Consumer complaint received 2017-12-22
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: MA
Product: Vehicle loan or lease
Sub-product: Loan
Issue: Struggling to pay your loan
Sub-issue: Denied request to lower payments

Complaint:
Wells Fargo Dealer Services financed my purchase of a XXXX XXXX several years ago. In XXXX, at the age of XXXX, I was RIFd by my company. As you can imagine, that led to a dramatic decline in monthly income and I eventually began missing payments on a variety of things, including my auto loan. One of their Customer Service Representatives ( CSR ) eventually -- months later -- suggested that I apply to their Hardship Loan Refinance program. At {$370.00} a month, my car loan was the largest bill I had remaining. Taking the balance and spreading it out over a three or four-year period would have reduced my monthly exposure and ensured that the loan was repaid to WFDS. That should have been a win-win. I happily filled out the paperwork and waited. After a few weeks, I received a notice telling me that my participation in the hardship loan refinance program had been declined ... due to my low credit score! 

Now ... my credit was near perfect prior to my being laid off. I had never missed nor been as much as one day late in paying my WFDS auto loan. There was no question that my financial problems were all a result of being RIFd. My friends in the finance industry were mystified : the low credit score ( along with my history ) should have been evidence that I was a viable candidate for a Hardship Loan refinance ... not that my application should be rejected. 

When I called them back and asked if there was an appeal ... the answer was no. When I asked what the approval rate for the program was, I was told that was ( admittedly ) none of my business. They told me I needed to sell the car immediately or get it refinanced somewhere else. I told them that I would continue to default on payments until they had to give me the statutorily required notice to repossessabout three months in arrears -- at which point I would pay the balance and start the clock again. After I did this twice, they invoked the acceleration clause in the agreement, demanded that I pay the entire {$7000.00} immediately or face repossession. Now ... if I was having trouble paying {$400.00} a month ... where the XXXX did they think I was going to get {$7000.00}. 

Given the history of Wells Fargo staff manipulating customer accounts, it seems clear to me that a case can be made that an awful lot of bad people work for Wells Fargo. People who willingly commit fraud ; people who have no problem damaging the financial life of their customers ; people who dont bother to follow the law. 
What astounded me though, as I went through all this with WFDS, is that they are also bad businesspeople. There were a couple of times where they had a choice to make, one in which they could increase the probability of recovering their investment from me or stick a corporate finger in my eye and increase the probability of their recovering nothing. The business case choice would have been the one that maximized the probability of getting what they were owed by me. Without fail, every single time, they chose to stick their finger in my eye. 
Im counting their so-called Hardship Loan Refinance program as the first example. Why even say you have such a program for people with financial problems if you use the evidence of those problems to reject the application for assistance. Why wait for months to tell me that the program existed to begin with? Given my perfect payment record prior to the layoff, would it have hurt XXXX to try? Its not like they were increasing the amount of risk they were carrying. Agreeing to refinance would have actually lowered that risk. What did they get in rejecting me ... except for the satisfaction of sticking their finger in my eye. 

As already noted, I had begun to pay the account every three months -- when I would get the Commonwealth of Massachusetts mandated notice from them that I had to pay $ XXXX or they would begin the repossession process. I didnt mind paying this way ... it gave me time to stage my payments, robbing XXXX from time to time to pay XXXX. They apparently had a problem with it though, because I did it twice and they called the loan, accelerated the payment and demanded it all in a lump sum. They knew the story. They knew my income had mostly vanished. They knew about my prior spotless payment history. Their choice was to continue to accept late, but ultimately complete payment ( including late fees! ) or demand everything now and push me closer to Chapter XXXX ... in which they would get nothing but the satisfaction of sticking their finger in my eye. 

After more discussions, I was told that WFDS would accept a payment of {$5000.00} in settlement, instead of the {$7000.00} they had been demanding. It would have been helpful to have known that earlier. The settlement could be paid in four monthly payments of about {$1200.00}. I figured out that, with a little borrowed money, not paying some other bills, taking into account the timing of my Social Security check and driving for XXXX ( not advised ... I have a XXXX condition that limits the amount of sitting I can do at any given time ) I could come up with the {$1200.00} ... but in two monthly payments of {$600.00} each. I called the CSR back ... and was told that this was impossible. It had to be in a lump sum. No other option was possible ; no further discussion was allowed. Why? What difference does it make if they get one check for {$1200.00} every month or two checks for {$600.00} every month? Again, I dont get the business sense here. All I get is some driving corporate need to be complete XXXX and theres that finger in my eye again. 

In the last conversation I had with WFDS, I agreed to voluntarily return the car. I was hoping to avoid a formal repossession notice on my already damaged credit record. The CSR I spoke with accepted that and told me that they would be in touch with a time and date for the turnover. She seemed sincere ... even somewhat ruefully understanding of the situation. Three days later, around XXXX, I get a phone call from my neighbor wanting to know if I was aware that someone was towing my car. I was given no notice, no chance to get my personal property out of the car. The last I saw of the car was my handicapped sticker on my windshield disappearing down the street. I dont even know what I had in the trunk or back seat. They had agreed to let me voluntarily turn it in. Evil. Evil to the very end. 
So now I have a formal notice that WFDS has sold the car ... and that I still owe them {$3000.00}. Its called a deficiency balance. I will be filing for Chapter XXXX, so they will never see a dime of this and I have been telling them that from day 1 so that they would have a context for their decision making. They basically had several opportunities to avoid this ... to recover their investment ... and they decided, every single time, that the better decision was to stick their corporate finger in my eye rather than to be decent businesspeople. 
All in all, Wells Fargos primary interest in its customers seems to be less focused on providing excellent services to them and more on determining how to best exploit or damage them. 

If you have read this, Im sure you can reach your own conclusion. Mine is simply this : If you want to avoid the possibility of being financially exploited or forced to do things that are no way in your best interestseven though there are win-win alternatives availablethen there is no question in my mind that you should avoid doing business with Wells Fargo. At. All. costs. 


XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, MA XXXX XXXX XXXX

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