Oh. The pettiest bureacratic nightmares. How they fuck things up.

I’ve been stretching thin my charm skills over the last several weeks in dealing with a situation involving my home and a lien the government has put on it due to my bank’s negligence in filling out paperwork.

As many of you know, I bought my home in Gibsons a year and a half ago as a first-time buyer. Part of the deal with first-time purchase is that as long as you maintain residence for the initial year, don’t sell the house or pay down more than 50% of the principal – then you don’t have to pay the provincial property transfer tax. It’s a little break for those who are getting into the housing market for the first time – and in my case it saves me close to $2000.

So after the first year, the province sends some paperwork out to determine whether you are eligible for the tax-break – but of course I can’t just fill the paperwork out myself, it has to be completed and signed by my mortgage-holder (the Bank of Montreal).

Now granted, the forms were first sent to me in July, but because of my trip to Colombia and a general haphazardness surrounding my mental state, I put them aside and lost them which meant that when I returned from Colombia and was dealing with things again at the start of August I had to call the province and get another copy of the form. No problem, they said – just get your bank to fax it in. That was August 8th and my bank confirmed they would send it to Montreal for processing and it would be sent from there.

At the end of August I received a notice from the provincial government stating that I owed them $2000, they had put a lien on my home and I was about to enter a collections situation if I didn’t contact them RIGHT NOW! A LIEN ON MY HOME! WTF?

Having learned a long time ago that it’s better to just address these situations early rather than ignore them (particularly when creditors are involved), I called up the relevant collections officer for the province and explained that yes, I had sent the forms to the bank but clearly they hadn’t sent them in to the province. I also flirted a little, acted hapless (at the mercy of the bank), and engaged him in some friendly conversation… turns out he was really nice to me in return. I said – I’ll call and have them fax the forms in again today. No problem he said, just call me if there are any problems with that. The bank faxed the forms to Montreal for me again (marked URGENT) September 12th.

The really frustrating thing of course is that there is no reason my bank branch in Victoria couldn’t just fill them out but because of their own internal process rules they can’t. We’re talking a four-line form here.

Yesterday I received another notice from the province saying that I owe them $2000 and they are charging me interest – which means apparently the bank processing centre in Montreal never did fill out the forms and send them into the province. I just finished with another round of phone calls – to the BMO processing centre, to the bank branch in Victoria, and of course to my collections guy at the province.

Even though this whole situation is really upsetting to me – I’m feeling like I’ve handled it pretty well so far by staying super calm with the bank and being really friendly with the collections guy. I had him almost consoling me today, telling me not to worry about the lien (he says it’s no big deal and doesn’t affect my credit rating) and commiserating about how bad banks are to deal with. It was actually a really pleasant conversation and I promised to check in with him again after I received word about how my bank. He thanked me three times for calling in without prompting and he even said – “Look, just tell the bank i’m the meanest SOB you’ve ever talked to and I’m really harassing you about it all the time – just blame it on me….” which was pretty funny cause we’ve had nothing but super-friendly conversations. But of course he is a collection agent which means that sometimes I’m sure he can be a real jerk – just fortunately I’ve handled this in such a way that he’s being really nice to me.

Hopefully I get this sorted out soon, I’m going to give the bank a week and then phone them again if the forms haven’t arrived – and keep on the good side of my collections officer in the meantime.