Banks vs. Consumers

The press has been hard on banks as they pre-emptively raise credit card rates in the face of coming legislation that will regulate the practice. And though they're under pressure to do payment workouts to mitigate foreclosures they rarely do. Sometimes it's too easy to write this off as other people's problems but yesterday I had an unusual conversation with my mortgage servicer Wells Fargo.

I received a tax bill from the town for about $4,000 so I contacted my closing attorney who said that the mortgage company had known about this at closing and had collected up front monies for it. He explained that it was the difference between the taxes for the unimproved property and the increase that would be demanded after the certificate of occupancy was issued. I explained this to the CSR at Wells Fargo and her response was, "Nope this must be paid out of your funds, not the escrow account."

So, again, back to my attorney who contacted the town and received what had been paid and what was due. After comparing that to the Escrow Account Disclosure I was given chapter and verse the exact accounting and exactly how to justify my claim that this should be paid out of escrow. The WF response was that It would leave the escrow short when they made the first payment in the new year. I suggested that they pay the $4K, do a new escrow analysis, and bill me for the shortage. They agreed.

So, I was left with these facts.

• The only reason there was any kind of shortage was because the bank's estimate at closing was wrong.
  
• Escrow was short only by half the amount that was due so they could have easily volunteered to pay half out of escrow.
  
• Throughout the conversation their only response was flat refusal and, if I had not had the experience of dealing with other mortgages, they would not have settled the matter through this standard procedure.

The ultimate question is, Why antagonize the customer for such a trivial amount of money? If they had held onto my money until the next escrow cycle it could have earned them what, $40?

IT Career Choices

I was talking to a friend yesterday who is a web administrator. He told me that the job has always been demanding but now, due to the recession, things had really gotten crazy. Apparently hiring more U.S. based support is strictly prohibited and there's a history of hiring junior off shore help that stay only for a short period before they gain enough experience to move on. So, why draw down your own resources to train someone who's just going to walk in 6 months?

Having spent time as a LAN administrator, and later, a Database administrator in the 90's this is a familiar refrain. Even in good economic times there's still a need to do maintenance during off hours and, of course, you have to be there during the work day to fix it when it breaks.

In IT today there are more administration jobs available just because they're harder to off shore. Sys Admins are the people that you turn to in times of crisis and many companies want to reach out and touch them.

But beware, as a network engineer, or desktop support tech, or any other job where you take responsibility for a critical moving, changing piece of the business you will not get to go home at 5 and your weekends are not your own.

If you want to be an IT professional with more regular hours consider systems analysis, data modeling, or even application development.