Consumer complaint received 2023-03-17
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: DC
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
Wells Fargo had been miss-paying our property taxes, and have now taken action to charge us a second time for the taxes and negatively affected our credit score. We found out on XX/XX/XXXX that the XXXX tax office had sold our home in a tax sale due to almost XXXX  years of unpaid property taxes. We have an escrow account as required by our refi with Wells Fargo ( WF ) and WF paid taxes. We had escrow statements showing taxes were paid, but DC said none had been paid, and complicating matters XXXX govt had the wrong mailing address for us. We contacted WF, who immediately blamed XXXX. I spent weeks trying to determine what had happened and ensure we still had our home. We have never made a late payment, and WF had been sending us Escrow adjustments and collecting money from us to pay taxes. 

After XXXX weeks of desperate calls finally WF told me they had made the error. That when they originated the payment account they made a typo. They said they would pay the back taxes and the current taxes and cover all penalties and issues. They never sent me any documentation when I asked for it. I am still waiting on a letter they claim to have mailed on XX/XX/XXXX that was a form letter stating a tax sale was averted. They finally provided to me via email on XX/XX/XXXX when I called to ask for a status update. I was told they had made payments to avert the tax sale and would work to collect the money from our escrow that had been payed to the wrong property. 

XXXX days ago I got an alert from my credit monitoring that WF has raised the principle balance on my mortgage. They had added an " Advance '' payment in an amount exceeding {$11000.00} to our account. No letter or call or any other notice had been given. This was flagged to me by another bank because it lowered my credit score enough it was pushing me from XXXX to XXXX. My husband 's score was also lowered. 

I called WF and from what I understand they " Advanced '' against my account the tax amount that should have been paid from my escrow for past years taxes. Instead. In essence they have charged me twice for taxes we already paid into escrow but that their error paid to the wrong property. We had already paid that money via the escrow account. I was told that as they try to recoup the money they applied the advance which raised the principle and reported that my principle balance has gone up triggering detrimental effects on my credit score. They said they assumed the advance would go down as they recoup the money -- again money they paid in error and we did not control -- but that does not mean my score will go up. I was told they could do nothing and they would not remove the " advance ''. 

We did nothing wrong. We paid the money WF told us to pay, we reviewed our escrow documents, and apparently had been receiving at best inaccurate or at worse fraudulent escrow statements. Making matters worse only shared updated tax pay out information and any details only today after I demanded information. I had to find out about these changes from another bank. I was promised updates and returned calles from WF that never happened. I had to spend hours on the phone to get information and much of that information was inaccurate. I had to use my vacation time to make calls because WF was so bad at responding and giving my information, but I took that time because I did not want to lose my home over their mismanagement and I did not want my credit score to tank because of their mistakes. 

My family was hoping to move, but now both my husband and I have lower credit scores. We spent weeks afraid we were losing out home after doing everything right, and now we will have worse rates all due to WF mismanagement and mistakes.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation