Hot Potato!

How perfectly this image (Thanks Harper-Collins) portrays Bank of America trying to wiggle out of dealing with improper foreclosures by playing Hot Potato with desperate clients!

I was just reminiscing on one of my first phone calls to Bank of America back in June after my mother-in-law's home was foreclosed on, auctioned on the courthouse steps in Coquille (nobody was interested) and the property was dumped back into the hands of the investor, Fannie Mae.
It resulted in my first game of Bank of America  Hot Potato!

I spoke to Terrance. (I'm on a first name basis with so many BofA employees!!!) Terrance told me that if Margaret wanted her home back, she'd have to pay back the entire $58K loan along with fees & interest.  Then he told me I needed to talk to "The lawyers at ReConTrust." I remembered that name...it was a logo on some of two foot fall stack of stuff I brought back home with me after visiting Margaret and realizing her home had been foreclosed on. That didn't make a lot of sense to me, calling ReConTrust, since they had already accomplished the task they were contracted to do. When I told him this Terrance thought perhaps he should get an upper level manager on the line to give him some advice.
I don't know if Terrance ever got ahold of a higher-up, but he put me on hold for 20 minutes while I became aquainted with BofA's on-hold music. When he returned, he reiterated that I needed to speak to the lawyers. He gave me their number. So I called.
I realized pretty quickly that I'd been passed on from one peon call center employee to another.
I didn't have to say it. The ReCon Trust employee said to me almost right off the bat, "I bet Bank of America told you that you'd be speaking to a lawyer, right? We're not lawyers. I don't know why they say that, but that's what they're telling people." Then he went on. "And I bet they told you that you needed to speak to us about buying the house back. But that's not true either." And he gave me the name of another foreclosure technician at Bank of America and told me to call them back.
And so the runaround began.
That day I spoke with Linda, who passed me to Rachel in home retention.
Rachel passed me on to Alan in REO.
Alan told me to call Fannie Mae.
And that's where the game of Hot Potato ended on that day, because Fannie Mae told me they wouldn't even begin to speak to me until after I filled out the proper consent forms, emailed them and waited at least 48 hours.