I started on in early December may...or may not...be finished now. It remains to be seen. While we wait out these last few (I hope) days, I have a big ol' rant to get off my chest.
Mortgage companies are irresponsible, plain and simple. They think nothing of playing games with people's finances and credit records.
Believe it or not, this is the SHORT version of the story. I've left out all our conflicts with C (more on that in a moment) last spring since they don't affect the refinance story directly.
To protect the far-less-than-innocent-but-capable-of-filing-defamation-suits-against-me mortgage companies involved, I will refer to them in the order they served (I use that term loosely) us as A, B, C, and D.
1) Late October, we got a notice from a fellow college alum offering a fantastic mortgage rate. We think about it but shelve the idea for the moment.
2) Early November, we get a notice from C saying that our escrow payments were larger than they should have been and that we have $X credit in escrow. Mind you, this was THEIR fault because for some reason they still can't calculate what the monthly amount should be. It fluctuates month to month. We pay whatever the bill says because our experience last spring taught us that they are absolutely dumb when it comes to receiving payments.
3) Late November, we get another notice from C saying that our total escrow is SMALLER than it should be and that we owe $X more. Once again, if that's the case, it's THEIR fault. (And, um, what happened to that credit?). We shut up and pay the bill...and dig up the old email from that college alum.
4) Early December, we've been in contact with the alum and gotten the new rate with D locked in, and we work our way through the reams of forms and statements and affidavits. Alum tells us it usually takes about 7-10 days to get to closing once the wheels are in motion.
5) Last Thursday--yes, late January--we finally hear from D's attorney. D has been trying to get our finances verified through credit reports and bank info as well as contact with our current mortgage lender, C, and our two former ones, A and B. But numerous mistakes have surfaced.
6) Ten minutes later, another clerk calls me. Apparently the first one had never run into these things before and passed the case on to her. She asks me a bunch more questions and tells me that the mistakes all appear to be the doing of B, but she can't do much to right them because, as she is not the customer, both B and C are refusing to accept requests from her. She gives me a list of info she needs and asks me to call B and C for it and have it faxed directly to her.
6) I spend the rest of the afternoon on the phone running the gantlet of so-called customer service hotlines, eventually speaking to humans, and putting in search and report requests with B and C. I also call the city and get property record numbers looked up.
7) It's nearly 6:00, so I'm on my way out the door for book club when the phone rings again. I'm shocked it's the attorney's office again. So I tell the clerk everything I learned. She is just bowled over with the incompetence. It turns out the info C's rep gave me was not just wrong but irrelevant, and B's rep had not faxed the attorney anything I requested.
8) Friday. I get on the phone with C again. Of course I get a different rep this time who has no idea what I'm talking about. I spin my whole tale again and file a new request. Then I get B on the phone again. And I get a different rep there, too, repeat myself, and discover that the attorney didn't get the fax because yesterday's rep had sent it to the city records office instead of to the attorney as I asked. I file a new request and hold my breath, because now I'm told it will be 3-5 business days before they will get around to filling it.
9) Attorney's clerk calls me to check in. I report what I was told, and she's just about beside herself. First, she can hardly believe that, besides the fact B didn't send the documents where I told them to in the first place, they would have faxed the document to the city at all. The clerk said it's a well-known fact that NO LOCALITY accepts faxes of this document. They only take originals. My request would be received and immediately trashed. The clerk said any mortgage industry rep with basic training should have known that.
But it gets even better. When I told her it would be 3-5 days, she said that was fine for the legal filing, but it wouldn't do for closing because the rate lock expires after six weeks. If B didn't get on the ball by Monday, our nice tidy new rate would be history.
10) I call B yet again, run the hotline silliness, and request (from a third rep) not a formal report or a legal document but a simple letter stating that the loan had been satisfied back in 2003. I told her what the clerk said--it didn't even have to be typed on letterhead, even a handwritten note was fine as long as it had a company rep's signature. This time I was told it would be up to one full business day. I repeated that it MUST be faxed because of my deadline. The lovely rep just kept repeating her "one full business day" line.
It didn't occur to me until after I hung up that I should have started shouting and demanding a supervisor at this point. B and its reps had no right to claim a full day to do this. The fact that B screwed up by never filing the proper legal document six and a half years ago was the whole reason we were in this mess in the first place. They OWED us a quick fix.
11) I call the attorney's office and report. We schedule the closing for Monday and all cross our fingers that the fax arrives by "one full business day," which would be 11am Monday.
12) We show up Monday for our 1pm closing. The document has still not arrived. We proceed with the paperwork anyway in the hopes it will come before we leave. 30 minutes and lots of signatures later, it's not there.
So. It's Thursday again. I'm guessing those documents are not going to actually arrive, and our paperwork and new loan will not be valid, until every last second (or longer) of those "3-5 business days" has passed. That means we'll be waiting another day. That's just to find out whether it came...THEN we'll get notice the new rate is in place.
Sigh.
The craziest thing about all of this is, these egregious inconsistencies were all over our financial records, yet we had no way of knowing it. Not only did the old mortgages not show up on our credit reports as paid...they didn't show up on them AT ALL. It was not until the title search that two liens against the property surfaced, one for the original mortgage amount and one for the current amount. (We'd paid off about $17K before refinancing the first time; that's where the $17K discrepancy came from.) The effect was to more than DOUBLE our indebtedness, on paper. It just blows my mind that one (or in this case, two) irresponsible companies can fail to follow through with legal procedures (i.e. recording the deed satisfaction documents) and create all this trouble for someone. And yet we were completely unaware that we have been technically "underwater" for the past seven years because of those mistakes. Happily thinking we're in good financial health.
Here's the sad part. The attorney told me that this is very, very common. Mortgage companies were so bad about filing legals that at one point there was a law that levied a $200 fine for each incomplete filing--not much until you consider how many filings they deal with daily. But the penalty law is no longer valid, so the companies have stopped following regulations again. The only way to force a lender to legally acknowledge that you owe them no money is to sue them and win. And what humble homeowner can afford to go up against a sprawling corporation?
Here's where I step on the pulpit.
Do yourself a favor. If you've ever completely paid off or refinanced your mortgage, call your county records office and make sure the certificate of satisfaction was recorded. (The call should be painless--the info is a matter of public record, and officials will give it to you with very little hassle.) If there's no record, call your former lender and demand it. Otherwise, you'll just never know. We found out the hard way--not every debt (valid or otherwise) shows up on your credit report.
Mortgage companies are irresponsible, plain and simple. They think nothing of playing games with people's finances and credit records.
Believe it or not, this is the SHORT version of the story. I've left out all our conflicts with C (more on that in a moment) last spring since they don't affect the refinance story directly.
To protect the far-less-than-innocent-but-capable-of-filing-defamation-suits-against-me mortgage companies involved, I will refer to them in the order they served (I use that term loosely) us as A, B, C, and D.
1) Late October, we got a notice from a fellow college alum offering a fantastic mortgage rate. We think about it but shelve the idea for the moment.
2) Early November, we get a notice from C saying that our escrow payments were larger than they should have been and that we have $X credit in escrow. Mind you, this was THEIR fault because for some reason they still can't calculate what the monthly amount should be. It fluctuates month to month. We pay whatever the bill says because our experience last spring taught us that they are absolutely dumb when it comes to receiving payments.
3) Late November, we get another notice from C saying that our total escrow is SMALLER than it should be and that we owe $X more. Once again, if that's the case, it's THEIR fault. (And, um, what happened to that credit?). We shut up and pay the bill...and dig up the old email from that college alum.
4) Early December, we've been in contact with the alum and gotten the new rate with D locked in, and we work our way through the reams of forms and statements and affidavits. Alum tells us it usually takes about 7-10 days to get to closing once the wheels are in motion.
5) Last Thursday--yes, late January--we finally hear from D's attorney. D has been trying to get our finances verified through credit reports and bank info as well as contact with our current mortgage lender, C, and our two former ones, A and B. But numerous mistakes have surfaced.
- The amount needed to pay off the house is $17K different depending on whether you ask A (who sold our account to B in 2001 and shouldn't be involved at all), B (who closed our account when we refinanced with C in 2003), or C.
- The name of the current lender is different depending on who you ask.
- The city has no record of our mortgage with B being cleared before the one with C went into effect.
6) Ten minutes later, another clerk calls me. Apparently the first one had never run into these things before and passed the case on to her. She asks me a bunch more questions and tells me that the mistakes all appear to be the doing of B, but she can't do much to right them because, as she is not the customer, both B and C are refusing to accept requests from her. She gives me a list of info she needs and asks me to call B and C for it and have it faxed directly to her.
6) I spend the rest of the afternoon on the phone running the gantlet of so-called customer service hotlines, eventually speaking to humans, and putting in search and report requests with B and C. I also call the city and get property record numbers looked up.
7) It's nearly 6:00, so I'm on my way out the door for book club when the phone rings again. I'm shocked it's the attorney's office again. So I tell the clerk everything I learned. She is just bowled over with the incompetence. It turns out the info C's rep gave me was not just wrong but irrelevant, and B's rep had not faxed the attorney anything I requested.
8) Friday. I get on the phone with C again. Of course I get a different rep this time who has no idea what I'm talking about. I spin my whole tale again and file a new request. Then I get B on the phone again. And I get a different rep there, too, repeat myself, and discover that the attorney didn't get the fax because yesterday's rep had sent it to the city records office instead of to the attorney as I asked. I file a new request and hold my breath, because now I'm told it will be 3-5 business days before they will get around to filling it.
9) Attorney's clerk calls me to check in. I report what I was told, and she's just about beside herself. First, she can hardly believe that, besides the fact B didn't send the documents where I told them to in the first place, they would have faxed the document to the city at all. The clerk said it's a well-known fact that NO LOCALITY accepts faxes of this document. They only take originals. My request would be received and immediately trashed. The clerk said any mortgage industry rep with basic training should have known that.
But it gets even better. When I told her it would be 3-5 days, she said that was fine for the legal filing, but it wouldn't do for closing because the rate lock expires after six weeks. If B didn't get on the ball by Monday, our nice tidy new rate would be history.
10) I call B yet again, run the hotline silliness, and request (from a third rep) not a formal report or a legal document but a simple letter stating that the loan had been satisfied back in 2003. I told her what the clerk said--it didn't even have to be typed on letterhead, even a handwritten note was fine as long as it had a company rep's signature. This time I was told it would be up to one full business day. I repeated that it MUST be faxed because of my deadline. The lovely rep just kept repeating her "one full business day" line.
It didn't occur to me until after I hung up that I should have started shouting and demanding a supervisor at this point. B and its reps had no right to claim a full day to do this. The fact that B screwed up by never filing the proper legal document six and a half years ago was the whole reason we were in this mess in the first place. They OWED us a quick fix.
11) I call the attorney's office and report. We schedule the closing for Monday and all cross our fingers that the fax arrives by "one full business day," which would be 11am Monday.
12) We show up Monday for our 1pm closing. The document has still not arrived. We proceed with the paperwork anyway in the hopes it will come before we leave. 30 minutes and lots of signatures later, it's not there.
So. It's Thursday again. I'm guessing those documents are not going to actually arrive, and our paperwork and new loan will not be valid, until every last second (or longer) of those "3-5 business days" has passed. That means we'll be waiting another day. That's just to find out whether it came...THEN we'll get notice the new rate is in place.
Sigh.
The craziest thing about all of this is, these egregious inconsistencies were all over our financial records, yet we had no way of knowing it. Not only did the old mortgages not show up on our credit reports as paid...they didn't show up on them AT ALL. It was not until the title search that two liens against the property surfaced, one for the original mortgage amount and one for the current amount. (We'd paid off about $17K before refinancing the first time; that's where the $17K discrepancy came from.) The effect was to more than DOUBLE our indebtedness, on paper. It just blows my mind that one (or in this case, two) irresponsible companies can fail to follow through with legal procedures (i.e. recording the deed satisfaction documents) and create all this trouble for someone. And yet we were completely unaware that we have been technically "underwater" for the past seven years because of those mistakes. Happily thinking we're in good financial health.
Here's the sad part. The attorney told me that this is very, very common. Mortgage companies were so bad about filing legals that at one point there was a law that levied a $200 fine for each incomplete filing--not much until you consider how many filings they deal with daily. But the penalty law is no longer valid, so the companies have stopped following regulations again. The only way to force a lender to legally acknowledge that you owe them no money is to sue them and win. And what humble homeowner can afford to go up against a sprawling corporation?
Here's where I step on the pulpit.
Do yourself a favor. If you've ever completely paid off or refinanced your mortgage, call your county records office and make sure the certificate of satisfaction was recorded. (The call should be painless--the info is a matter of public record, and officials will give it to you with very little hassle.) If there's no record, call your former lender and demand it. Otherwise, you'll just never know. We found out the hard way--not every debt (valid or otherwise) shows up on your credit report.
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