@yajjo: I do beleive that deserves an "OH SNAP".

Goo goo gah bah gah gah boo goo. Gee hee tee me poo poo.

Buh bye.

@snowburnt: I doubt that she could have even dropped her name to the rank and file phone tree to get help. Unless she had an executive's name or direct phone number, the rank and file phone people probably don't give a crap, don't know who she is, or think that she is some low level assistant to the congresswoman's office...

Wait, she's on the House Financial Services Committee and the Chair of the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, and she just now figured out that it's a royal PITA to renegotiate mortgage payments with BoA?

If she wanted to get something done for just one person she would have started dropping names (hers) and the problem would have been rectified. I'm guessing she may have done this for several people already. She tried to do it the normal way and got stonewalled to prove a point and help more people all at once.

That's my real way of looking at it.

Your statements that she let this happen are EXACTLY the reason why she will rain fire on BOA. If she did let it happen, she will react probably a little too harshly to correct the mess especially since she's seen evidence of the problem.

If you're going to look at the past don't look at what they did, look at how they do it.

@Jim Topoleski: Glass Steagall was repealed under Clinton and is the biggest reason for the mess we're in. it allowed banks to foist their mortgages on unknowing investors, and that's what allowed the reckless spending. if banks didnt have such an easy time getting rid of their loans, they'd have exercised some restraint

"And if you want to go blaming someone blame the republicans first. It was their deregulation that allowed Mae and Mack to give loans out willy nilly in the first place."

I direct you to this NY Times article dated Sept. 30, 1999. Specifically paragraph three where the article states, "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people..."

Paragraph four delivers this delicious nugget, "banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers".

And finally paragraph seven predicts, "the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue".

Reading the article you will find that the markets in concert with the Clinton administration helped create our current situation.

How do these FACTS figure into your 'willy nilly' unsupported ACCUSATION as to which political party should be blamed first?

@FuryOfFirestorm: BoA doesnt care about bad press anymore, neither do they care about congress or the people they represent.

BoA has a goal and it's clearly in their sights...who else did you expect that Buy-N-Large Ultra-Store Society of the future.

/finally saw Wall-E last night.

BWAHAHAHAHA!! Fuckin' right I just take there word for it, eh? Absolutely ridiculous. The first sign of when you should start shopping around for other businesses is when they start lauding themselves.

Her political affiliation or views are irrelevant to the article. BOA is offering its customers absolutely no way to discuss mortgages. Not that BOA is obligated to renegotiate or anything, but don't you think they should at least offer customers a way to DISCUSS it? With a HUMAN? Or is this a service that should only be afforded Republicans?

OK, yeah, whatever. That's not the point of this article. It doesn't matter if it was Waters or McCain, the point is that a prominent politician received this treatment, which is probably more embarrassing to BOA than having it happen to a million of us regular working stiffs. I wish I matterd as much as a congressperson, but fact is, from a publicity standpoint, I don't.

I'm getting so tired of people taking every opportunity to crow about how lousy the OTHER party or it's members are, even inserting it where it's not relevant, like here.

I know, I know, I should know what I'm getting when I click to read the comments on a story about a politician.

I'm glad she got this treatment, though, as having it happen to one prominent politician does a better job of embarrassing the company (and they ought to be embarrassed) than a million of regular working stiffs.

Your "Screw 'Em ALL!!" attitude towards politicians is understandable, but completely unhelpful. Like it or not, if things are going to improve, the politicians are going to have to play a part. Dr. King may have moved a nation, but it took Johnson (and others) to enact legislative change (however grudgingly).

It may not be more efficient, but with a company you generally have some other option if you hit a brick wall. You can take your business elsewhere or appeal to government regulators. If you deal straight with the government and they don't do what you need, you have limited options.

This is not to suggest that anarcho-capitalism is the answer-- only that government seems to work best as a regulator instead of the sole provider of all goods and services. The Soviet experience would seem to support this conclusion.

It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person - Maxine Waters, a complete moron and leftwing extremist (what the anarchists call a "useful idiot") who threatened to nationalize the oil industry.

I'd have hung up on her too. Kudos to BofA for treating her like a regular customer instead of giving her special treatment.

California, you could do so much better than Crazy Maxine.

And if you want to go blaming someone blame the republicans first. It was their deregulation that allowed Mae and Mack to give loans out willy nilly in the first place. Both sides are as much to blame as anyone for it continuing to go on, but the republicans created the laws that deregulated the industry.

Who needs a member of congress to refinance a mortgage if you are current on the mortgage?

Do these people need instructions to blow their nose too?

Do you WANT your identity to be stolen?

Besides banks aren't allowed to force you onto computers anyway. That's why they keep trying to get you to approve e-billing or e-statements if you don't sign up.

Oh, and I CANNOT wait to watch KEN LEWIS get kicked out on his sorry ass as soon as possible.

Sad, Greedy, Foolish Moron that he is.

Logic fail.

your joking right?

Thank you that was a good one. Over four years ago they starting giving out loans with no proof of income, at no time should this have been allowed. Thanks though you made me laugh.

So these constituents' mortgages might be eating through their savings at an alarming pace due to rate adjustments or under/unemployment. Or they might have just realized that they are not going to be able to refi out of a massive adjustment that's still a couple of months away.

Personally, I think you had to be pretty gullible to get into an ARM, but I certainly have more sympathy for people who are current and trying to avoid disaster than people who never really expected to have to pay at all.

Bank of America vs. Maxine Waters. Hmm, can they both lose?

The thing about "they don't check to see if you have a computer" is lame victim-seeking. Are there people who don't have at least a local library with terminals, albeit maybe with a wait? Yes, but vanishingly few.

I've always wanted lawmakers to hear what I've occasionally gone through to get a customer service issue resolved, but I knew none of them would listen to a 1 or 2 hour recording even if I did record it. This story is even better! I bet she would get the same ghastly treatment if she called Sprint. What some large companies call "customer service" amounts to a brush-off, and a bad faith breach of the service they are legally bound to provide, IMHO.

I'm hoping this experience will motivate Ms. Waters to actually do something with the power of her office that will help all consumers, not just the two constituents she was trying to help - it would be a lot more efficient use of her time.

@PunditGuy: Um... how so?

When Phil Gramm and John McCain had the laws loosened in 1999 to allow unethical lending practices, that's when. (Although I doubt that's what VRWC was "thinking" about, if you can call it thinking.)

And I am SICK TO DEATH of people complaining about "playing the race card." Just because you are sick of hearing about racism doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Grow up.

Quite frankly, Maxine Waters has a lot of currency with me because she was one of the few people who had the courage to try to stop GWB from stealing the presidency in 2001. If just one senator had had the courage and good sense to do what was right, we would have been spared the 8-year national nightmare named George W. Bush. There probably wouldn't BE a banking crisis, at least not one of this depth.

@FuryOfFirestorm: Roll?

Don't you mean spin, as in pretending this was an "isolated incident"?

It's only an isolated incident insofar as Waters only experienced it once, not a thousand times. But what do you call it when it happens to a thousand people once each?

@ShadowWylde: Somehow, I think that being a black woman, she has been on the receiving end of some shitty treatment in her life. She knows.

The only thing that would make me happier is if BofA admitted they were giving her the runaround after they saw her name come up on the Caller ID.

Did she think she could refinance someone else's loan over the phone? Sure, that makes sense.

"To add to the fun, Maxine, who never met a race card she hasn't dealt, has earned yet another dubious honor - being named by the blog "Beyond DeLay" as one of the 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress. She's the only one on the list from the Metro LA area and only one of two Democrats on the list (the other is William Jefferson of Louisiana - need we say more?).

Among Maxine's alleged corrupt activities include her daughter shaking down local pols for big dough to appear on Maxine's slate mailers, her husband working as a part-time consultant for a government bond firm seeking introductions to decisionmakers, and a lucrative deal for Waters' husband and son getting a county golf course concession with support from Supervisor Yvonne Burke whom Waters had campaigned for in a close election."

Bank of America, I salute you!

Or would you like to cut the foreplay and just admit you don't know anything?

Um... how so?

@cmdrsass: Also Chris Dodd, and Charlie Rangel.

@numberoneasa: Yes. Like successfully preventing oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at the very time they were expanding their efforts to give loans to people who could not afford them.

We are trying to fix something that isn't broke (sic). We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae.

@VRWC: Did you not read the committees she's on. I would hardly call her a "know-nothing unskilled politician."

Clearly she wouldn't have; otherwise she would not have bothered making the phone calls in the first place. She made the phone calls because she knew they were having issues and being given the run around. I imagine she expected her clout would help her deal with her constituents' problem more expediently. If it had, though, I don't think she would have been any less equipped to understand or address the complaint.

This sure is great publicity for Congresswoman Waters.

Who give's a rat's a** if some know-nothing unskilled politician was put on hold? The whole financial meltdown was caused by the politicians meddling in the first place -- why would anyone want to let them meddle further?

The politicians are supposed to work for US, remember? They're not "royalty", despite what they may think of themselves, and they should have to wait LONGER than actual customers using their OWN money.

In fact, I'd go so far as to support a phone system that automatically identifies politicians calling from their taxpayer-funded offices and puts them at the END of the hold queue. The politicos have f**ked the economy up enough yet the majority of financially-illiterate morons in the country seem to not understand that fact.

Bank of America is just doing their part to fight "the Man."

otherwise, how else can the complaints be addressed? if she had been treated deferentially and not known any different, then she may have considered any constituent complaints as being anomalies.

i hope some good comes from this with regard to all the banks and how they serve their various accounts.

Please explain to me why dealing with BOA is better or more efficient than dealing with a govt. agency?

I am Maxine Waters! Don't you know who I am?!

Way to go, Bank of America, for upholding the American Dream and giving everyone equally shitty service.

Heads are going to ROLL at Bank of America!