I have been purposely, superstitiously, ridiculously refusing to blog since I got some excellent news on June 30. I have been terrified that if I wrote about it here, it would be somehow cursed and wouldn’t happen. Now it has happened- it is done- and I feel like I can finally come up for air.
On June 21st, we called in our request for the dreaded final inspection. After the allotted five business days, I still had not been contacted by the inspector, so I followed the written procedure for such an occurrence, which is to call the inspection company directly and write horrible run-on sentences about it. They told me that my second inspection had been cancelled due to “duplicate request.” They said it exactly like that – as in, “No, we don’t have any record of who did the cancelling or why other than that it was duplicate request.” It sounded like “duplicate request” was some kind of virus that must be eradicated from their system. Of course, the only way to fix this problem was to have Chase re-initiate the process and go through all the mandatory waiting stuff again. I reluctantly called Chase and explained the problem. Of course, they did not understand what I was telling them.
“Ma’am, the request for an inspection is still active in our system. You don’t need to request it again.”
“I just talked to the inspection company. They have cancelled it.”
“That’s not how it works, ma’am. We have to cancel it.”
“Yes, but they did. They said you had to re-initiate the request.”
“Ma’am, the request for an inspection is still active in our system. There is no reason to start a new one. You already had one inspection, you know.”
“Yes, yes I do know. Thank you so much. May I please speak to your supervisor?”
I went through the supervisor and her manager before I finally got someone who was not intent on locking me into the ninth circle of loss draft hell. This wonderful, helpful, angel of a woman put me on hold and called the inspection company. It turned out that they DID cancel my inspection and Chase DID need to start the process with all the waiting periods again. It turned out that I am
not actually a masochistic moron and I do comprehend the English fairly well. I asked her if there was any way she could expedite the process, and she said she couldn’t but then looked into my file. She noted that my 50% inspection report had come back 85% complete, and decided that she could request that Chase waive the final inspection and just send me the rest of my money right away. Wonder of Wonders, really – and she did just that. She called me back that evening to tell me that the request had been approved and they would be sending my checks via overnight mail after July 6.
Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. The next day I got a voice mail informing me that my “request for deviation” had been declined, and I needed to request a 90% inspection to get my final draw. When I called back, I spoke to person after person trying to find out what had changed. After a solid 40 minutes on the phone, someone finally figured out that there was an error in their system or something and everything was fine. I was actually going to get my money without the final inspection.
The next day I got a voice mail informing me that someone had erroneously called me to tell me that my deviation had been declined when it had, in fact, been approved. Hey, Right Hand! It’s me, Lefty! Perhaps this process has made me a little edgy.
On July 7, I received the second third of our money as promised. On July13th, I had not heard anything about the final check and decided to call and make sure we were all still moving along. They confirmed that the check had been processed on July 10th and would be sent via overnight mail…in 2-3 business days. On July 14th, I missed the FedEx guy. Ironically, although this is the smallest of the three checks, this one will require a signature. I think the FedEx guy is secretly a Chase call center employee, though, because he checked every single box on the “we missed you” form and then wrote that the next delivery attempt would be the day prior to the day he was there. Yesterday, I obsessively watched the tracking online and waited in the house all day for the delivery. At 2:45 p.m., the Chase Loss Draft Nightmare of 2009 was officially over.
Now, if they could just finish with the house…more on that later.
