Consultation 74.
Consultation 74.
“God, how do I make all the slimy mortgage brokers, profiteering investors, and lying lawyers involved in the corrupt housing market across the globe suffer the most?”
“That’s quite an oddly specific request. What made you want to make these people suffer exactly?”
“They’re all shitty lying scumbags who deserve to suffer a fate worse than death.”
“What happened exactly?”
“It’s a bit of a long story, is that okay?”
“Sure, I guess.”
Having said that, she began to recount her stupidly long story.
“Well, it all started three years ago, right after I finished university. My father and I were forced to sell our home a few years after my grandfather’s death. We were left with a lot of my grandfather’s debts and it just kept piling up more and more. Because of the ridiculously high interest rate on my father’s credit cards we were left with no choice but to sell the house. After selling the place, I thought I could finally forget about all those bullshit debts that only ever increased. I wanted to just rent out a room by myself for dirt cheap at $400, however, I had the heavy baggage of my father on my back.”
“He was ill himself, unable to survive on his own, he was also a stubborn fool in his own right who thought it was a waste of money to rent out a room or apartment. He’s an old fashioned idiot who thought the world still worked like the old days where housing was still affordable. He can’t adapt to the state of the present world, he thinks renting an apartment is a waste of money when in fact it’s quite the opposite. From my perspective, renting a room allows you to be free, not chained or shackled to any one place. But he doesn’t seem to understand that sort of concept.”
“Well, you’re not wrong, these days owning your own place isn’t all that it’s made out to be. It’s actually just a pain in the ass to outright own the place.”
“That’s exactly right, God.”
“So what did you end up doing?”
“Well, I had a problem, I was only employed part-time back then while he was on disability. Despite having enough money after the sale of the house, because I was only employed part-time back then, people wouldn’t let me rent a one-bedroom apartment on my income alone even if I could afford it. I didn’t really need a room to myself, which is why a one-bedroom apartment would have been enough for us, but people were reluctant to let a father and daughter rent a one-bedroom apartment alone together. It was basically bullshit, they just wanted more money. A one-bedroom apartment in the area went for about $900 while a two-bedroom apartment was about $1300 or more.”
“It was a total rip off, but I understood it was their choice how to rent their units out.”
“We spent some time trying to find a place to stay, but my father ended up setting his eyes on a condo in foreclosure at a reasonable price. I still had little to no interest in owning a property, but he was narrow-minded and only set his sights on that and nothing less while thinking housing was the best way to save money.”
“I didn’t care anything about saving money at the time as I only ever desired freedom. To live unchained to anything or anyone. But I had no choice; since young, I’d been trapped by familial debt. I knew he couldn’t live on his own and I was the only person that could look after him.”
“I’d been on a job search the entire time and I ended up getting a callback around the time we found that condo in foreclosure. I bit the bullet and reluctantly took up the shitty full-time minimum wage job in addition to the part-time job I was already working. He put in a bid for the condo in foreclosure and we got it. The financing was really difficult though as his credit had turned to shit after helping me get through university. I also naturally couldn’t get it on just my name alone with what my income was at the time.”
“We had to get it put on both our names. The worst part of it though is that we couldn’t get financing approved through the usual ways. I didn’t have much of a credit history while my father’s credit score was in the dumps. Left with no choice, we had to go the stupid private mortgage route with stupidly high interest. Somehow we got one in the end, but the first year would be ridiculously high interest. It would be $900 for the mortgage by itself even after we put down a decent amount as a down payment. The principal amount on the mortgage was set to $90000. It was explained that after the first year it would still be $90000 and all we were paying in that first year was solely interest, but we would have the option to refinance it.”
“But… the mortgage broker turned out to be a slimy crook. I maintained both my jobs the entire first year, slaving away while thinking it would just be a year and I’d be free. However, it didn’t end after that first year. We tried to refinance through that mortgage broker once the year of locked-in high interest was up, but he made excuses saying his lenders suddenly wanted two years of full-time work experience before we could refinance the place under just my name.”
“My father was stubborn and wanted it to only be under my name as he was concerned we could lose the place if he was also listed as an owner on the land title. Though he was making payments on his debts, he was afraid that his creditors might one day suddenly come after him to collect on the full amount all at once and even place a lien on the property to force us to sell. He still had all sorts of debts that I’d been helping him pay off. Yes, even after we sold our house, he hadn’t actually paid off all his debts as I’d thought at the time.”
“I was extremely frustrated, but there was nothing I could do. All I could do was grit my teeth, shut up, and accept it. It was just one more year. I put up with my mental health degrading every single day from that point on due to overworking myself. Somehow, I made it through this second year. When this second year in hell was over, we tried again to refinance. The mortgage broker kept giving us a runaround. He stalled for half a year again. One auspicious day I was laid off from my full-time job after two and a half years due to a health crisis. The mortgage was set to mature at the end of the third year and I’d lost that job at the worst possible time when finding a new job would prove to be impossible.”
“That sounds like quite the dilemma you found yourself in.”
“Dilemma? Hahaha.” A wide hateful smile formed on her face.
“A fucking dilemma is right. After contacting the mortgage broker’s boss I found out that our mortgage broker had recently been let off and banned from working in our region due to shady practices. He turned out to be a true crook in the end. Unlike my father, I never trusted him from the start. Deep down, I always felt he was scummy. And you know what? Because we couldn’t refinance the place after all this time, when the third year was up, because the high interest never went away, the amount owed at maturity was $92000 instead.”
“After I’d been laid off from my full-time job because of the health crisis that popped up, we had to defer one payment which we knew we’d have to pay at the end, but for the amount to be $2000 more than the principle was complete and utter bullshit. Over three years we literally paid $32400 in just interest alone, yet they still wanted to suck every last cent out of us. The lender made over a 30% return on his investment in just 3 short years. As for us, we drew the short end of the stick and found our debt had only increased. Capitalism at its finest. Truly. You’ve got to love it. It’s practically criminal, but will we get any justice in it? No, of course not.”
“The fact that it would go up rather than going down a single penny was exactly what I figured would happen from the very beginning. The terms of the mortgage were bullshit and I knew it, I explained that to my father many times over the three years that we weren’t going to pay off or save anything in the end, but he didn’t listen. He didn’t seem to understand it. It only became apparent at the end when we finally found a lender who could refinance it. The mortgage broker’s boss was somehow able to find a lender to refinance the mortgage. However, the best he could get was for 1 year under my name with the promise of being able to renew it after the year was over.”
“And that brings us to present, God. I absolutely don’t buy into the fact that we’ll be able to renew it in a year's time. It’s just more bullshit to push us further into debt as far as I’m concerned. They’re all greedy assholes trying to scam every penny they can out of you as far as I’m concerned, yet my father still chooses to believe in the nonsense he’s being fed. In the end, we set the amount we’d refinance the mortgage at as $95000. That was supposed to include legal fees, broker fees, land transfer fees, and whatnot. But guess what, God.”
“What?”
“That was once again more bullshit. It turned out to be nowhere near enough. In the end, after the funds were paid out, we were slapped with a bill of $4000 that has to be paid all at once. There is no option to finance it with the lawyer. The mortgage broker who worked on getting this refinanced for about 6 months gets $1900 for doing an absolute shit job, botching his estimates when he was supposed to refinance it so we wouldn’t have to pay anything extra out of pocket. The lawyers for the lender got $2500, while the lawyer we used, who was trusted by my father, slapped us in the face with a fat $4000 bill. It’s the biggest shitshow ever, God.”
Once we'd finally caught up to her present situation she concluded, “And that is why I want to make each and every one of them suffer. But not just them, every single one of the filthy rotting profiteers in this goddamn world making a living off the back of us slaving away at the bottom deserve the same fate. Not a single one of them despite showing we’re capable of keeping up with these high interest payments were willing to refinance at a lower interest rate. NONE OF THEM! FUCKING NONE OF THEM! Killing them would be too fucking easy for them. They should experience the hell known as the bottom of the debt trap they like to push us slaves into!”
Slightly taken aback by her outburst, I awkwardly chimed in, “Well… I understand where you’re coming from. Even as a God in heaven it’s not that easy. I can certainly sympathize with you as one of the Gods at the bottom rungs in heaven.”
“I don’t need your sympathy. I just want a way to bring these scumbags to ruins.”
“I see… but before that, there’s something I wanted to verify.”
“What is it?”
“How exactly did you book a consultation with me if you’re this broke?”
“I bribed the Goddess of Reception with a sandwich.”
“A sandwich?”
“Yes, a sandwich.”
‘Just how much did they cut her paycheck that she can now be bribed by a bloody sandwich of all things! Are my consultations a joke to her!” I fumed in rage over my loss in daily revenue.
Wait, now that I think about it, she probably has a grudge against me, right? I did get her paycheck cut. Rather than it being for the sandwich, she probably just wanted to dig into my pockets. Ugh, it’s a real pain knowing I won’t make a cent off of this consultation.
“Haaaaaah. If you didn’t pay your fair share, I really shouldn’t be giving you any advice… however... since I’ve already spent all this time listening to your story… just this once I’ll make an exception.”
“Thank you, God.”
“If you want to make them suffer, the best thing you can do is affect their ability to do business. Simply put, you only need to attack their livelihood and damage their credibility.”
“You mean by leaving a bad review? That’s nowhere near a satisfying answer.”
“No, a single bad review wouldn’t do shit. However, what you can do is make it so it is impossible for them to do business.”
“Oh, and how would I do that?”
“First, DDOS and take down their websites. This isn’t too difficult to achieve for a smaller business.”
“Second, use a call flooder to take down their phone lines. If they can’t receive any calls, they won’t be able to get new clients unless they change the number. But to change the number means to pay a price to market that new number locally which can be costly. If they change their number, you can obviously get access to it and use the call flooder to take those new numbers down. You can use spoofing software to change the number it appears you are calling from so they can’t do shit to block the numbers calling in.”
“Third, you can flood their emails with spam from disposable email addresses. Essentially you’ll overload their email servers and bring it down so they can’t send or receive any emails to communicate with clients.”
“Fourth, rather than simply leaving one review for them, leave many negative reviews under different accounts. Saying things like you can never get through to them or how you spent hours waiting on the phone only to be hung up on. You can make these accounts review other things as well to make them all the accounts look legit. When people see this sort of recurring trend they’ll reconsider contacting them. This will greatly affect their business and make them bleed money.”
“If it goes on for long enough, they’ll really suffer the same sort of pain being strapped for cash. They could even be pushed to the brink of bankruptcy if they are harassed to such a degree.”
“I see. It certainly does seem possible to make them suffer losses this way. As long as I use a dynamic VPN in countries that don’t keep logs it should be possible to pull it off. I might still eventually get caught, but what do I even care? Do they think they’ll get any more money out of me? Hah! Over my dead body. If they come to me seeking compensation for damages, I’ll laugh in their faces and slit my throat in front of them as I burn the place down so they can salvage nothing from the property. As for the lender, good luck getting your investment back after the place is burnt to the ground. Insurance sure isn’t going to cover it.”
“Don’t you think you should reconsider doing that?”
“Reconsider? Fuck reconsidering. I’m through with their bullshit. They’re the ones who picked the fight so I’ll do everything I can to drag them down on my way out.”
Before she left, I explained a few other underhanded methods to further increase their suffering. Things such as targeting their family and friends. Making them lose their jobs by spreading lies and rumors online in local groups to give them a bad reputation among the community. There were many things that could be done to accomplish her objective, but I only went over some of them. Honestly, ruining someone’s livelihood and making them suffer mental anguish these days wasn’t anything difficult. With the internet and social media around, and enough knowledge on how to not get caught, it just required a bit of creativity.