I'm still here

Hello and Season's Greetings to all my creditor-friends! Just a quick note to say "I'm still here".

No significant change in my status as of yet. I continue to draw a small salary from helping my father's trading firm. Since my last post I've had one face-to-face job interview and a few requests for my resume', but no serious developments unfortunately. I think it's because of the time-of-year, so I'm hoping those headhunters who asked for my resume' recently will re-contact me after the Holidays. Still trying to get sales / marketing / telecoms consultancy projects, but that's also affected by the season and there are rarely projects this late in the year.

So I'm afraid it's one more month of token payments for my creditors. As promised, as soon as things improve (e.g. I get another job) I will revert to regular payments to the extent possible. I'm hoping for better times as early as possible in 2010!

Merry Christmas and God bless!

November 27, 2009 Token Payments

Hi everyone. I was able to make token payments for this month of November 2009, last Friday Nov.27.

Absent from this list for now is the payment for the vehicle loan with Universal LMS Finance & Leasing, since I was able to make a temporary alternate arrangement for that. But in its place I've started payments for the vehicle insurance (long, long overdue)

Below are the scanned images of the various payment / deposit slips.


Citibank Mastercard




Chinatrust



Universal LMS (Vehicle Insurance)




Binan Rural Bank




If you need the un-masked versions of these scans, please send me your correct business email address so I can email it to you.

More early Christmas gifts!

Just last week my relationship with Universal LMS Finance & Leasing was stress-tested. They understood my situation and my limitation of making only token payments for now, but they let me know they would rather exercise their legal right to ask me to surrender the vehicle.

Since my father uses the car quite a bit for business and personal use too, I let Universal LMS know that I would ask my father if he could "pay rent" for the use of the car. My aim was to find a way to retain the vehicle since it is giving us so many benefits already.

The first early Christmas gift was from Universal LMS because, without my asking, they made me an offer to re-strucuture the loan! The second gift was of course from my father who agreed to cover the new monthly payments by treating it as "rent" for using the car.

Thank you very much Universal LMS!

Again, this frees-up the token-payment amount I was paying previously to Universal LMS, which was P2,000 per month.

Amnesty Programs

Almost all the banks call their programs for debt restructuring "amnesty programs". So I looked up the word amnesty.

Dictionary.com defines the word amnesty as...

Noun:
1. a general pardon for offenses, esp. political offenses, against a government, often granted before any trial or conviction.
2. Law. an act of forgiveness for past offenses, esp. to a class of persons as a whole.
3. a forgetting or overlooking of any past offense.

Given this definition, I'd say banks shouldn't use the word amnesty in naming these programs. It isn't accurate :)

Citibank Restructuring

After many days and many, many different phone numbers I finally have a pretty clear idea about how to restructure my debt with Citibank.

Basically, per Citibank policies, I am not qualified for any more restructuring of my debt with them. The main reasons seem to be:

1. They only allow 2 restructurings
I was aware of only one re-structuring since entering Citibank's amnesty program, so I thought my request would be the second restructuring. But it turns out that Citibank counts your first entry into their amnesty program as the first restructuring. Since I had one restructuring so far, they therefore count my latest request as the third.

2. You have to be in their program with not more than 2 months arrears
I was just over 2 months in arrears, so they would not entertain a request for restructuring.

Well it was worth a try. It ended with me letting them know that I will stand by my commitments and they let me know that I am out of their amnesty program and another collection group will take over (still inside Citibank; they don't use external agencies daw).

Thank you BPI!

Talk about an early Christmas gift! Today we received in the mail a Statement of Account from BPI for my credit card account. My wife almost just filed it away without looking at it (we're so used to depressing news from these SOAs).

But when she looked at it more closely she saw that BPI had reversed all of the remaining balance, all of the penalty charges and all of the interest charges! It clearly says "remaining balance: P0.00". Woohoo!

Thank you so very, very much BPI! I do not know what your decision process was, but your generosity and big-heartedness could not have come at a better time. I really needed this. You guys are - Wonderful!

For all my other creditors, this frees-up the amount of the token payment that I was making to BPI (I was paying P1,000) at this time that I'm still unemployed. That isn't much so I'll probably give it whole to one of you.

Oh what a relief! Thank God and thank you BPI!

Commitments

At one time or another, I've told each of you what you can expect from me as far as how I will settle my debt. Though I probably used different words at the time, I've always meant to communicate the same set of commitments to each of you.

So I decided to post them here - my commitments to you, as clear and public as I can make it.

1. I will never renege on my obligation to any of my creditors;

2. Much as I would like to I cannot, at this time, commit exactly when I will finish paying the loan because of my on-off / employed-unemployed status since April 2009;

3. But I give my assurance to all my creditors that I continue to find new work constantly, because my "jobless status" MUST BE temporary. Otherise how will I ever fulfill commitment no.1!

4. Nevertheless, for as long as I have even a little income, I will make payments to each of my creditors. Lately however these have been only "token" payments because of my severe shortage of income. But these token payments are the tangible sign of my good faith, with regard to my first commitment above.

This is my current situation, and it is under the conditions above that I have been asking each of you to please extend your patience and allow me to make the payments at the pace that I can manage.

And for all the patience you have extended me so far, I am truly grateful.

October 23, 2009 Token Payments

Hello everyone! I was able to make token payments last Thursday, October 23, 2009.

Below are the scanned images of the various deposit slips. You can left-click them to view an enlarged version, or right-click them and select "save link as" to download them instead.

Universal LMS Finance & Leasing

BPI Credit Card

Binan Rural Bank

Chnatrust Banking

Citibank Mastercard

Made some token payments!

Welcome back! As mentioned in the last post, I made "token payments" to each of you creditors. The percentage of these payments vs. the regular monthly amount is about 10%.

Sorry but these are really token payments - what I can afford at this time, para lang masabi natin gumalaw yung account (just to be able to say that the account did move).

Following are the scans of these token payments. The greyed-out portions are either my name or signature or both. But I'll be sending the un-covered images to those of you who have actually given me email addresses!

Click on the pics for a larger view.


BPI Credit Card

Binan Rural Bank

Chinatrust

Citibank Mastercard

Universal LMS Finance & Leasing Corp.

God bless!

2-way communication

Remember I mentioned that this blog is to ensure 2-way communication between myself and my creditors? So how come I'm the only only talking here?

Well the standard mode of interaction between a collection department and their debtors is 1-way communication : they talk, you listen. They insist and demand, you get all anxious. You put down the phone, you try to do what they told you. You want to let them know that you're done, or that you had problems and... oops! how do i contact them back?!

So you get more anxious. Then they call again. Did you do it na? You did? Very good, keep that up. You didn't do it?! Oh, I have to penalize you unless you do...

And the cycle goes on. There is an active effort to limit communication to 1 direction only, because communication, being heard, is a form of power or at least an equalizer. Without any way for you to contact them, they have taken away your voice. They have taken your power, to ensure you are not on even ground with them.

But like I said, that's the old traditional way of doing it. More banks seem to relaize that the job of their collection groups is to collect, and that threatening and berating your debtors is actually not an effective way to get that done (not to mention all the ill-will it generates for the bank).

I guess it depends on your paradigm of the debtor. If you believe that your debtor is a criminal who will screw you the first chance he/she gets, then I guess you will naturally tend towards the old "I am powerful, you are powerless" model.

I'm sure a certain percentage of your debtors are actually like that. But if you believe that those who are criminals are fewer than the debtors who want to pay to clear their names, then you will approach it more as a problem to be solved along with the debtor, which involves dialogue.

Yes there's a risk - the guy who says all you want to hear but actually does nothing. Aba, when you find out his/her game, dapat lang ipa-sherrif nyo na yan!

But the change is happening quite slowly. So far the collection group that seems to have come the farthest has been Citibank's. When they call nowadays I can sense that they are instructed to help not to hurt. But I still don't have anyone's email from there, only phone numbers. And it's still impossible for me to ge the last name of anyone who works there.

Working On Partial Payments

I wanted all of my creditors to know that I'm going to make partial payments on each of my loans soon.

This came about from my discussion with the UMC collector who calls me regularly. She suggested I make a partial payment "para lang gumalaw ang account". I thought about that and I decided that I want to do that!

But to be fair, if I do it for one I should do it for all. Kaya ayun - I'll borrow a little money from somewhere to make those partial payments to my creditors. It won't be large okay?! but I hope you appreciate this effort I'm making!

Auto-dialler Recording of Citibank

Hi Citibank! Just to let you know I've become very familiar with the recoding on your auto-dialler software. The one that goes "I'm calling with an important message, please hold" (with that American accent).

Wouldn't it be a good idea to change that recording from time to time - more fun diba? Suggestion lang!

P.S. I normally wait only for 3 repetitions of the recording; pag di pa na-pick up ng collector from the auto-dialler by that time, I hang up nalang.

September 2009 Update

I made this blog to be able to give updates to my creditors, so here's an update!

Unfortunately it's not good news - my last job was at Liberty Telecoms and I left from there in April 2009 pa. The management and I could not get along so they actually asked me to leave. But they were decent enough to give me a severance package.

But the release of the severance pay was delayed by 2 months and I finally got it in July 2009 pa. Some of you collectors who call me regularly might remember during this May-June period was when I started to miss my payments again - it was because of that delay.

Anyway when I got the severance pay I was able to resume payments to all of my creditors again in July 2009. But it was only a 2-month package, so by August 2009 ubos nanaman siya.

I was really hoping to have a new job already by the time the package ran out, but given my job-grade level (senior management) and my age, it's just not that easy to find those kinds of jobs.

I have had a few interviews with head-hunters and at least one of them is still active/hopeful, but for some reason they have not gotten back to me yet. And so the search goes on!

I'll make another post also about my current income-generating activities (para hindi kayo mag-panic!) that will put this update in a better perspective.

15 Sept 09 Update - the job search I mentioned in the article above that was "still active/open" - well, I just got word that they have closed the search. Sayang. It was a job I would have really enjoyed pa anaman, I think.

Improved Citibank Collection Effort

I'm pleased with whatever changes Citibank has been making in their collection practices. Their staff is much more courteous now.

I even got a call once from one of their officers specfically to let me know that I had made a short payment and it might result in more penalties. In the past, they wouldn't have bothered reaching me and they would have just let the penalties happen - talagang walang paki-alam.

So please keep it up Citibank Collection Team!

Have to visit BRB

I really have to go to BRB (Binan Rural Bank) soon. I returned the signed PN to them early this year pa and sila ang nag-notarize. So I need to go there to get my copy! Kaya pala di ko makita ang PN number ko sa kanila in my records, hehe...