Complaint Review: Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

Our trouble began in May of 2001, when my husband was laid off. After 10 months of his unemployment, we were within two days of foreclosure. We filed for Chapter 13 in February of 2002. Fortunately, my husband found a job shortly after that. But...

Wells Fargo has made our lives a living hell! We had missed a payment in March of 2003. When we attempted to make it up, they put our extra money into some weird suspense account. Naturally, the suspense account built up, but they kept insisting that we were behind on our payments.

Two things kind of happened at once. One was that we decided to try to refinance away from these criminals that were charging us 11.25% interest. We contacted a company that worked with people in Chapter 13 to try to refinance and discharge the bankruptcy. WF decided to declare that we'd missed our August payment instead of the March one. That meant that we had to wait even longer to refinance. Then they decided to try to foreclose on us again. I was so frightened and depressed that I was almost suicidal. It took withdrawing a LOT of money from my 401K to feed that beast, but we were finally in the clear. Or so we thought.

Meanwhile, while we had tried to get all of the paperwork together, they kept throwing roadblocks up in our path. Not only did they insist that we hadn't made payments, then they said that our BK trustee hadn't made them! We could never get get a straight answer out of ANYBODY at the company about anything. They work on obfuscation and the fact that they can throw their pet lawyers at anyone who gets out of line.

We think that the real reason they decided to get nasty with us in the summer of 2003 was that a new section of our subdivision had opened up, and the builders were putting up homes that were about double the price of ours. Our property values went up by about 25% this past year. So, they probably figured that they could get a boatload off of this fairly new house that's suddenly in a higher-value neighborhood.

Cut to the current month (July 2004). Our refinancing company (who have been VERY helpful and patient about this whole mess)calls to say that, since it's been about a year since our "missed payment", they're going to start to process the paperwork. Up go those roadblocks again! Now they're claiming that we need MORE proof of our trustee payments. It's just been one big hassle after another. Fortunately, our refi company has been great, and willing to fight for us.

If anyone watched the show "Angel", they'll understand when I refer to WF and their pet lawyers as "Wolfram and Hart" - the demonic law firm. They are obfuscating, irresponsible, and downright abusive. I'm not sure what recourse my husband and I have at this point. I've looked into the class-action lawsuit filed by ACORN, but I'm not sure if we can join it. I mean, we're in a suburban, middle-class neighborhood that is multi-racial, and we're not minorities. The ACORN suit, as I understand it, is for minorities who are victims of redlining. If anyone can confirm or deny this, please let me know! I want these guys to get what they sent out three times over!

Ann
Laurel, Maryland
U.S.A.