Tag fema sucks

Last night after work I got to meet Bentley, the new puppy my neighbors across the street just adopted.  He is an adorable 8 week old yellow lab puppy.  They had to put down their long time family dogs a few months ago and swore they were done with dogs because of the intense pain when they were gone.  I am glad they reconsidered.  I am sure Bentley will be the source of much love and happiness for many years to come.

Last night I also went outside to survey the screen repairs that will be needed as well as simply replace some dry rotted spline that was hanging out after the pressure washing session.  It looks like I have two side panels that are ripped along the spline plus the one roof panel.  I may tackle the side panels after work this week or tack that on to the weekend work list.

Right now I am on a holding pattern with the bogus, bullshit FEMA flood insurance request from my credit union.  I have a county flood expert corresponding with the bank on my behalf, pointing out the error in their data.  If this works I will be off the hook.  If the bank still clings to their error then I will have to get an elevation survey to prove my house is 4-5 feet above the level of the road.  This entire situation is ridiculous. There are a number of people in my area that are all in the same boat.

So Saturday night I fell asleep at 3 AM.  Last night I found myself waking up at the same time.  I could tell I wasn’t going to be able to just doze off easily so I drug my ass out of bed.   I filled the roughly 3 hours of time with various activities like emptying the dishwasher, watching Freddie Wong videos, doing some race maintenance work, updating the Bar-barian Challenge scoreboard and playing through a few levels in Diablo 3.

I am sure I will pay for my early rise time this evening.  I expect zombie mode to hit me pretty early.

So as promised, I dug into my personal flood insurance caper yesterday and as expected it lead to heaping mounds of frustration.  See if you can follow this long and twisty tale of stupidity.

My first call was to a local county government phone number that was identified as the flood insurance hotline.  This number was supposedly the place to go to get help with problems regarding the new flood maps.  I called twice and got voice mail, I left a message, hoping for a call back later.

My next call was to the credit union, I wasted my breath going into a detailed explanation of why I was not in a flood zone as the woman said that she was the wrong person to talk to.  She said the credit union doesn’t make the determinations, I had to contact FEMA.  Obviously she has gotten a number of complaints as she had the number to call readily available.

So I call the number given to me, talk to a woman, again give my background situation and again am told that she isn’t the one to talk to.  I had to talk to the department that specifically deals in LOMA’s (map amendments).  She gave me the number.

Ok so finally I was talking to the right person.  I explained to him how the bank is telling me I need flood insurance even though FEMA’s own maps say that is not the case.  Obviously whatever data the bank determination is utilizing is out of date.  I asked him how do I go about getting a LOMA to get this corrected?

I could hardly believe what he told me.  In order to get a LOMA I need to go through an application process.  There is a substantial form to be filled out.  I also need to include a copy of my deed and a photocopy of my FIRM panel (elevation/flood zone mapping).  I then have to mail this to FEMA and wait.  He said it can take up to 60 days to obtain a LOMA, if it is granted.

I was flabbergasted.  I think I literally said, “You are kidding, right?”

First of all, I only have 45 days to respond to the banks request for flood insurance, if I don’t respond by then they sign me up for flood insurance automatically at the highest premium rate.  I explained this to the guy on the phone.  He said he understood and that was why their official recommendation is the homeowner just buys the flood insurance and then if they get the LOMA they can USUALLY get their premium refunded.

So the official FEMA stance is I should buy flood insurance that I don’t need, that MIGHT get refunded once this clusterf is sorted out.    I followed up by pointing out the lunacy that I was being asked to jump through all of these hoops to prove that FEMA’s own data was correct, it was insane.

The guy on the other side of the phone understood my frustration, it simply does not make any sense but that is what is required to get a LOMA.  I asked why is it that a federal agency like FEMA can not simply punch in a home address and get their current flood zone information?  He couldn’t explain why, just that it doesn’t work that way.

I knew this guy was just the messenger and had absolutely no power to do anything but direct me into the bureaucratic pile of bullshit.  I told him to send me the form although it was looking like just paying an unnecessary $150 to a surveyor might actually be the least painful of my options, as silly as it is.

So later I got another brainstorm.  The flood insurance form said it was managed by a Fiserv, a huge company that is the back end to many banks.  On there was contact information so I figured what the hell, I’ll call them and ask why they are using incorrect data for flood zone determination.

So I get a guy on the phone and he has a HORRIBLE Indian accent, I could literally not understand him.  Eventually after many tries I conveyed to him what I wanted to find out.  He said he would have the person that handles flood zone inquiries call me back, great.

So I had left my cell phone number as my call back.  I get the call, on the other line is someone with an even more garbled Indian accent.  It was ridiculous.  I told the guy I could not understand him at all and asked him to call me back on my office hard line, which he did.

Talking to him on a real phone made little difference, his english was horrible.  I was so frustrated that I was obviously thrown into one of those infamous Indian call centers.  Trying to communicate what I needed was excruciating, time and again I would ask him what he said and he would simply repeat it in the same garbled english.  I was going insane by the end of the call.

The call was left at they would get back to me which I was 95% sure would never happen.  To be honest, I almost would prefer they didn’t, I despise when companies outsource their phone banks to India.  I am convinced it is a deliberate effort to frustrate customers to the point where they abandon action requests, plus companies love being able to pay pennies on the dollar for Indian phone armies.

So by the end of this series of phone calls I was done.  I realized that when my neighbor warned me that she could not get anywhere trying to sort out the same thing she wasn’t kidding.  I thought I would be able to plow my through to a solution.  Instead I slammed head first into a wall of apathy, paperwork and incompetence.

I had pretty much given in to just paying the money to get the survey.  It was a cheaper option than buying flood insurance I don’t require.  However later in the afternoon I actually got a call back from the local county flood hotline.  The woman I spoke to said they have gotten a number of calls from homeowners in my boat that are being asked to purchase unnecessary flood insurance.

The woman gave me the name of another guy whom has been working on these issues for other people.  So I made my 7th or 8th call of the day regarding this issue.  Finally I got some encouraging news.

The guy I talked to was already dealing with other credit union customers having the exact same problem.  He said he is working with them to get the problem corrected.  He asked for my info and said he would call me back with an update.

Well I was amazed when I got a call around 8PM from him.  He asked for some additional info but he said he was successful getting the designation fixed for another credit union customer and was hopeful he could do the same for me.  I am crossing my fingers.

Last night after work I ran over to Mom’s place to drop off some mail and have the girls visit her.  Mom was nice enough to make dinner for me as well.  It was a good visit.  Mom mentioned something to me about how she would like to replace her fridge with the one I turned off in the garage months ago.  Even though it is 12 years old, it is still probably half the age of what she has in her kitchen.

I told her she should have said something to me right away if she wanted it.  She is going to see if she can get the ok from her landlord to yank out the old one.

I also threw an old spare tv and vacuum cleaner that was taking up space in her closets into the van.  When I got home I sat them both by the road.  As expected, both items were gone when I got up this morning.