It seems like I get these letters everyday offering me unbelievably low re-finance rates or some other too good to be true offer involving my mortgage. I can’t imagine how much life they’ve stolen from my shredder at this point.
These letters look so legitimate and expiration dates give people a sense of urgency to act. I can understand why people are taken in. Here’s the latest one I received from some group called the Community Programs Division of ACT with my personal information redacted:
The easiest way to test the legitimacy of these offers is on the web. I’ve found in the cases of many scams, googling the name of the organization + scam usually produces the desired results. In this case I was a little surprised to see so little information available about A Community Programs Division of ACT. However, following the first link leads you down a typical path of everyday consumers smart enough to do a little due diligence digging through the details and revealing that this deal involves a method of consolidating your debts and adding them into your mortgage for which they will charge you exorbitant fees or doing an analysis (that you can do for free) to see if you have been over-charged for your mortgage for which they will charge you exorbitant fees or trying to sell you on Money Merge Account software (from United First Financial) to pay your mortgage down more quickly (which again you can do yourself for free). Thanks, but I’ll pass guys.
If you receive anything like this in the mail and even remotely seems too good to be true, please do yourself a big favor and at least research it for a few minutes on the web before you bother contacting these people. As soon as you call, they have skilled operators ready to pounce (and maybe sell your information to another group because if you were gullible enough to contact them, you might be susceptible to future offers).