Consumer complaint received 2023-03-02
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: TX
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process

Complaint:
Wells Fargo forced me to quick sell my house. 
They violated section 50 of the Texas constitution. 

*Wells Fargo ( WF ) took over the serving of our mortgage. 
*Our payment was XXXX XXXX. 
*WF paid our property taxes, without notifying us, and without asking us if we needed help. 
*WF raised our monthly payment to over XXXX  XXXX, and sent us a new monthly statement. This included our mortgage payment plus our new accrued property tax payment, plus the amount to pay back the current property taxes. 
*I contacted WF by phone to inquire how our monthly payment went so high, and they explained the above. I told them I wouldnt be able to afford this payment.

*The Home Affordability Act was in place, and we needed help. XXXX XXXXy XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX nearly went out of business, my wife lost her job, and our house had drastically dropped in value. We needed help. 
*We made the XXXX  XXXX payment for 7-8 months, and every month I would call WF and tell them we needed help from one of the current government programs that were available at the time. Each time Id explain this to WF, their representatives would tell me I needed to stop making my payments for 90 days! And then, they could help me! At this point Id never even been late for a payment, and my credit score was very good. 
*Finally, after making 7-8 monthly payments I called WF and they again told me they could help me after I stop making payments. 
*we stopped paying, and started through their processes of determining how they could help. Sometimes they would tell me we made too much money, and the next day a different representative would tell us we do t make enough. 
*They kept making us redo our financials, and wed wait and wait to hear from them, and they wouldnt ever reach back out to us. Months would go by, and we would call WF, and theyd say we need to update the financials AGAIN. 
*In total, we updated our financials for them at least 9 times over a course of about 13 months. 
*WF finally said they could lower our payment by {$30.00}! 
*They Federal Expressed the new documents to our home, and told me we had to sign the documents or lose the house. The girl in the phone told me, what choice do you have now. At least sign the documents and then stop paying again, and start the whole process over, AGAIN! 
*we signed the documents and XXXX them back in the packet THEY provided. 
*we decided we were going to sell our house and move. 
*while talking to our realtor, she told us this did not seem right, and told us to go XXXXXXXX section 50 of the Tx constitution *we went straight home that day and did this. 
*there was an attorney here in XXXX who was pulling together a class action lawsuit over this very issue. 
*I called and spoke to him, and explained everything. He asked me to come to his office THAT day to show him our documents. I did, and he said, WF definitely violated the constitution in our case! He further asked us to join his lawsuit as THE named plaintiffs, David and Tracy Hawkins vs Wells Fargo Bank. He expected this to be a class action lawsuit. 
*We did everything he told us to do, and we tried suing the bank. 
*This went on for several months before we went to court for an initial hearing. 
*In our hearing, our attorney seemed very nervous and unorganized, and he explained to me later that he got everything on record that neede to get on record. The banks attorneys ( 5-6 total ) were very organized, and seemed confident they were going to beat us up. 
*Our attorney lost another case, and told everyone in our lawsuit that we needed to prepare to lose our homes because the lawsuit he just lost would have a bad outcome on our lawsuit. 
*a couple days later, our attorney reached out to me and told me he would like to move forward with our case as an individual case. In the conversation, he explained he needed to get paid for his time for this new case, and he wanted to start immediately by reviewing all our documents. 
*In the attempt to understand, I said, you mean the documents youve had on you desk all these months? This made him mad, and he hung up on me. 
*I reached out to his partner, and his partner told me they didnt want to work with me anymore! 
*A couple days later I was driving in my car, and my attorney called me and screamed at me to sign a document he had emailed over the night before. I told him I hadnt read it yet, and in a very angry voice he told me to sign the document. It was a withdrawal from the WF lawsuit, and it was written EXTREMELY one sided to WF. 
*My attention screamed at me that this is the best deal we would get, because otherwise WF was coming after us for hundreds of thousands of dollars for their attorneys fees and expenses! 
*my attorney was extremely upset, and we finally signed the document. 
*WF then forced us into a quick sale, and we lost our house.

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