Thanks for the responses everyone. Running around with dd and could not get back to the computer all day. We felt pretty much like most of you. Didn't want the retraction printed as we were opening the new business. Any association about us and our business and a financial problem is not the type of marketing we are after! But... at the same time wanted to make sure anyone who saw it knows it was incorrect. We pay our bills darn it! I honestly expected nothing when I filed with the OCC. I simply wanted to know I did what I could to right a wrong and let it go. Never expected a case to be opened or the bank to contact me. The bank messed up our homeowners insurance last year and I thought nothing of it. A few phone calls and all was well. I think the snide BOA women who laughed put me over the edge. I appreciate the advice regarding not using the same bank for the business banking as personal banking and we don't. Igloo, I am all for business relationships but had to follow the savings...local bank really could care less if they had our mortgage business after we have banked with them for 20 years. I don't get it. Their interest was much higher than BOA and they would not go lower. Full disclosuree: I have a smart, sweet sil who has worked for BOA for almost 30 years. If I had asked she would of helped but I felt it would have been rather obnoxious of me. After all the turmoil at BOA, she did not need to deal with a relative's issues. asjama and idee, thanks for the credit report heads up. I only ran 1 of the 3 free ones for myself and was going to run the other 2 every few months as you suggested . They did not use our money for the penalty. Will talk to hubby about taking care of our own taxes. shermann thanks for the input. I'll let it go when we get everything in writing. Most of it is so far but the contact balked the whole way through. She didn't want to put anything in writing and do everything via phone. That didn't work to well for us when we talked to people who said they would pay the taxes the next day and it took them over 2 weeks to get it done. carol, I feel your pain. How darn hard is it to pay your customers taxes? Shannon, my husband would have went ballistic if that had happened to him! magothyrivergirl, You're right. Promoting a negative event is not the way to go. I'm sure I'll toughen my skin as I go, but at my age it's pretty tough already. I simply refused to take really crappy treatment and followed some simple procedures to make it right. lukk, I will watch for the vultures. We had a couple of the real ones land in our yard the other day. Had no idea they were THAT ugly close up! Thank you stinky and best. Why do they publish peoples names anyway? Since we are looking for a new Supreme court judge, they may want to consider someone from GW. You guys are awesome. Thank you Will let the hub know what you all said. Thanks again

After many years of observing GEM's extreamly poor service for Sam's Club member, the bank has hit a new low by redefining the meaning of a simple word in the English language. If I lost my credit card and it was replaced with a new one (new acciount number)I could understand the reason for reporting that fact to credit bureaus. When the primary account holder of my Sam's card passed away, Sams changed my standing from secondary (user) to primary, with a new account number and membership ID card. After reporting that I lost my credit card to the credit bureaus, GEMB refuses to correct the delibert insertion of false information to my credit file. The GEMB supervisor stated that I "LOST" my old credit card NUMBER when Sam's Club changed it to a new one. I never lost my existing card, nor was it ever stolen. GEMB's is violating the Fair Credit Reportring Act, and as usualy blames it on Sam's Club. It seems that Sam's club would have had to alow me to keep my old account number when changing my status from secondary to primary in order to keep GEMB from flagging my reports with untrue information. No wonder GEMB is at the center of so much fraud. The company simply has no ethics of its own. It does not help resolve fraud issues that people do have, while the bank insists on creating eronious credit information where there is no lost or stolen credit card involved. Someone asked what GEMB stood for. The name aboviously is derived from the parent company's corporate policy. GE (General Electric) Means ..... Whenever contemplating the purchase of any product made by GE, I think of the routine customer abuse it provides through GEMB and then buy any product but GE. It is a shame that Sam's club refuses to sever its relationship with such an arrogant, irresponsible, incompetent financial institution. It probly has something to do with the amount of money that Sam's makes selling GE products.

Berniek is right: Much of the blame here falls upon the shoulders of the politicians (led by then-President Clinton), who forced banks to begin some rather foolish lending practices. Alan Greenspan certainly did his share to push this concept of "everyone can borrow" during his time as Fed chairman. Between creative financing, no money down offers, and other such options, the government has given people plenty of rope with which to hang themselves. We Americans haven't proven ourselves to be particularly strong in the moderation and self-discipline categories over the last 30-40 years. Also, remember the climate that existed in the 90s, when I bought my first house: Spurred on by the soaring housing prices, people were convinced that buying "as much house as you can afford" was a good move. Housing was considered an investment that couldn't fail. Yes, the experts began preaching about "the housing bubble" long before it hit, but the masses couldn't grasp how this sure-thing could ever fall. And there's always been a (faulty) basic belief that "If I couldn't afford it, the bank wouldn't lend it to me." I fully agree with those who say that Real Estate agents will push buyers to their upper limits and beyond, and banks will lend what they can -- it's all about profits for them. Yet, the home owner DOES also bear the brunt of personal responsibility. After all, who cares most about whether I can afford my mortgage -- and still buy groceries and other things I need? Clearly, it's ME! I reap the rewards or punishments of my decisions, so I should do the math and know whether I can comfortably afford a house (or anything else) before I buy it. However, we've sort of left that thinking behind in today's buy-now-pay-later society. We're constantly told that "we deserve" this or that thing. That if we're going to finance it, we deserve to have exactly what we want. That "everyone" has debt. We've got to get past that.

From one of the Social Security booklets, How Your Retirement Benefit is Figured, available online: "Many people wonder how their benefit is figured. Social Security benefits are based on your lifetime earnings. Your actual earnings are adjusted or 'indexed' to account for changes in average wages since the year the earnings were received. Then Social Security calculates your average indexed monthly earnings during the 35 years in which you earned the most. We apply a formula to these earnings and arrive at your basic benefit, or 'primary insurance amount' (PIA). This is how much you would receive at your full retirement age—65 or older, depending on your date of birth." Therefore, if you find an error in your annual earnings statement, you wouldn't necessarily worry about getting it corrected, depending on how big the error is, and whether or not that particular year was one of your larger-earning years.