Why I Hate Wells Fargo

When we sold our old house in 2007, we needed a bridge loan for 7 days to cover the days between the closing of this house and our old house. Through a mortgage broker, we arranged for a line of credit against the equity in our house and we got the line of credit through Wells Fargo.  The line of credit was to be closed when we closed on the house.  Well, the line of credit was opened up but never closed.  And, on top of that, they also opened a line of credit on our new house (we did not need or want).

We wanted to close these lines of credit since they were not needed but found out that there would be a $500 charge (EACH!) to close them if they were opened for less than two years.  Screw that!  And on top of that, there was a $75 annual fee on these lines of credit (again, each!).  So we decided to wait 2 years to close the line of credits and pay a total of $300. 

Meanwhile, we refinanced our new mortgage in '09 through the mortgage broker and fortunately our mortgage was sold to Bank of America instead of WF.  We paid to close the lines of credit at the same time (and lift the lien on this house).

Even though we closed the lines of credit, Wells Fargo still had a lien in our name against our old house and we found out when the new owner tried to sell it in the summer of 2011. Yes, they filed the lien on the house a week after the house was sold by us to the new owner!  So we no longer owned the house or had the line of credit but the lien was still in place, applied after we had sold the house.  As a result, we had to send a letter to WF, requesting that they close it immediately and then we had to pay some Wells Fargo some fees for faxing information to the title company and processing.  We were charged another $50 to be rid of this damn thing!

WTF - Wells Fargo kept costing us money!

Mortgage interest rates dropped again so we refinanced our mortgage in March of 2012.  Our first payment was due in April. The mortgage was sold part way through March and we found out late in March that Wells Fargo bought it (damn!).  By this time, it was getting close to April 1st so I mailed WF a check with our payment since we had not received an official mortgage statement from them. I then called and arranged for automatic payments of mortgage to come out starting in May.

Stephen was paying bills on Friday night and noticed that our May mortgage payment had not come out. I called Wells Fargo and they said that we two months behind in our payments! But they cashed our check in April (March 30th actually)! How could we be 2 months behind? It seems that WF had taken the April payment and applied it to the principle instead of applying it as a mortgage payment. Then, since there was no April payment on record, the automatic payment scheduled for May was automatically canceled.  Just like that! Oh, but WF did not inform us of this.  That would be too easy. 

So, on Saturday morning, I made the May payment over the telephone and they made arrangements to back out April's payment and reapply it as a mortgage payment. Then I again had to arrange for automatic withdrawals of our monthly mortgage payment.  Oh,  all of this would take up to five days to correct. Aargh!

I have felt sick about this for days even though it was their error. They told me "you are lucky it is a new loan because new loan missed payments do not get reported to the credit bureau for 90 days". Fuck! It was their fault for applying the April payment incorrectly!  I did get a cursory"sorry for the mistake" over the phone. 

I called once more today to ensure that all looked ok with it (it does).

Stephen and I are both educated people and Wells Fargo has completely hosed us over twice! I get so upset thinking of people who are not as educated who are getting royally screwed by companies like Wells Fargo over these kind of mistakes. Wells Fargo has not yet sent us any information that we were late on our mortgage payment although they told me over the telephone that these letters are generated automatically and had been mailed out.  And I am awaiting the confirmation letter that the June payment (and further payments).  Also, waiting to ensure that the June payment actually does come out.

So by refinancing to save ourselves a few thousand dollars a year in interest payments, we really just created a huge headache (and stomach ache!) for ourselves.  I hate Wells Fargo and hope that my mortgage gets sold to someone else.  Soon.

Editing this on June 7 to say that our mortgage did not come out automatically on the day we had set it up for, and had received a letter stating it would be taken out on that day and the same day every month thereafter.  The payment came out the FOLLOWING day.  Great.  So now we will have be on top of this every.single.month to ensure that the payment actually comes out.  This is so frustrating!