Pain and its Place

American road racing cyclist and seven times winner of the Tour de France Lance Armstrong once said, “Pain is temporary, it may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or even a year but eventually it will subside and something will take its place.  If I quit, however, it lasts forever” and despite a substantial helping of painfully damaging cyber bullying this week, giving up, although tempting, has never been an option.

In the last twenty four hours I have,

·        Sent three hundred and forty six emails explaining my hotmail account has not only been hacked but had my contact list hijacked as well.

·        Contacted Hotmail Abuse to report the distress I have endured at the hands of a cyber bully and supplied my tormentor’s message source code.

·        Spoken to the Headmaster at my children’s school to warn him of the potential for fallout from the offensive spam reaching both him and my children.

In addition I have,

·        Co-ordinated and ordered beverages to stock a bar for 150 people at the Friends Summer ball.

·        Compiled, commissioned and printed, 150 tickets, along with menus, bar lists and table names.

·        Encouraged, cajoled and begged inordinate numbers of parents, staff and hangers on to assist in the transforming of a speech day marquee into and tasteful venue for a summer ball.

·        Observed both  my older daughters and my mother try on every ball gown available on our high streets, dress agency rails and within the wardrobes of generous friends.

·        Altered and reworked a beautiful ball gown my thirteen year old daughter was given into something she is now happy with.

·        At no extra cost, completely redesigned and reworked a ball gown for myself which I originally paid the princely sum of £2.00 for in a sale.

I have also,

·        Written yet more letters to Lloyds Banking Group's debt collection agency explaining it is against regulatory guidelines to threaten court action and the instruction of doorstep collectors when a case is the subject of a Financial Ombudsman Service complaint.

·        Written to the previous Community President and the apartment complex administrators to point out sending abusive spam, which includes their own correspondence, to everyone on a debtors contact list is inappropriate behaviour for someone elected to hold this position

·        Scoured the Internet and picked the brains of anyone would listen for information on what constitutes cyber crime.

On top of this I have ,

·        Packed four suit cases for a ten day break which will start immediately after I've cleared the marque of all things associated with our Friends event

·        Cleaned the house and restocked the fridge for my seventeen year son who wishes to be left behind

·        Assembled mattresses and prepared bedding and for nine extra overnight guests who wish to crash at my house after the summer ball.

Although frenetic activity at this level has left me little time to read or write anything on the subject of Libor rate manipulation, Farepak victims or HBOS skulduggery, it has meant,

·        The arrangements are now finalised for the best attended fund raising summer ball the school has enjoyed in years.

·        All the women folk in my family will be resplendent in their affordable ball gowns regardless of the individuals respective personal budgets.

·        My husband, my youngest two children and I will be able to take up my father in laws generous “all expenses paid” offer of a holiday in his Spanish apartment 24 hours after the ball

And,

·        According to Hotmail, cyber bullying may actually have a consequence for those who choose to practise it.

While it is evident my One Angry Man will never appreciate I am without concern at being publically exposed as financially bereft, it is clear he is also unable to comprehend both I, and Hotmail Customer Services, wish to avoid judgemental and inappropriate comments hurting my children. However, my short lived but none the less excruciating discomfort has brought the very welcome support of friends, family and an ever increasing number of sympathetic Life After Debt readers while their encouragement has allowed me to hope that, one day, I will finally celebrate a financial future free from both the wrath of cyber bullies and the avarice of Lloyds and HBOS.

In the words of Lance Armstrong, “When you think about it, what other choice is there but hope? We have two options, medically and emotionally: give up, or Fight Like Hell”.

I know which road I plan to take.

One Angry Man

Maya Angelou once said, I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel and this week, despite the obligations of my hitherto clandestine occupation as debt fighter extraordinaire, I am very much hoping this observation proves to be true.

When my world fell apart as a consequence of our financial demise in 2008, it took me two years before I could communicate coherently with anyone. For this reason I remained largely out of sight from all but my immediate family and a few very close friends. All my hair fell out, I lost several stone in wait and I spent every moment of every day consumed by the horror and shame of being in debt. Each and every hour that I wasn’t required to carry out my duties of mother and housewife, I spent explaining our dire circumstances over and over again to our creditors. At the time I was incapable of being anything but consumed by our predicament.

Time has been a great healer and although we are far from out of the woods, and entirely because of the endless patience and kindness of many, many people, I have gradually emerged from a tunnel of overwhelming stress into a life which is different but far from unpleasant. The dark days of repeated panic attacks at the arrival of the postman are a memory I rarely linger on and I am proud to have pieced together a family life which provides both love and security for my children despite the back drop of a million pounds of unrecoverable debt.

Every creditor has been informed of our position and with the exception of HBOS and Lloyds all debts have been written off or are in the process of being written off. Even our beautiful apartment in Spain is due to be forcibly sold when Bankia get round to completing the sale at which point, according to both my solicitor and the bank who holds the mortgage, our community fee arrears of 12,000 Euros are to be settled in full by the bank.

While on occasion the lack of assets and the knowledge that our income remains very small saddens me, any malaise seldom persists because our children are happy and thriving in a school where I continue to work with grateful diligence as Chairman of the Friends. Whilst the head and his wife have been keen to remind me I have created an atmosphere of warmth and enthusiasm at both school events and amongst the ever increasing number of volunteering committee members, I am rewarded in the knowledge I have made a contribution, albeit not a financial one, towards to my children's education.

Despite the ongoing frustrations of my Financial Ombudsman’s Service complaint with regard to my HBOS case, my role as chairman has enabled me to move my daily focus away from obsessing about debt and instead channelled my energies into making myself useful and in so doing I have re-acquired “a life”. My email contact list bears testament to this with its one hundred and seventy three contacts and anything up to thirty incoming emails a day. Only two short years ago I had no computer and no email account,  whereas today I communicate with everyone from my children’s friend’s parents, Friends committee members, Governors, teachers, service providers for our events, through to my five children and six grand children to name but a few.

However today, in spite of my relentless determintaion to secure a safe and happy family life for my children, the very foundations of my new found stability have been rocked. Following the discovery that my email account had been hacked and was sending a link containing a virus out to all those on my contact list, I emailed everyone to warn them not to open it. Included in my alert was the wealthy volunteer chairman of the community of our apartment. Unwillingly to accept that Spanish law dictates the arrears on our community fees will be paid in full when the bank takes possession, he has chosen to send an abusive and threatening email outling his disgust at our non payment of the community fees not only to me, but also to everyone on my contact list.

It is certainly true the kindest words in all the world are the unkind words not said” but because of the unkind words born out of this malicious man’s impatience for money, I am now faced with the fact that not only has everyone I know been served a large helping of our shamefully dirty washing, but my children, along with many of their friends, their friends parents and their teachers have too.

It is four years since I discovered the extent to which my husband had borrowed in an effort to save his property business and today my head once again hangs in shame while my heart bleeds for what my children may well face on Monday morning. I can only hope the recipients of this vicious hate mail might pause to remember how I have, during my time as chairman endeavoured to make them feel, before passing judgement on our position. Either way I can only assume my family and I will need a strong stomach over the coming months as, now he has access to my contact list, I cannot imagine this will be the only time this angry man will be making use of it.

The thought of this makes me feel physically sick.

Rainy Days and Lost Luggage

Self help writer Maya Angelou says, “You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle rainy days, lost luggage and tangled Christmas lights” so I am pleased to disclose rainy days are a weather condition to which thirty four years of continuous parenting has not only supplied a ring side seat for many hours of wet suited, watery fun but they have also been the backdrop for numerous convivial gatherings in front of a roaring fire while inclement weather fills reservoirs in a single down pour.  Lost luggage has also been an integral part of my life and although I have not endured its inconvenience whilst in transit, five children, six grandchildren and a husband with short-term memory loss has meant I am never more than a whisper away from a panic filled enquiry as to the whereabouts of something vital. I find an un-flustered approach to the retracing of steps seldom disappoints but on the rare occasions it fails a plentiful supply of spares usually saves the day.

However, the task of tackling tangled Christmas lights could easily be a euphemism for my increasingly complicated battle with HBOS via the Financial Ombudsman’s Service. Not unlike its namesake, an inordinate amount of time is required along with a steely determination and an excellent pair of glasses with which to spot the intricacies of the task at hand. With this in mind I recently allocated my first child free day since the Easter holidays for the preparation of a response to the Financial Ombudsman Services latest letter in which they claim my HBOS complaint is outside their jurisdiction on the grounds of timescale.

 I have asked my adjudicator to consider the following points;

·        HBOS have neglected to provide a full and final response to any of my letters of complaint and for this reason should not be left to decide when my six month window of opportunity to complain commences.

·        When jurisdiction issues were raised by HBOS at outset (March 2011) I was invited to respond to their argument. On 27 April 2011 I replied with my defence (which the FOS acknowledged on 5 May) and I was then invited by the FOS on 15 May to proceed with the completion and return of their complaint form.

·        In the FOS’s letter of 15 March 2012 upholding HBOS’s jurisdiction objections, no mention is made of my correspondence of 27 April 2011or my subsequent letter of 16 June 2011 in which I thank the FOS for supporting my jurisdiction appeal.

·        When the jurisdiction issue was raised once again by the FOS on 21 July 2011, I wrote on 25 July 2011 to explain I believed it had already been dealt with in my letter of 17 April 2011. No further mention was made of jurisdiction issues until 14 December 2011despite three further FOS letters to me in the meantime.

·        Stating I was unaware of the six month deadline to complain is simply not true. I was only unaware that HBOS had already started the six month clock ticking because of the ambiguous nature of their letters.

And,

·        Withdrawing eligibility to an extension of time for my future responses to the FOS gives HBOS a huge and unfair advantage over me as lone complainant.

Safe in the knowledge my five page letter will be rocking several boats before the week is out, I am left to ponder the content of another HBOS response. My additional and separate FOS complaint sights HBOS’s over valuation of my home in May 2006 as pivotal to my family’s financial down fall and entirely responsible for the shortfall arising from the forced sale of my home in April 2009.  Having already waited two months for a reply to a letter HBOS claim they have never received, I have now discovered HBOS are to enjoy an additional two months in which to formulate their reply.

Sadly I have no reason to believe I will be hearing HBOS offer me anything like the words of Bank of America Chief Executive Officer, Brian T Moynihan who recently said,

“It's time to acknowledge that our Bank isn't working anymore—not just for the market, but for people, our real customers. We've paid $8.58 billion in relief to borrowers and $3.24 billion in fines. We face lawsuits and claims from citizens, companies, and state and local governments. There is even a petition with the Federal Reserve to break up our bank, adding yet more uncertainty to our position. Finally, we've found ourselves front-and-centre in the national foreclosure crisis, and deep in unpopular investments like coal, at a time when climate change is a growing societal concern.”

Instead, I am in no doubt that despite damning FSA reports, HBOS will be making no confessions nor will they have plans to shelter the individual from the economic down pour their actions have caused.  In contrast I suspect many of us will be losing much more than our luggage as a direct result of their “terrible corporate governance” and it will not only be me left untangling far in  excess of a few Christmas lights this year. It will be business as usual for HBOS as there is no incentive for them to behave otherwise and the Financial Ombudsman’s Service will remain characteristically ineffective in the wake of the ever increasing demand for justice through a complaints process that constantly creaks in protest to the unprecedented rise in the number of complaints.

Maya Angelou also said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story”... [and while]... “I can be changed by it I refuse to be reduced by it.” I am pleased to report that regardless of the rain, the lost luggage and the tangled Christmas lights, these remain my sentiments precisely!