Home Is Where the Card Is

Last August, the director of the St. Louis chapter of the Better Business Bureau issued a cautionary statement about HomeBuyers after the agency began investigating the complaints. The letter said customers rarely were provided the services advertised and that HomeBuyers refused to make refunds, falsely claimed to be a member of the St. Louis-area Better Business Bureau and tried to sell customers homes they hadn't even seen.

"Michelle Corey has gone out of her way to get me," Zabawa says of the St. Louis Better Business Bureau director. "We work with vulnerable people, but her mission in life is to protect those people, like all regulators. She has never called me. She doesn't talk to people like the Coldwells of HomeBuyers. I just know there are people inside her organization who very silently agree with my opinion."

But Kenneth Murdock, the St. Louis chapter's consumer relations director, says his organization does not have a personal issue with Zabawa. "We've had numerous interactions with Mr. Zabawa to give him complaint forms, and he has sought resolutions to some but not all of them. Saying it's personal is a common accusation when we issue a caution report."

Zabawa's organization has no outstanding complaints registered with the Kansas City Better Business Bureau. But the attorney general's office says it has investigated a dozen complaints about HomeBuyers in the past year. The agency does not comment on specific cases under investigation.

"Lately it's been disappointing being in this business -- the scrutiny," Zabawa says. "I'm not ripping people off. And I would dare people to be in five different jobs in this place for eight hours a day."

That chaotic environment appears to be at the heart of his customers' complaints.

"They give you somebody different every time you call," says Betty Fields of St. Louis, a HomeBuyers client who eventually received a $350 refund after she and her husband, Reginald, filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the attorney general.

But the Fieldses haven't cashed their check because they believe they deserve a full refund after enrolling in the program on June 7, 2000.

"We paid $795 altogether, and they said the $695 was a half-price deal if we got it to them in thirty days," Betty says. "But I called them for weeks and finally the [office manager in St. Louis] called us back. We had been getting calls saying we had only a certain time to pay or we would have to pay $1,600."

The Fieldses cashed in a life insurance policy for $800 to join HomeBuyers after they filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy two years ago. Reginald, now fifty, has been unemployed since 1996, when he suffered two strokes. Betty, 48, says HomeBuyers approved them for a lease-purchase deal. HomeBuyers provided the Fieldses with a list of possible housing choices in the south St. Louis area, but each one of them, Betty says, was either already sold, boarded up or "raggedy."

They decided not to continue with the HomeBuyers program.

And the Fieldses' dissatisfaction with HomeBuyers grew when the company sent her forms to authorize the transfer of funds from her bank accounts and to sign up for three credit cards from a list of a half dozen banks as a way to "[establish] credit quickly and effectively." The letter offered them good advice for rebuilding their credit: "Do not accumulate a balance on your credit cards; this could decrease the qualifying amount of your home." However, Betty says she didn't feel comfortable being asked to make additional monetary commitments to HomeBuyers after she and her husband already had exhausted their finances paying the enrollment fee.

"I've learned a lot," she says. "You can't trust someone when you put your faith in them and they ignore you. I called and left messages, and calling to Kansas City during the day ain't cheap.... If [Zabawa] treats other people like us, I don't see how he could have a business."

That the Fieldses didn't complete his program is no surprise, Zabawa says. "Here's what I'm guilty of: working with people with bad credit. All those organizations that do credit counseling have people bomb out of their programs. It's like a fat person joining a gym. You can't make them want to lose weight; only they can. I'm probably stupid enough to dive in with these people, but you'd think the people I try to help would support that."

But some of Zabawa's clients say they're the ones who don't get any support.

Stephanie Jimerson of Kansas City regrets she ever got involved with HomeBuyers. During more than a year in Zabawa's program, Jimerson spoke to the owner twice. Their second conversation came after what seemed a merry-go-round of unreturned phone calls and unanswered questions about a property Jimerson wanted to buy after HomeBuyers got her approved for a loan.

"He told me I needed to be patient and calm down," Jimerson recalls of Zabawa. "But I was being given listings that had been on the market for a while, and I would get on the computer and find out they were not the type of houses I was interested in. I had told [HomeBuyers] I wanted three bedrooms, a basement and a garage."