Samandigrow: Making Money Program

Late last week, Microsoft put an end to its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program. The Office Notifier, the OGA ActiveX control for Internet Explorer, and the OGA plug-in for Firefox have also been retired. The change took place on December 16, was first confirmed in a KB article last updated on December 17, 2010, and found by ZDNet:

The Office Genuine Advantage ("OGA") program has been retired. For more information about the benefits of genuine Office, please visit the following website:

Benefits of genuine Office

When OGA still existed, it required users to validate their copy of Microsoft Office to download noncritical updates and other downloads such as addons, samples, templates, and so on. Now, users can grab said content without having to perform the extra step, whether they pirated Microsoft Office or not.

It's important to note that OGA is different from product activation. The former is Internet-based and permits users to download files and updates from the Microsoft website while the latter is enforced at the software level and is required to use the actual software. OGA rejects the product keys that have either been widely leaked or which have been generated to pass through the initial activation. OGA covers Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007.

OGA has an equivalent on the Windows side: Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). WGA is required for much more useful downloads than OGA, such as Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Redmond has no plans to kill off WGA, at least not at this point in time.

"The Office Genuine Advantage program was designed to notify many customers around the world whether their copy of Microsoft Office was genuine," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "The program has served its purpose and thus we have decided to retire the program. Given our strong commitment to anti-piracy, we are making several new investments that will allow us to engage with customers and help victims of fraud."

The change is a significant one because it implies that OGA was costing Microsoft more money than it was saving the company, suggesting that OGA was largely ineffective in its goal. This is hardly surprising given that the "Advantage" in Office Genuine Advantage was minor: the large majority of Office users can live without extra templates and samples.

Bank Of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs

The Attorneys General of Nevada and Arizona last week slapped Bank of America with lawsuits alleging widespread fraud occurrs in the bank’s mortgage modification programs. BofA, the nation’s biggest bank, has consistently lagged behind the other big mortgage servicers in successfully modifying mortgages for troubled borrowers. Andrew Jakabovics and I also caught the bank violating the contract it signed with Treasury to participate in the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) by siphoning borrowers into its own private modification program without determining their HAMP eligibility.

But these lawsuits allege an even bigger mess, with BofA accused of giving deceptive and inaccurate reasons for rejecting modifications, and stringing borrowers along in the modification process for months, allowing them to continue making futile mortgage payments before ultimately foreclosing on them:

As a result of Bank of America’s misrepresentations, many Arizona consumers stopped making mortgage payments in a perilous attempt to qualify for help. Others waited for months for — or never received — answers on their modification requests, all while fearing that they would lose their homes; many actually lost their homes. Some consumers were misled to continue making payments in the belief that they would be able to obtain modifications and keep their homes.

Had they known they would lose their homes despite making payments, some consumers might have sough short sales or other foreclosure alternatives or simply allowed their homes to be foreclosed, saving the money from the additional payments for other necessary expenses. Other consumers lose willing buyers who could have mitigated their own (and Bank of America’s) financial losses by stepping in to purchase their homes.

Nevada’s attorney general told a very similar tale, accusing BofA of “misleading consumers with false assurances that their homes would not be foreclosed while their requests for modifications were pending, but sending foreclosure notices, scheduling auction dates, and even selling consumers’ homes while they waited for decisions.” The Upshot describes the “Boschian hell” that one Arizona family went through before having its home sold out from under it while waiting to see if it qualified for a modification.

Unfortunately, this story is all too common for homeowners seeking modifications. As Shahien Nasiripour noted today, 29,000 borrowers participating in HAMP have been stuck in the “trial modification” phase of the program for a year or more, unsure of whether they will ultimately keep their home, when that phase is only supposed to last three months. If those families are foreclosed upon in the end, they will have wasted months and months of payments that could have been used for something else.

HAMP, at this point, badly needs to fixed, and other foreclosure prevention efforts need to be undertaken. If they aren’t, the sorts of horror stories outlined above won’t stop, and the economy will continue to be weighed down by preventable foreclosures.

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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Making Money Program

Bank Of America Lawsuits Highlight Broken, Ineffective Mortgage Modification Programs

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