Household Is Unbelievable!

First I highly recommend Mr. Blake's websites re: Household Finance/Household Retail Services etc. You can start with www.householdwatch.net and go from there. It is important that all victims of this company band together so that NO ONE will be able to ignore us.

We were lured in by a live check from HFC at a time when we were literally starving to pay bills. They gave us one of those "equity lines of credit" which really are second mortgages because there really is no credit ever available even after paying for 15 years. Anyway, after many lies, they gave us a loan of $36000 against our house at 24.5% interest! No, we did not sign up for that percentage, but when the first bill came--surprise! We were going to sue but because lawsuits take so long, we were forced into bankruptcy by their $725+ a month payment.

We started investigating how they could give a $36000 loan on a house that had two mortgages already and was upside down by at least $21000. Filed a complaint with the state Dept. of Banking. It was answered by HFC's "answer man", whose job is apparently to concoct absurd answers against allegations.

He claimed that when they ran a credit check, only one mortgage showed up. We TOLD them we already had two mortgages, but they claimed they had no knowledge of this. Not only that, they "allegedly" falsified our application. It showed us owning a Ford Escort; we have never owned a Ford in our lives. Their HUD statement only had our signatures on the last page. I thought the signature page was supposed to have interest rate, monthly payment etc. How do they get away with this?

Because of them and factors relating to my disability, we had to declare bankruptcy and lost our home of 18 years. They claimed our interest rate was so high because of our FICO: at that time 681/690 respectively, and that was with over $30000 worth of error's on my husband's report. Now, they don't look like bad scores to me; at least not to warrant 24.5% interest!

Oh, we were also told if we paid on time for a year our interest would go down. Yeah, right. Since then, we learned that a number of people were told this out and out lie.

I refuse to get further depressed and consider suicide, etc. I bear scars from self-inflicted wounds done out of the hurt and desperation caused because of this company. I just had to write and let others know just some of the things they are capable of.

I wish I had found Christine sooner. When the bankruptcy lawyer pulled our credit report, our Best Buy account (financed by Household Retail) was reported twice. Same info, everything. Knowing what I do now, I question whether this was an honest mistake on their part.

So here we are, discharge in hand, no home, broke and lost as to what to do next. Renting really stinks, losing your home stinks, especially since we never missed a mortgage payment (except the HFC dispute) in 18 years, even at 9.9 and 14.5 rates respectively. Only after changing from Chap. 13 to 7 did we stop making the payments to allow the foreclosure to go through.

All that money and not a penny of equity to show for it. Folks, there are real crooks in the world of finance. And the $484M settlement--what a joke! They can shove it--it will never give us back our house, our credit rating, my mental and physical health.

Dealing with the Mafia would have been easier. Thanks for letting me vent. Any comments would be nice; not a day goes by that I can't forget the horrors that have been done to us by Delaware Savings Bank, Lehman Bros., Wells Fargo, Greentree, Conseco (these were all the companies our mortgage was passed through--all noted to be predatory lenders by consumer groups. Having had NO late payments on any bills until we filed bankruptcy, I believe we deserved much better treatment then this.

Thanks just for reading this.

P.S. Check out HSBC's Wm. Aldinger, former CEO of Household. His compensation package is unbelievable. Blood money, in my opinion. Does it really pay to be heartless, cruel, dishonest and pure evil? In the world of finance, those are desired qualities for advancement.

Now is the time to go forward with the lessons from the past. DO NOT allow this situation to keep you down. In fact, I would use it further your resolve to never be a preyed upon again! You future is now free and clear. If you take a pro-active approach to rebuilding your credit, saving money, and educating yourself so that no one can ever do this to you again, you could very well be in a nice home with a decent lender in only a couple years.

Be careful - there is a whole other breed of criminals waiting to prey on you in your current situtation. Credit repair scams, Ultra-high interest loans, credit cards that will charge you more for a fee - than the limit itself. etc...

Read, read, ask, etc... at sites like this - you will find answers.

If you learn from the past and change for the future - things will be much better.

Best wishes to you!

It's really hard to think of when you'll own a house again while you're broke and all.

Maybe it'll help to know that Household should have gotten my complaint last week, although it's only over credit reporting.

The predatory 2nd mortgage lending is so widespread - and I have posted so many times not to refinance creditcard debt into secured loans, regular readers must be sick of reading it.

I think Household bought Beneficial, and they got my "last $250" for an appraisal back in the 80s, they lie and lie - anything for a buck.

I made some calls to Household before I sent them my Waiver of Service, thought maybe they'd give me a direct address and person to send it to, but no such luck. It's unbelievable how many corporations they are, it's tough to figure out who to serve.

The HFC corporation in based out of NV, I think that's the Best Buy accounts too. And they are ROUTINELY reported in duplicate and with balances even when paid.

Anyway, it's a shame that "regulators" just don't regulate. Can't say I haven't complained, as with Transamerica (http://www.bayhouse.com/transamerica.shtml)

LostHearts shouldn't read that, it's even more depressing.

I'll definitely add the Householdwatch link to my Household section for my suit.

Household will always give people the runaround. One service rep will say one thing and if you call again they will swear no one ever told you that. They were based in Illinois but bought out by a huge conglomerate, HSBC, based in the UK. This is a HUGE company and the ramifications are scary.

Household provides the financing for about 60 stores, including Best Buy and QVC. They also provided this service for a number of stores that soon went out of business. Please check out www.bestbuy.net and read the horror stories there. It's a shame because Best Buy is really a great store, but choosing HRS to carry their accounts was a BIG mistake.

We received our first predatory loan in 1998, simply because the US Government took 1 1/2 years to approve my disability, and I was one of the lucky ones. Two months after getting the loan (which immediately was split into two and sold) I was approved and received a back payment check, which really wasn't all that big. Too late--we were stuck with the loans.

It really hurts because now the rates are so low and we are throwing our rent money out the window. Punishment for paying everything on time....always, always pull your credit report before shopping for loans. With over $30000 in errors, my hubby's score would have looked a lot brighter, even though it wasn't that bad to begin with. In fact, our scores would have qualified us for A or maybe a B loan, but we were too dumb at the time.

Thanks for the replies. BTW, Household is really sly about some of their loans. They call them "home equity lines of credit" to escape the tighter regulations governing secondary mortgages, but in reality there is no way anyone can use them in that manner. After 15 years on a $35000 loan, there would be only $700 available to use on your credit line.

And still they get away with it. ACORN has a list on their website of contributions made by Household either under its name or obstensibly by their employees to members of Congress. Money talks.

It doesn't just "talk" - money rules everything. With all these international mergers things are getting worse everywhere.

Losthearts,I just came across this forum tonight and was reading your post. I know what you are going through,household did the same thing to us, They called me on the phone one day asking me if I wanted to refinance our home. I told them no and hung up.We had an interest rate at 7% already which was a good interest rate at that time.We hadn't even thought of refinancing.
Well household called us back a few days later asking us again and making it sound really good paying our house off in 17 years instead of 30, low interest rate doing a first morgage and then doing what they called a side loan which wasn't suppose to be a second moprgage but thats what it was to my opinion,it was an equity line of credit, but I don't undertand that because what they loaned on the first morgage was even over what the appraised value was. they lied to us about the interest rates, they were higher than what they were suppose to be, they told us we could come back in 6 months and they would refinance us at a lower interest rate well that was another lie they said they couldn't do it because our scores supposible dropped from the 6 months prior.So my husband and I went to several loan companies and morgage companies to try and get a 125% loan and we couldn't get one, they all said the same thing that household fixed it so we couldn't refinance anywhere else.We were also upside down on our house now and nowhere to turn.We had a 346.00 a month payment when we first got our home and after household got done with us our monthly payment was a 1,000.We've had to go and file for bankruptcy now and my husband is upset thinking he is a loser.

Your post sounds SOO familiar. The rates we were quoted were less then what they turned out to be. They also told us if we paid on time for a year that our rates would go down--NOT!. I finally saw the application they worked on by contacting my state's Dept. of Banking. Household put in a car that we never owned, a job my husband no longer had, and claimed they knew nothing about the second mortgage. The loan amount was to be $36000 and curiously they came out with just a little over this amount in equity and so could approve the loan.

The loan we had was their famous $35000 equity line of credit, which is no such thing because the money is loaned all at one time, technically making it a second mortgage. This was one of the charges brought against them by states' Attorneys General. We were so upside down on the house nobody would even bother with us.

Now this settlement with Household--just got the letter. For our bankruptcy, loss of house and loss of sanity, we qualify for:
ta da! $271.00. This settlement was contrived between Household, politicians and lawyers to make it seem as though our lawmakers were really listening to us and were gonna get the big bad lender. What a joke. This company needs to be shut down, period.

Now we can't even avoid foreclosure because even though Household's loan was made unsecure by the Chapter 7, anyone wanting to do a short sale will have to deal with them. Who wants to do that? Nobody! Can't even get an FHA mortgage with a foreclosure on the credit record. So they in effect destroyed our lives.

Corporate crime pays!!!!

I have been reading some of the posts on here and I in shock at how everyone has the same story as I do! My husband and I built our dreamhouse in 1994, then sometime after that took at a "little" loan from Household, well, that loan never got down to anything and everything else started to pile up, we ended up taking out a second morgage with them and then was talked into putting both morgages into one "to save money" of course, big mistake!!! The company promised us one thing and turned around and gave us something else. I believe it was in 1999 when this happened, promising us 6% rate and including our property taxes in it, when we got the paperwork back the interest rate was 12.75%, taxes were not included and (surprise, surprise) never were the papers in which some proof of the agreement was made. Plus, when they came out to appraise the home, they appraised it at such a high amount I could not believe it! I even asked the appraiser if what he was doing was legal, he said "of course, it is. We do this all the time, otherwise you would never get your loan." Well, being stupid and believing I was saving our home, we listened to them. Also, thinking we could not fight it, we just started to pay it. A year later, we had to file for bankruptcy and a year after that we had to let the house go into foreclosure. I am heartbroken still, my husband was suicidal for a while and our marriage suffered because of this. Of course, it has been almost 3 years now and they have yet to foreclose, (we just keep getting notices and phone calls on how to work this out) Our credit will never be re-established and we will never be able to own a home again!
What can be done with them? How can this be stopped before anyone else has to suffer???

I honestly don't think that anything can "stop" them - the trend is for things to get WORSE not better, with the full support of the legislators.

I just sent another e-mail to ACORN, see http://www.creditsuit.org/blog/archives/000125.html

These types of law suits are difficult to win, and almost impossible to win by individuals who are not lawyers. And few lawyers want to take on HUGE corporations like Household.

So I recommend suing for FCRA violations whenever possible.

http://household-credit-complaints.us/