American Loss Mitigation Agency, (ALMA), American Loss Mitigation Consortium TRICKED ME INTO SIGNING A FORBEARANCE AGREEMENT WITH MY LENDER BY SAYING THEY WOULD USE IT TO PERMANENTLY MODIFY MY LOAN PERMANENTLY. AFTER SPEAKING WITH MY LENDER, THEY SAID THEY NEVER AGREED TO SUCH A THING, AND THAT I DO NOT QUALIFY FOR THE LOAN MODIFICATON. Newport News Virginia

In June of 2008, I hired American Loss Mitigation Agency (ALMA) to help negotiate with my mortgage company because I was facing foreclosure. The fee for this service is $1500 which is not paid up front but is paid through the program. I found out about them by searching online for "help with foreclosure". I filled out a survey and sales person or representative for ALMA contacted me. She explained the program and said I would have to qualify for the program. The program would like such, you would send in your mortgage payments to ALMA to show to show the lender that you can make your monthly payment. ALMA would negotiate on your behalf but no monies would be released until an agreement was reached by both the lender and me. This sounded good to me, so I submitted my applicated with general financial information. Days later, I was told that my application was approved. You could imagine the hope I felt that my home would be saved!

The sales person forwarded all of my information to an ALMA counselor named Barbara Chronister. She sent me an information packet that explained the program and asked that I would provide a detailed package of financial information. It took me about a week to prepare the package, but she in order to began negotiating with my lender she would need this information plus my 1st posting of $2696. Sounds ok so far, not much is going wrong except I don't really know this company, that is why I was a little leary about sending the 1st payment. Despite my doubts, I sent the first payment in June but ALMA changed locations and the check was sent back to me. "That should have been my 1st clue that this is a scam company". I resent the check to the correct address and my 1st payment (certified funds) was received on 7/7/08.

Now they have my money, I am obviously interested as to what negotations are taking place, so I began emailing and calling quite a bit. My counselor, Barbara Chronister rarely answered emails, and when I called the office she was hardly available or on vacation. After finally reaching her, she said the lender had agreed to a loan modification and that I would need to send in a payment of $3740 as a good faith payment. I asked her "shouldn't we receive the loan docs before sending in the payment" she said yes, and that one of us should recieve the documents before releasing any monies Carrington. She received the "loan documents" via email which she forwarded to me which turned out to not be loaa documents but a "forbearance agreement" that I refused to sign 3 times before with Carrington because I didn't want to be locked into a high payment and then after 6 months come up with a lump sum payment. Barbara said the lender would use this to permanently modify the loan and that all the lenders are doing it this way. We had several talks and emails before I signed anything. Despite my better judgement I listened to Barbara, signed the forebearance agreement and released the 1st payment end of July to Carrington. BIG MISTAKE!

Barbara said that Carrington would have the final loan docs before the end of August. Time began to go by and I began wondering where are the loans docs. I contaced Carrington myself and was advised that "I do not" qualify for a loan modification because my financials show that I cannot afford the payments and all of my other house bills. Now, this is what ALMA was supposed to find out before they advised me to send the Carrington any of my monies.

Now you could imagine how upset I am that I released my savings to the lender and for them to tell me that "they never agreed to a modification" as ALMA said. This through me for a loop! I would have never released any monies to them if they planned to foreclose anyway.

After I figured out that ALMA was scamming me, gave poor advice and put me in a worse situation than before, I sent them an unhappy email. They responded and tried to start covering their tracks.

This is when I began dealing with Christy Sasser, office manager, at ALMA who doesn't normally handle cases but was put in charge of mine after I expressed my unhappiness with Barbara's performance. My dealings with her was just as frustrating as she failed to respond to emails and phone calls in a timely manner too and she ignored some emails and phone calls to both me and my lender. NOW TELL ME HOW DO YOU NEGOTIATE FOR SOMEONE WHEN YOU ARE IGNORING THE LENDERS PHONE CALLS! SOUNDS LIKE A SCAM TO ME!!!

There was lots of frustration with this company. My only mistake was trusting them, but you know, you live and learn. My last response to Christy was that she can use my case in a training session of "how not to handle a case".

I would just advise anyone before hiring them to read this report 1st and know what to expect, delayed emails & phone calls, and poor service. You think that you are working with experts in dealing with lenders and foreclosures but that was not the case in my situation. I found out it wasn't necessary to hire an outside service (3rd party) to negotiate with the lender because the borrower (homeowner) can negotiate for themselves.

One thing I will say in ALMA's favor is that they did refund my $1500. Praise the Lord! I had also asked for the $7000+ that I had sent to the lender based on their misinformation but they denied it.

I know and they know that they did not handle my case well. Consumers beware lest you experience the 3 months of frustration that I did in dealing with this ALMA.

Dawn
Lemon Grove, California
U.S.A.