Consumer complaint received 2023-07-28
Product: Mortgage — Conventional home mortgage
Issue: Trouble during payment process — 
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY (CA)

It came to my attention in early XX/XX/XXXX that our mortgage had {$580.00} in late fees on our mortgage. We have had this mortgage since we refinanced from a former Wells Fargo Mortgage at the end of XXXX beginning of XXXX. 

Our old mortgage account # is XXXX for XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX XXXX. We had payments automatically pulled 2 times per month for that loan on the 1st and 17th of the month and we were NEVER assessed a late fee by Wells Fargo. 

When we signed the paperwork for our refinance with Wells Fargo ( to new loan # XXXX ), we indicated that we wanted to continue with the automatic payments and completed the paperwork at closing to keep the dates the same, the 1st and 17th of the month. We were NEVER informed that the grace period has obviously been changed by Wells and that payments need to be made by the 16th to avoid late fees. I found out about the grace period when I called in and asked for the late fees to be waived. The representative said he could only waive the last fee and then adjusted our payments to the 16th of the month so that we wont have this issue going forward. 

In early XXXX I did receive an email indicating that the payment was due and when I checked my Wells Fargo account it showed the payment was pending so I assumed the email was a timing issue thing. Additionally, when you look at the loan transactions online, the fees show as a credit with a negative sign in front of it. Therefore, I assumed the fees were being reversed due to the timing problem. 

I have included the letter from Wells Fargo dated XX/XX/XXXX, indicating that our automatic payments were set up. It never indicated anywhere that the 2nd payment had to be made by the 16th of the month to avoid additional fees. I sent a letter to them on XX/XX/XXXX asking them to remove the {$580.00} in late fees that is on our current loan ( ending in account number XXXX ). I received a response back from Wells Fargo dated XX/XX/XXXX, along with a copy of our note indicating that the payments needed to be received by the 15th to avoid late fees, this paragraph is the same ( Late charges for overdue payments ) paragraph that was on our old loan ( mortgage ending in XXXX ) where we also made payments on the 1st and 17th and were never charged a late fee. If something had changed with the new loans grace period, someone at Wells Fargo should have notified us that if we kept the 2nd payment on the 17th, we would we charge late fees. No one ever brought this up and since we were refinancing an already existing mortgage with Wells, we just wanted to keep everything the same and told several people involved in our refinance this information numerous times. 

I then received a second letter from Wells Fargo dated XX/XX/XXXX addressing my concern regarding the fact our current loan was to be set up exactly as our last loan at refinance and we never we charged a late fee. The explained that the current loan was set up so that the payment on the 17th was for the first of the next loans payment. Since we wanted our current loan to be set up like the last one I am not sure why when they scheduled the automatic payments that they didnt set up our current loan the same way ( i.e, the 17ths payment would go towards the future month ). They also sent me a copy of our note again and a breakdown of the account showing the late fees charged. I feel they didnt correctly set up our loan to be like our old loan and if they had we never would have been charged late fees. 

Someone at Wells obviously was aware that the current loan wasnt set up to have the 17ths payment go to a future month and so I am furious that no one ever contacted us to explain that we should move the date by one day to avoid late fees. Therefore, I this they were deceiving a consumer by not having this information spelled out for us on the auto payment form and should reimburse me for the late fees they charged.