Consumer complaint received 2017-03-13
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: NJ
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: Conventional fixed mortgage
Issue: Loan modification,collection,foreclosure

Complaint:
I am a widow who has owned her home since XXXX and made mortgage payments faithfully for over 20 years. Due to a job layoff after 38 years in my field and the death of my husband I went through a tremendous hardship. As things were falling apart financially for me I reached out to my mortgage lender Wells Fargo in hopes that they would help me get back on my feet with a modification or restructuring of my loan. However, I was shocked when they told me they would work with me but I needed to give them an ADVANCE FEE OF {$7000.00} in order to get Wells Fargo to review for assistance. I have since found out that this is very unusual and not the normal protocol. I could not come up with these funds and fell further behind and at that time Wells Fargo finally allowed me to be reviewed for assistance programs. However, this was not very productive, the communication was terrible, there was no assigned manager to my account and I had to send the same papers over and over to Wells Fargo yet they still seemed to misplace them. Now I am facing a foreclosure sale date later this month. I ca n't believe this is happening to me. 
These issues began in XXXX when my husband passed away from a XXXX XXXX. About a year later I was laid off from my position as an XXXX after 38 years in that field. Everything happened all at once and I was overwhelmed and I could not keep up with my mortgage payment. I reached out to the agents at Wells Fargo in an attempt to get some relief. However, instead of offering an option that would actually help me save my home ( especially considering that there was only 5 years left on the term ) I was told I MUST provide a large lump sum upfront fee ( {$7000.00} ) in order to even be CONSIDERED for a modification. I have been told that this is typically not a condition of a modification review so I am not sure what program the agents at Wells Fargo were looking at and what options were considered. I continued to follow up with Wells Fargo and as mentioned before, now that I was further behind I was told that I could apply for a loan modification. I prepared the documents and submitted them to Wells Fargo, but the communication was bad and it was hard to move the process forward. I did not have a single dedicated contact assigned to help and it seemed that no matter how many times I provided the paperwork it was never enough Now I have a sale date coming up this month and I am besides myself over this situation. It is not right to foreclose on a widow who has paid on her mortgage for over 20 years. I am back to work and making a decent living and I feel It is not right to deny access to government programs that could have fixed this issue two years ago because Wells Fargo wanted to ignore guidelines and demand a {$7000.00} down payment out of me. It is not right to take {$30.00} billion dollars from the taxpayers as part of a bailout and then refuse to work with the homeowners who need this help.

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