WRONG!!!!

I PAID ALL MY BILLS AND IT WAS FRADULENT ACTIVITY WITH A BOGUS ENTRY IN MY CREDIT REPORT THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM!

Tell the people who were illegally foreclosed upon that THEY don't need someone looking out for their interests.

THAT'S THE VERY PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT - TO PROTECT IT'S CITIZENS FROM ILLEGAL ACTS!

And just to let you know..

I've lived in my house for 21 years. The only reason I'm mortgaged out at the moment is because of my divorce. Even so I managed to hang on to this house and continued paying the bills even when I'd lost contracts.

My car is 10 years old and runs like new. Yeah, I *do* have a new cell phone but part of THAT is because I'm saving $50/month on my new plan (3 lines with data).

I could have walked out on my obligations. According to the wording in my divorce decree, I could have taken the things I wanted out of the house and started anew. My house was in DEPLORABLE condition for reasons too numerous to go into here. Suffice to say that, if you've ever seen the show "Hoarders", I can tell you my house was about two stages away from being like that. To keep my house, I had to pay my ex a certain amount of money. I could have just walked away and let the place be sold for a pittance that would have probably barely covered the mortgage balance. My ex would have gotten nothing and I would be in pretty good shape.

What did I do? I went to work, in more ways than one. It was a point of pride with me to hang on to the house (I'd inherited it and it's problems from my adoptive mother). I managed to get some credit to start hiring some guys to get to things fixed (now that my ex was out of the way - shw wouldn't let people in the house). I fixed it up some, refinanced and fixed up more. One 2nd mortgage later, I had the money to pay her off.

During that process I worked to get a more secure job. Although I'd lost a contract in that time frame, I was unemployed for all of about 18 hours. I'm lucky enough to have the skills that can be in demand and I've worked hard enough to make them valuable.

Rather that go through the contract market again, I was looking for permanent employment. Yeah, if I was contracting again, I could be making more money - but the stress levels would be through the roof and the commute would be hellish compared to what I have now.

I'm making a little less - but enough to make progress on the bills that are outstanding. I just finished paying off the note on my car so that's one less payment. Sure the mortgages seem like they'll take forever but I know it's a matter of time.

And that's the thing I'm talking about. I knew the rules when I started into these loans. Fortunately my credit union has been fair with me. When the bogus stuff showed up on my credit record, they didn't hike my payments or call in my loan. I didn't have to fight like crazy to get things restored - and not everyone who tries manages to succeed like I did in getting things put back to normal. Later on, when the new credit card law passed, some companies hiked their interest rate on me. I called them asking if that was how they believed they should treat their best customers. Those that basically said "yes", well, my balances with them are ZERO. Those that were reasonable, I still do business with. I didn't even really complain when two of them cut my credit limits in half - I had no intention of ever borrowing THAT much money.

The things is, and I know this'll sound arrogant but I hope you'll take my meaning, not everyone is as smart as I am. Not everyone has my skills. And it's been myexperience that not every bank officer is on the up and up. Not every credit offer tells you the whole truth. In another case I dealt with, not every financing company even wants to abide by their own contracts (I was cancelling a club membership according to the terms of the contract and they kept refusing to do so and demanding more money).

THAT is why having an agency to protect consumers is needed.

I apologize for going on a bit too long..