Consumer complaint received 2017-09-06
Product: Student loan — Private student loan
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem — Investigation took more than 30 days
Company: WELLS FARGO & COMPANY (WI)

I 'm a cosigner on a private student loan with Wells Fargo. I have been paying this particular loan back for at least 8 years, never missing a single payment in the process. The amount that I pay every month is usually around {$82.00} dollars which has always been on auto-pay. In XX/XX/XXXX of this year, I switched banks and had to update all of my auto-pay for information for all of my accounts along with this student loan account. My new bank mistakenly gave me my savings account number instead of my checking account number and this caused all of my bills to end up going to the wrong account. Fortunately, I noticed this mistake within a week and was able to contact all of my accounts and everyone affected reversed any and all fees and the situation was fixed. I also went online to the Wells Fargo website and updated my auto-pay information like all of the other accounts to the proper checking account number. This was done in the middle of XX/XX/XXXX, well before the XX/XX/XXXX date when the amount would be due for that month. I received an e-mail on XX/XX/XXXX about an issue with my automatic payment, so I went online and once again re-enrolled in the automatic payment making extra careful that all my bank routing numbers and checking account numbers were correct. On XX/XX/XXXX, I logged on the Wells Fargo website and decided to pay off completely a 2nd smaller student loan I also had with Wells Fargo in the amount of {$160.00}. While on the website there were no messages indicating that there were any further issues with my auto-pay, and no alerts to tell me that a payment was due soon on my account. I have several accounts that I handle online, and without exception they all inform you in big bold red letters when a payment is coming due soon if no payment has been scheduled or if auto-pay is not enabled. Figuring everything was fine I logged off the Wells Fargo website feeling satisfied that I had one more account paid off in full. It was not until early  XXXX when I first found out that there was still a problem with my student loan payments. During this whole time i was never notified by either e-mail or phone indicating there was an issue with my account and that a payment had not been received. I only found out there was a problem because they contacted my mother whose name is listed on the loan, but at no time did they ever try to notify me that something was wrong with my account. When my mom made me aware that someone from Wells Fargo had gotten a hold of her about my student loan account I went online and saw that there was still no auto-pay set up on the account and the account was now 2 months past due. I immediately made a payment for {$170.00} on XX/XX/XXXX and again re-enrolled in auto-pay. By this point a negative report had been sent to the 3 credit bureaus showing I was late 30 days on a payment. My XXXX score took a 50-point hit and pushed it below the XXXX level I had been working towards to get a home equity line of credit at my bank. I spoke to the Wells Fargo customer service department on XX/XX/XXXX and explained to them the issue. The very nice and helpful customer service rep sent the request for my dispute of the negative credit report to be looked at, and explained that I would get a response in the mail. She also notified that my account was no longer past due but that there was still no auto-pay setup up on my account and that my previous attempts might not have been processed since there was an amount past due on the account. I paid {$100.00} dollars that day on the website and waited for the payment to post and once again re-enrolled in auto-pay on XX/XX/XXXX. I finally received a response to my dispute on XX/XX/XXXX and they informed me that after reviewing the information they verified that the negative report was accurate. I once again contacted the customer service department and escalated the issue to a supervisor who offered to look at it more closely including the calls that were made. After a couple of hours, she called back and informed me that since they did make an attempt to call my mother and payments were not made on time there was nothing that they could do to change the negative credit report.