Capital Subversion: CitiFinancial failed to intimidate    
 CitiFinancial failed to intimidate1 comment
18 Nov 2005 @ 23:18, by Chris Hagglund

[Crossposted from , my other blog ]

I Kicked CitiFinancial's ass. They gave me a loan (before I went bankrupt) and they secured it with a bunch of random household crap. A Citizen 27" TV, a VCR, a Sanyo 3disc 2spkr Stereo and a Pentium III Computer w/printer. That is the exact level of detail, definitely no serial numbers and I was totally guessing on the specs of the TV and the Stereo. It turns out that I actually have a 21" Electrohome TV and a 5disc Panasonic stereo. Oopsee, but that's ok as you'll find out. So after going bankrupt these guys start talking to me (after finally getting the bankruptcy memo) about how we can settle the security on the loan. They wanted the $900 estimated replacement value of the stuff (I'm not really sure where the values came from, I think it was both me and my loan officer guy pulling numbers out of our asses), after giving me the spiel on how they don't hardly ever settle for less than half the loan amount, and why did I just go bankrupt instead of trying to continue to pay them, and how I've wrecked my credit rating. And I don't care one whit of course about my credit rating, or what they usually do, and I'm certainly not going to talk about $900 hahaha. I made my first counter offer over the telephone. I started at $40. Hahahaha. But it was more funny because then they said $500. They wanted me to come in to meet with them and talk about settling, so I went in, and I spoke with the branch manager C and she and I discussed the matter. I let her know in the end that I was only prepared to settle for a maximum of $110, and if that was insufficient then they could have the stuff. She said they'd have to get back to me and that she didn't think they'd accept the offer of $110. They started calling me a few days later to get on with it, the woman who called apparently not knowing about my offer of $110. The first time she called I think she said $500, but I told her $110 (or take the stuff). The second time she called and that time she said $250, and I again told her $110 (or take the stuff). She said that she thought they would want to take the stuff, and that she would go to get the details of the stuff and asked me to please hold. After a few minutes she came back and said they'd be accept my offer of $110. Bwuwhuaahahah. It was a possibly that it might have cost me up to $150 to assemble all the junk I would have needed to satisfy them. But the junk was so poorly described that just about anything could have passed. I was gonna get the old p3 computer from work (gutted) with a second hand cartidgeless $5 bubblejet printer. Old vcrs are supercheap too. The TV and the Stereo are funnier. Not sure if they'd care much about the difference in the stereo or if I could have gone out and found some junk that more closely matched the description. For the TV, what the hell does 27" mean? There are ways of measuring things which can yield whatever number you are looking for ;) . I could also have said that the stuff all went to Jessica when we split up, but I didn't think of that, and I didn't want to play games. This was a few days ago, and now that I've actually paid them the $110 and got a receipt stating that it is done with, I feel better. I'll stand by my $110, even though it means the combined total that I gave them of $938 (3x 276 monthly payment plus the $110) is about 7% of the roughly $13200 they would have gotten out of their $7550 loan to me (3 years at %30.99).


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1 comment

18 Nov 2005 @ 23:39 by bushman : Hmm
How much did you get loaned? I mean I don't have a problem with your aproch to paying a debt, if you paid back at least the what you barrowed, thats ok, but if you didnt pay back what you barrowed, and filed bankrupcy, then I would call you a thief. I personaly dont think people should be responcable for the outragious intrest charges compounded with late charges, thats where bankrupcy is ok, but not to get away with barrowing money and then not paying it back, thats just wrong, and oppertunistic.  


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6 Nov 2005 @ 21:02: Upgrades to FunMoney system
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23 Oct 2005 @ 15:04: New forms of money



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