or being terminally ill with a lot of pain – that’s what I keep telling myself when I see red bursting across my field of vision as I try to clear something up that never should have happened to begin with, and it’s a time eater, and it’s stupid, and it could affect my mortgage and my credit if it isn’t cleared up.

Let’s talk credit for a moment before I jump into the ‘red rage’. Have you ever subscribed to a credit monitoring service? It’s amazing what you find out when you do. In the summer of 2006, if I hadn’t been subscribed, I might not have found this out when I did (even though it was ugly at the time), and it could have been more costly in time and stress for me.

With the same subscription, I recently found out that a woman I’ve never heard of – name doesn’t even resemble mine – has been living at my old digs since I moved in there – and the bitch still lives there. Granted, I thought there were ghostly apparitions and strange happenings around the house but little did I know someone else actually moved in when I did…I thought it was inhabited long before I got there. This same woman has managed to have me show up as licensing a car in Conrad Montana (never even been there) and having something to do with some commercial property (naw…I don’t own anything there). There are two women’s names associated with mine – that are not mine – I have never had an alias, I don’t even masquerade or try to act like I’m not Bitch, I am. There are two social security numbers associated with me – one is identical to my # except for one digit.

I started out trying to clear my credit report of stating that I had 15 open accounts – 10 of these are old and have been closed. Now I’m trying to get the reporting agencies to remove names associated with me. It’s not a case of stolen identity. I have no idea what it’s a case of…possibly some irresponsible freak, that was high bored on a cold night in Credit Reporting Land, just accidentally hit a wrong button and because of it, those two names became associated with me. Check your credit out, you might be surprised.

Back to RED RAGE. My mortgage is with CountryWide Home Loans. They have carried my contract since a refi back in 2004. Back in October of 07, I got this hare brained idea that if I made two payments a month – instead of one – that I might reduce my principal balance faster. I contacted the representative that had set up the mortgage for me. Sure, no problem. I made an electronic payment out of my checking two weeks before the payment was due and then for some reason I decided to go online and look at my account. Woops! The payment went straight to principal. I called and spoke with someone at the company. They informed me that I would have to set up my account differently to be able to do that.

Ok, how do I rectify this? Make the additional payment with a note, explaining that both partial payments are supposed to go as the monthly payment.
Done deal…all before the due date. I wrote a check for the remainder of the payment and sent it, along with a note explaining what I wanted done, and promptly forgot about the whole mess. Why not forget about it, it should have been taken care of.

A month later I start getting those sappy phone calls that you are sure are agents trying to get you to open another account or extend your credit further. They go something like this, “This is a call from CountryWide Home Loans. It is not a solicitation, please call blah, blah, blah,” giving only the # to call and of course, it’s automated. I didn’t call.

About three weeks later, I received another one, with a real human on the other end that can barely fumble through my name and her English sucks. She thanked me for making my payment. I couldn’t figure out what the hell the call was all about, and she didn’t indicate anything other than ‘thank you,’ and got off the phone.

I should have put something together then. But it didn’t register. A couple of more automated phone calls which I chose to ignore due ultra spamming, telemarketing horse crap. Then I got a real person again, the English factor was the same…”me no speak Englas…”

Let me veer into the English rant. I got my contract in English and when I do business with a company that services the US and possibly other areas of the world, I would like to have someone that speaks and understands English contact me. Why is that so damn much to ask?

This is how that conversation went, “Ma’am I am calling you because your payment is past due and you owe a late fee…”

I jump started the anguish by telling her I had never been late with a payment since the day I had a contract with them and I always prepaid on my account. Hell YES, that’s the truth!

She backed up a bit and started telling me that if I sent in a $67.?? late fee by such and such a date, it wouldn’t go on my credit report, and I kept pushing with the fact that I was not late on my payment, and she informed me that when I sent in my ‘statement,’ it was late. I corrected her, telling her that THEY sent me statements, I sent in payments. Don’t worry, I corrected her two more times during our conversation about the statement issue…they send them, I get them. Kee-rist!

The long and short of it was that I had to speak to someone in an account section that wouldn’t be there until morning.

I called the very next morning – around 10 days ago – and spent over 30 minutes on the phone as I was transferred – after telling one person my life’s payment history and pertinent info – to someone else. After the someone else got my info, I was put on hold while they made account changes and it was all settled, right? Who the hell knows?

Two days ago I got another call, from someone telling me my account was in arrears. I had the same argument with them. They gave up and hung up.

Today I got a NOTICE OF DEFAULT AND ACCELERATION, threatening me if I don’t pay up extra bucks to catch up my overdue account. I called, had to go through the automated voice crap, “Do you have your account number?” – “I didn’t hear you, would you like to access your account using your account number?” And on and on and on for over five minutes of keying in this and keying in that, and then the Automated Fairy told me it was sorry but my call had been disconnected.

I tried again. This time when the Automated Fairy queried me, I said, “I hope this call is being monitored, FUCK YOU!” Obviously it wasn’t, I made through all the hoops and quizzes, only to be informed by the Automated Fairy that their business hours were 7 AM to 5 PM, it was a few minutes after five. The first phone call was over five minutes, the second one was over four minutes. I should send them a bill for wasting my time.

I’ll be calling in the morning, running through another wasted five minutes of time trying to get to a real person, and then probably be caller #97 with a hold time of three days.