Wells Fargo Run Amock

When the threat of unemployment hit me square in the face a year ago I started looking at the family finances.  Specifically, I wanted to see if I could do something about our mortgages, particularly our second.  Our ten year fixed note with Wachovia was killing us.  The bank hemmed and hawed and said nothing but it doesn't really matter because now Wells Fargo holds the note.

I've had mortgages with Wells Fargo for more than a decade.  I've never missed a payment and in fact pay on a bi-weekly basis.  Still we plunged ahead with the pursuit of a mortgage modification not knowing how long I would be without a job. 

By March of this year WF said we qualified for the modification on a trial basis.  Our payments would drop by more than 100 dollars over the next three months but no one from Wells seemed to know what a final deal would look like.  It took the credit counselor forced on us by Wells to contact to explain what was happening.  The bank was dropping our rate by about 3/4 of a percent but adding $5000 to the principal.  Of course the credit counselor was taken aback by the fact that the Czarina and I had no "debt" per say and that our credit scores were 800 plus.

Finally WF was ready to finalize the new deal.  When I told Curtis, the guy from Wells Fargo that had guided us through the process that I had a job now, he was overjoyed.  He told me that only improved our chances of being approved for the modification.

The deal WF was offering was a good one if we were to keep the house for more than five years.  But then the wheels started falling off.  First, I went through hell of getting automatic withdrawal for the mortgage taken off my Wachovia account and put on my new WF account in California.  It was a never ending circle of phone calls and emails that finally led me going to the branch bank and getting them to fix the mess.

Right on the heels of that one of their mortgage folks called saying we had too much money saved in stocks and the like to qualify for the modification.  I was stunned.  I said fine, we'll go back to our original 5.5 percent 30 year fixed and call it a day.  I was tired of the endless paperwork and faxing I had gone through to get this far.  The gal started choking.  "Well we can look at one of our other plans and see if we can do something else," said responded.  I said, no thanks, I'll have this paid off in 15 years so that's fine.

Since then I've been bombarded on a daily basis from Wells Fargo with phone calls, sometimes twice a day.  Each time I repeat that I don't want the modification and they act stunned.  I don't know what in the hell is going on but it's getting old.  Part of me wants to stop paying both mortgages as a big FU to Wells Fargo.  We haven't done anything wrong and we've never missed a payment on either mortgage.  I feel like we're under siege.  Please let it end.