Consumer complaint received 2022-09-29
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY
State: VA
Product: Mortgage
Sub-product: FHA mortgage
Issue: Struggling to pay mortgage

Complaint:
I am a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage customer. I have been XXXX. I use XXXX to automatically deduct mortgage payments from my bank account and have been using XXXX for many years. Thus, I barely pay attention to mortgage payments on a monthly basis other than making sure there is sufficient funds in the account to make the payment. Yesterday, when looking for tax information about my mortgage, I logged into the Wells Fargo website and noticed that I have been charged {$150.00} every month ( as far back as the record shows on the site ) for a " Late Payment ''. Thus, I started a Chat with Wells Fargo on the site. The Chat person, XXXX, looked into it and told me that I had missed an AutoPay payment in XX/XX/XXXX, so since then every month when I pay on time Wells Fargo applies that payment to the previous month 's payment and charges me a late payment. I asked why I was not contacted about this. XXXX said that they called my telephone number and emailed me. However, I had no missed calls from Wells Fargo and no emails about late payments. 
While on Chat, I checked my email. I found no email messages about a late payment. When I kept inquiring about the emails and what they would say, XXXX said, yes I was correct Wells Fargo is not allowed to say that I have a late payment in the email due to some kind of PII concerns. 
I asked, " then how would I know I have a late payment? '' He said I should have received a phone call. I never received a call so he checked the number they had in their system. At the same time, I checked the numbers listed in My Profile on wellsfargo.com. The number he had was erroneous ( starting with XXXX area code, my area code is XXXX ). I have had this exact same number since XXXX and have not changed it. I could see in the Wells Fargo My Profile that my correct number was there in 3 times : Home, Mobile, Work. But XXXX said he could not see the numbers from My Profile because their internal contact system uses different numbers from My Profile. 
I also checked the wellsfargo.com Message Center including Alerts. There were no alerts for my account ( 0 ). 
Long story short, XXXX updated my number in the system and I got a call from a lady at Wells Fargo while still chatting with XXXX. The lady said I owed over {$1000.00} in late fees. I said that now that I know I will make the missed XXXX payment and catch up but late fees should be removed. I can't see how they made any effort to contact me. She said that yes the emails they sent did not clarify that a payment was missed and no they had not made contact with me by email but I still owed late fees. I do not think it is unacceptable to charge without notification. I asked for a refund of the late fees upon successfully making a payment to bring the account up to date. She said that they could refund one month 's payment and if I had a problem with it perhaps I should contact XXXX  and CFPB. So that is what I am doing.

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