1st June 2008

Incompetence Rules At Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

posted in Mortgage |

Here we go again. Back about a year ago I wrote a couple of posts about how Wells Fargo Home Mortgage basically abuses their mortgage customers by treating them like fiscal delinquents because they (who does?) pay their mortgages (gasp) later than the 1st of the month but before the 15th. I have to admit that those two posts are the MOST widely read and commented on entries in this entire blog.

Wells Fargo SucksWells Fargo SucksWell, they’re at it again. One of the comments I recently received on one of those prior posts had to do with a mortgage customer who sent in an extra mortgage payment with their regular monthly mortgage payment and explained that it was AN EXTRA MORTGAGE PAYMENT. Wells Fargo, in their wisdom, proceeded to put the extra money into “suspense.” Suspense, in this case, is an accounting term meaning, “I don’t know where this money is supposed to go so I’ll just leave it here “in suspense” until I figure out where it’s supposed to go.” Apparently, the people who process payments can’t read. Anyway…

This brings me to my most recent experience: About 3 months ago, I replaced the homeowner’s insurance policy on one of my rental properties, right about the time when the existing policy was to expire, with a less expensive one. Notifications ended up crossing in the mail and Wells Fargo paid for both the old and new insurance policy premiums thereby causing the monthly payment to increase significantly. I should mention that this was through no fault of their own.

What I take offense to is the following: About 1 month ago, I called in SPECIFICALLY to find out how much I should pay into escrow to make up for the other policy premium that was paid out. The customer service representative gave me an amount which I paid in with the regular monthly payment. No problem there.

This month, when I got the new monthly statement, the amount of the payment had not changed. So, I called in to customer service to find out why.

The first rep I spoke with basically misunderstood my question and quickly handed me off (and then disappeared off the line) to the insurance department who explained that the payment increased because they paid out on two insurance policies, which of course I already knew. I thanked her, hung up and called customer service back.

I explained the story to the next rep who let me know AGAIN why the payment was what it was. AGAIN I explained the situation and asked her to explain to me how the rep that gave me the incorrect amount to pay, arrived at that number.

The representative proceeded to tell me that she did not know how the previous rep arrived at that number and the amount due was WAY more than I had paid. At that point, completely frustrated, I hung up the phone while she was asking me, “Have I answered all your questions today?” The end result is that I will have to continue paying, per month, more than I should because I can’t get correct numbers out of the MORTGAGE company.

It seems to me that not only do these people not care about solving problems, they are not trained, managed and/or equipped by Wells Fargo to do a competent job. I guess Wells Fargo is waiting for the Federal Trade Commission to open an inquiry into this kind of behavior or better yet, they’re waiting for a class-action lawsuit from their own customers who just can’t take it anymore. How this division of Wells Fargo is still in business, I just don’t know.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Mortgage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There is currently one response to “Incompetence Rules At Wells Fargo Home Mortgage”

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  1. 1 On August 11th, 2008, Meredith said:

    I worked as a customer service rep. at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage for about six months straight out of college. I believe I was the only college graduate in my “class.” I say “class” because before CSRs are out on the floor taking customer calls they go through about three weeks of training.

    Working at WFHM was a horrible experience. It got to the point where I would pray that I would get in a car accident over lunch so that I wouldn’t have to go back to work.

    99.9% of the calls I got were from frusterated homeowners (why else would they be calling?). Sometimes the homeowners were simply confused and needed someone to explain to them what was going on, other times they were pissed off at the company for good reason.

    Unfortunately reps are ill-equiped to handle most issues. Training is limited and reps truely have no authority. Reps are evaluated on the number of calls they take per hour - not on how well they resolve the issue, mind you, but how quickly they get the caller off the phone. Homeowners would frequently request to talk to a supervisor but we were instructed to do whatever it took to avoid handing the call over to the supervisor. Little did they know, the “supervisors” are simply CSRs with more experience. Most true supervisors never take calls.

    We were usually able to see which CSRs the customer talked to the last time they called in but we were not allowed to contact that rep - so basically there is no accountability.

    Just FYI - payments are not processed by actual people, they are processed by machines so notes/instructions sent with payments are not read.

    I don’t know what the purpose of my post was. Basically I just hope that people remember that they are mad at Wells Fargo, not the human on the other end, and that they *try* not to yell or swear at the rep who is trying their best.

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