Consumer complaint received 2018-04-07
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: AL
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Struggling to pay your bill
Sub-issue: Credit card company won't work with you while you're going through financial hardship

Complaint:
I am the Power of Attorney for my XXXX year old mother, who is XXXX, XXXX, has XXXX and lives in Alabama. 
In XX/XX/XXXX, a caregiver living in my mother 's house, had himself fraudulently declared my mother 's Power of Attorney. I was unaware of this : the correct legal route is to have the current Power of Attorney removed ( myself in XX/XX/XXXX when he did this ) and have a new POA created. This was not done. This caregiver used a small town southern real estate attorney to make this change. This attorney no longer practices law. 

In XX/XX/XXXX, when I discovered that the POA had been changed, I used my mothers elder care attorney of many years to remove the fraulent caregiver POA and reinstate me, her daughter. I filed a police report with the local authorities about the financial elder abuse aspect of the situation. ( At the time of the fradulent POA creation, my mom was well into her XXXX ). I was encouraged to sue the caregiver who had himself declared POA by mom 's elder care attorney and by the local detective who investigated the case, but because I was living at the time in XXXX, I decided not to. 

When I went to Wells Fargo bank to have the former caregiver removed from mom 's bank account, they informed me that mom had a credit card in her name ( she is XXXX, and completely dependant, so can not use a credit card ). Because only the former caregiver and my mother were listed on the account, I was told I could not have access to any information about the account. ( I did later learn that the credit card has a 22 % interest rate! ) The credit card had, at the time, a {$5000.00} balance which I began paying off in increments of {$120.00} a month from my mother 's Wells Fargo checking account. 

Currently my mother lives in her own home and is cared for by a live-in caregiver ( after the criminal caregiver was removed ) and subsists on her small Social Security stipend. This year, as her financial agent, wanting to keep mom at home and to be able to continue to pay caregivers, I had to make tough financial decisions. I went to the local Wells Fargo office and spoke to XXXX XXXX, Branch Manager in XXXX XXXX, AL. I described the situation to the branch manager and told her about XX/XX/XXXX Code of Alabama Title 38 - PUBLIC WELFARE Chapter 9E - Protecting Alabama 's Elders Act which has a section about elder financial abuse. XXXX XXXX created a case # ( XXXX ) and directed me to call a Wells Fargo executive ( XXXX XXXX XXXX who, I was told, was in the highest level of Wells Fargo Executive offices in XXXX, OR. XXXX XXXX was completely not receptive to the elder abuse aspect of the situation and told me to continue paying on the account. I stopped the automatic withdrawal payments and have not been paying on the account since the beginning of XX/XX/XXXX. Now I am receiving daily calls from Wells Fargo ( my mom 's phone number has since been disconnected to save money, so they are calling my personal number ). 

Given the original amount of the credit card balance has been paid, I'm requesting the remainder ( interest and fees ) be forgiven.

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 monetary relief