"LowerMyBills.Com" Ads Claiming an Obama Housing Refinance Program Completely Bogus

It's hard to believe that there are consumers, looking for ways to lower their mortgage payments or get out from under credit card debt, that think that President Barack Obama has passed laws designed to give the individual some sort of relief. The bait for a recent advertisement for LowerMyBills.com states: "Homeowners Fail to Take Advantage of Obama's Refinance Plan," and features a cute, guinea pig tweaking it's nose. The ad goes on to state that "the U.S. government launched a housing relief program, designed to help 7-9 million homeowners, but that only 85,000 homeowners have used the program." No source is cited for these statistics, which should be significant, because LowerMyBills claims to have some sort of affiliation with the Experian credit reporting agency.

First, let's examine why this come-on for LowerMyBills.com is disingenuous, using as bait, the "Obama Refinance Plan." This so-called "refinance plan" passed by the government around February of 2009, was supposed to inject "$75 billion" to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. The way this "refinance plan" was supposed to work, was that it was going to offer financial "bonuses" to lenders and servicers of mortgages who, at their discretion, "successfully modified loans." The other part of this government relief program was to "allow the bankruptcy courts to modify terms of a mortgage," according to a news account posted by MSNBC on Feb. 19, 2009 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29260537/ns/business-personal_finance//). Ironically, the title of the article was, "No 'magic bullet' in Obama housing relief plan." Translated into more simple English, "lenders and servicers" of existing problem mortgages would have to agree to restructure "preventable foreclosures," defined as foreclosures that are caused by homeowners falling behind in payments, but "preventable" in the sense that if payments were lowered, foreclosure could be avoided. Since this two-pronged approach has only two options in which either a lender has to agree to the restructured mortgage OR the bankruptcy court has to modify the terms of the mortgage under the "Obama housing relief plan," it's no wonder that "only 85,000 homeowners have used the program."

There is nothing that LowerMyBills.com can do to influence an existing lender on a mortgage in danger of foreclosure and there certainly isn't anything LowerMyBills.com can do to influence the bankruptcy court. Certainly the MSNBC report from February of 2009 seems to clearly state the opposite of the come-on for this "relief" that LowerMyBils.com, in suggesting that homeowners have been somehow remiss in "taking advantage" of this wonderful government "bailout of homeowners."

So what exactly is LowerMyBills.com going to do to help you, the delinquent homeowner, do to "take advantage of Obama's Refinance Plan?" First, you'll give out personal information about yourself to all kinds of affiliates of LowerMyBills, including your Social Security Number and credit card number. You'll be put in touch with venders who want you to sign up for credit card offers and you'll also give up any rights you may have requested if you put yourself on a "Do Not Call" list, allowing anyone and everyone affiliated with LowerMyBills to solicit you, according to the Terms of Use, "by telephone, by e-mail, or by mail." The primary concern LowerMyBills seems to have is getting you to sign up for a $14.95/month credit monitoring service in which they only promise to monitor your credit through Experian. They then offer to "match" you with lenders for mortgages that they believe can help, but it appears that everything is done online and that eventually will be processed through the credit bureaus to see if you're credit-worthy for a mortgage. This hardly sounds like the "Obama housing relief plan" that was mentioned in the advertising link for LowerMyBills. Since LowerMyBills is in the "home insurance, debt relief, auto insurance, and education loan" business, it would seem that they are more interested in gathering your personal information so they can sell it to salesmen in these areas for some rather aggressive follow-up by phone, e-mail, or mail, since you agree to basically give up all of your privacy under the "Terms of Use" section if you request mortgage quotes or the credit card monitoring "service."

Giving out your personal information online to an entity like LowerMyBills is not going to help you with your original problem, and that was to lower your mortgage payments. You'll just wind up getting solicited by all of their affiliates while you're convinced there's some sort of "government program" out there waiting to help you lower your mortgage payments or avoid foreclosure. Chances are, if you're behind in mortgage payments already or just need a lower mortgage payment to balance your household budget, there won't be anything LowerMyBills can do to help anyway. As we examined earlier under the so-called "Obama housing relief plan," lenders are not under any obligation to change the terms and conditions of your mortgage, nor is there that much to convince them under the "$75 billion government plan," which appears to be targeted more at buying up Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae loans than it is at keeping individual homeowners in foreclosure trouble in their homes. Unless you like the idea of being solicited for auto insurance or debt relief programs and not being assisted with your mortgage payments, which was likely to be your original concern, LowerMyBills appears to be nothing more than a lead generation system for one of their other "services" that you qualify for, but if you don't qualify for a mortgage now, LowerMyBills is not going to be of any help.