Dear CitiMortgage Customer (s):

We are extremely concerned that your mortgage account has not been kept current.  If this situation is not corrected soon, you could lose your home through acceleration of the mortgage and foreclosure....

You do have options.  We would like to speak with you....

Without talking to you, we cannot help....

......Call immediately so that we can begin working toward a reasonable solution to this problem.

Sincerely, 

Collections CitiMortgage

Here are some excerpts from a letter mailed to us on the 15th of March.  I have some problems with this letter.  My first problem is "acceleration of the mortgage".  I looked this term up because I thought I knew what it meant, but I saw it in this paragraph and figured I was wrong.

I assumed that 'accelerated mortgage' was paying your mortgage bi-weekly or adding payments to speed up the completion of paying a home loan as the phrase suggests.  As we are no longer making any payments, how could we lose our home if we pay our loan at an accelerated rate?  As some smarty-lawyer wrote and approved of this letter, I am assuming I do not understand 'accelerated mortgage'.

Also, I am surprised by the lender's concern for us.  This letter seems so personal, with words like 'help' and that they want to speak to us. If the bank really did care about people, and relationships, that would be personal. The personal part of this matter are the people who live in my house.  Their attempts to be reasonable so far, have been very impersonal: every time I call, I talk to a different person who transfers me to another person, they monitor my calls, they call and hang up, they send me seemingly personal letters to appear like the bottom line isn't cash. Could an international financial group ever be personal?

I did call them in regards to this letter, and they refused to help make our house affordable, for the 67th time (that number may be hyperbole)!  This letter makes it seem that I have been the one who has not contacted them.  I have been calling them often for a year.

This letter is subtly sneaky.  I am not going to fall for sneaky.

PS Our house is in a valley, near a creek.  These birds use this tree to scout for carrion up the hill from us.  I took a photo of them as I drove by last spring.