Interesting letter and phone conversation

[Joel Fraser]

wow, where do I begin. back in 2006 we refinanced our house to help with our credit. we were supposedly doing a quick credit fix loan that was an ARM for 2 years at 10.3%. then to 12.3% in 11/08. our current mortgage is $2732. going to $3532 in November. the guy said dont worry your credit will get better and we can refi before the two years is up. at the time and the hardship we were in it sounded like a good idea. we got some equity out of it and was able to pay off a lot debt. well, 6 months go by, 12 months go by and still nothing. guy says credit not high enough yet. it was 620 at that time. 18 months later we get a call saying we did a great job our credit is acceptable now and we can refi. send in all the paperwork. get all the way to the appraisal and thats where we found out that our house was worth less than what we owed. sorry cant help you he says and refuses to answer our calls or emails ever since. contact Homeq (our lender) and talk to a nice lady who seems helpful but eventually tells me we wont help you until you are 3 months late and are near foreclosure. now, ive worked very hard the last two years to get our credit score up almost 200 pts. (my wife is above 700 now). now i have to purposely miss payments, ruin my credit before they will help. talk about frustration. we make good money. (im a firefigher/paramedic, wife is a RN) but because of our mortgage my family is struggling paycheck to paycheck. fast forward to today. get a letter in the mail from a company saying they can help with a loan modification. so i call them and talk to Alex Reyes. senior load modification specialist. conversation actually sounds very promising. he says there is no way with our credit that we should be at 10.3% he can get us down to below 6% give us a 30 year fixed and take close to $1000 off our mortgage payment. i tell him our hardship, he ask a few questions about income. then the conversation goes wierd. he says all he needs is $3500 (fees, closing cost, etc....) and we can get started. i tell him if i had $3500 i wouldnt need a loan modification. he then says well we can do a payment plan. then he says actually dont worry about it well just take it out of your first few mortgage payments. now the red lights start going off and im starting to get suspicious about this. he tells me its legit and they just want to help hard working americans like myself. he gives me a website to check out (link removed) and says he'll email me the application.ok, first question. is that company and what there claiming to do legit? or am i being or going to be scammed out of $3500?second, can companies other than your lender help with a loan mod?thanks for reading, i know it was long but were getting close to november and the stress level is rising and im wondering if we are going to be able to keep our home. thanksGreg