When does a mortgage rate bait and switch become fraud? I'm currently in the process of buying a house. Once the price was negotiated and agreed upon, I solicited quotes from various mortgage brokers. One offered a lower rate than the others, so we picked them. I signed a loan agreement, submitted all my documents, and last week signed a rate lock agreement. Yesterday (two weeks out from our targeted close date), the lender called to inform me that they could no longer offer the rate on the lock agreement, and offered a much worse deal instead. There were no new revelations in the intervening time. The reason they cited was that I've only had my current job for three months, but they've known that since I began the process, and certainly they knew that before I signed the lock agreement. Now I have to decide whether to take the crappier loan, or to go back and find another lender and risk not being able to close on time. I might lose the house. This seems like a clear case of bait and switch to me. I picked these guys because they offered a certain rate, and once I was far enough along to make it hard to go with someone else, they switched it out. Is it legal? Do rate lock agreements have implicit 'out' clauses? Do I have any recourse? Location: Texas, USA
There is no such thing as an "implicit" out clause in a contract like this. The onus was clearly on them to consider all the facts before agreeing to lock in an interest rate. The facts have not changed since the lock and you did not misrepresent the facts so they should honor their agreement or pay you damages. Your options are to take the deal, get a new deal elsewhere or take them to court to enforce the deal or recover damages. Those aren't particularly great options but that's the situation.
You might take a look at this summary. You have an offer, consideration (a promise of something valuable), acceptance, and "mutuality" i.e. there was no confusion over what you are talking about. Email is a form of writing, and written contracts are the strongest that there are. In this case, the offeree relied on the contract in buying materials and who knows what else. If there's nothing surprising that you're not mentioning, a court would then obliged you to make him whole. That could be in the form of compensating him for his losses, or else ordering specific performance (i.e. making you sell the car). Specific performance is most likely with real estate deals where the seller reneges, but maybe not in this case, and maybe especially not in Wisconsin. It is likely that you could keep the car for a price, but you'd really need an attorney to advise you on that.
Terms in a contract that are not legal or not enforcable are quite capable of causing you trouble and costing you time or money, most likely a generous amount of both. Your friend shouldn't care one bit about whether these terms would be legal and/or enforcable. If he doesn't like them, then he MUST NOT accept the changed contract. Not if these terms are illegal and unenforceable and of course even less if they are legal and enforceable. I would write back "I believe that the suggested change in terms is illegal and would be unenforceable. I also believe that the change is deeply unfair towards me and creates a considerable legal risk that I am not willing to accept under any circumstances. I therefore strongly reject your suggested change. "
The written document is given very high priority, so parties will be held to what is in the document. Both parties sign at the bottom, as a way of signalling their agreement with the terms specified in the document. If conditions are added or subtracted (by crossing out), especially with pre-printed forms, the "customer" (person who didn't write the contract) can initial such modifications, as a way of clearly signalling that they indeed agree to the deletion of such-and-such clause. Since both parties have a copy of the signed agreement, this is not strictly necessary. The potential issue would be that an unscrupulous person could cross out a clause after the contract was signed, and claimed that they aren't bound by that clause. A comparison of the two copies would then reveal that the unscrupulous person was attempting fraud. There is nothing special about handwriting in or crossing out conditions, except that it poses a potential evidentiary problem as to what exactly was agreed to, if for example one party threw away their copy and then maintained that the crossed-out clause had not been crossed out. (So, keep your copy). In case you are proposing a scenario where one party is unaware of a change, i.e. at the very last minute Smith crosses something out and signs it, and Jones did not see that happen, then both copies would be the same and Jones would be legally bound to what's in the paper. Smith should announce to Jones that a clause was being deleted. We might suppose that there are innocent reasons why Smith made changes without making an announcement to Jones, in which case the parties do not have an agreement. There may be amicable ways to deal with that situation, but push could come to shove, in which case the written form of the document is generally taken to be the most important piece of evidence (though not always the only admissible evidence, unless you're in Colorado, Florida or Wisconsin).
If you want to get out, and are willing to lose $270, you can not sign the lease and demand a return of your security deposit. You could ask for a return of the other fees as well, but you are less likely to be successful. They would probably have trouble enforcing a security deposit against you if you didn't have a lease with them, and would probably have trouble demanding you sign a lease when they changed the unit. You should probably get it all back, because you applied for it, but it probably isn't worth litigating over. I would also encourage you to turn to social media sites if they have one, or to sites like Yelp, if they do not. Many businesses are sensitive to this and if you are truthful if could provide you with some leverage.
Usually I would think one answer to a question is enough. But since your edits have transformed a reasonable procedural question into what appears to be a rant about unfairness of the sort which any bankruptcy court has heard hundreds of times before, I will give another piece of advice: Focus on one thing at a time. The judge at the hearing of the application will be deciding (if your question is accurate) the single point whether a house should be sold. The submission "There is an application to annul the bankruptcy to be heard on XXX; if it succeeds this application is a waste of money and if it fails there will still be time for this application before the time limit, so you should adjourn till YYY" is a reasonable one that he will take into account. Saying "The bankruptcy order should never have been made; it was a mistake by my accountants and HMRC, and a High Court Judge joined in the conspiracy" will get you precisely nowhere. Even if the judge believed you rather than the written evidence, it has no bearing on the point he is being asked to decide. More generally; besides casting your arguments into proper shape, there is another good reason to consult a professional, namely that he can tell you when to give up. The courts are bound by laws and regulations; however unfair you may think the result, at some point it is necessary to accept the reality rather than wasting time and money making points that the law cares nothing about. (And no, I see no point discussing this further in comments. This answer can be upvoted if you think it helpful or downvoted if you think it "not useful"; it isn't something to argue against.)
This is not "libel," which is a form of defamation (publishing a false and defamatory statement that injures another). "Bait and switch" is a type of violation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Law. That Law makes it illegal for a business to engage in any false or deceptive practices, or to perform any false or deceptive acts, in commerce. Read more about it on the Massachusetts' state government site. If the restaurant's conduct was deceptive and it caused you harm (for instance, you would not have gone into the restaurant and ordered at all if you had known you had to order a drink to get the favorable price on sliders,) there may be a violation.
When I signed up over 5 years ago, I signed a contract agreeing to a specific service at a specific price and I was locked-in for 24 months, lest I be charged a penalty for early breach of contract As the original 24-month fixed term has expired long ago, the service provider is no longer obliged to provide the service at the original terms. They may terminate the contract at any time, and equally you are allowed to quit any time as well. The notice you have now got is essentially a termination notice combined with an offer for a new contract. You can accept it, or give them a counteroffer, or walk away to another ISP.