The Military Dependopotomus

Finally, the age old skank has a fresh, new name:

Wells Fargo, So Far You Wouldn't Go.

These bankers aren't serious about your money.

Overall
Rated 1 out of 5

The customer service in the beginning was great, and everyone I spoke with has always been very polite, but their work is not reflected in their social skills.

Before I go any further, and people start to make assumptions, my credit score is in the Excellent range, and almost has a perfect score. My husband's just shy of Excellent in the Good standing. We have no debt, aside from student loans. My husband's pay is stable, and we were never shopping for a house outside of our means. We actually did not look for houses that were more than half of what our pre-approval amount was.

When I was pre-approved, everything happened quickly. We found a home to make an offer on the next day, and had our offer accepted and locked in a contract within a week.

The minute the completed housing contract went to Wells Fargo, things started going downhill.

First, the sellers agreed to pay closing costs of $3,300. Our banker at Wells Fargo wrote it down in their system as $3,030. An easily made typo that I corrected her about, but has still yet to be fixed or applied to our loan information.

We then got a big contract packet in the mail. It listed $60k in debts that were not ours, and that did not appear in any of our credit reports. They said they made a note to fix this error, and, weeks later, that still hasn't happened. The most updated contract I has shows these debts with and * that says "Do Not Included in Total," but, if you look at the total amount of liabilities, they are being added in!

My absolute final straw was the unclear nature of their contract. I couldn't figure out if they were trying to cheat me or if the numbers were adding up properly (but extremely complicatedly), and no one could be bothered to take the time to go over these concerns. My biggest problem was that we were putting 10% down, and paying all closing fees upfront, yet, they claimed that our "Loan Amount" was higher than even the purchase price of the home. The "Amount Financed" section showed a slightly lower amount, but it still did not compensate for us paying fees and 10% down. If I am give the bank cash, then shouldn't my loan be for what I actually borrowed, not the total amount?

Just to give a numerical example (that are not my real numbers), lets say the Loan Amount was listed at $65k, the Amount Financed said $62k, but the house price was only $60k total. By my logic, and the logic of our second bank, if I put 10% down and pay all fees upfront, then Loan Amount should be $54k - period!

Since no one could explain why the numbers were adding up that way, I felt that this might be a way to scam in some extra bucks in interest by pretending that I borrowed the full amount and made a giant payment days later (since interested is calculated and compounded daily at most banks). Yeah, that smaller amount of interest might only be a drop in their bucket at a mega-giant like Wells Fargo, but if you do that to thousands of people, you could come up with billions in unjustified revenue.

My house was being sold via Fannie Mae, and so the contract was pretty tight and standard. They allowed ten days for the bank to do an inspection, and back out if they found any unacceptable defects. The day our contract was finalized and given to Wells Fargo, we were told that they would call us by the end of the week to get the inspection set up. We would have to pay $400 upfront (normal price) and they would take care of the rest.

THEY NEVER CALLED! The inspection/back out period came and went, and never once has anyone said another word about it! If you are dealing with so many home loans, I would think that you would have streamlined and organized the processes better that this. To this day they have still never contacted us to schedule any inspections.

My biggest frustration is with the underwriting department. Nothing gets done, they are slow, they ignore your closing date, they want documentation, and when you provide it, they want it all over again, or want a new set of information. Then, they take at least a week to verify each bit of information when you only have 30 days to close!

Wells Fargo also didn't know anything about their loan types. I was given information about VA Loans that I knew was false, but they assured me that they were correct. Well, a month into the loan process they "suddenly" discovered that they were wrong, but acted like it was my fault. So they screwed up, but do they offer to fix it? No, they wash their hands and tell me that going back and requesting a different type of loan meant that I had to go speak with the loan originator (I believe that's the right term), wait for them to respond and send it to underwriting, and then, after another week or two was wasted, I might hear back with a new list of demands.

Another thing that I hated was that our banker went on vacation right after sending us a list of required documents that they needed ASAP. With Wells Fargo, if your banker is gone, no one else will step up to assist you in their absence. I get that things happen and these employees are people with their own lives, but I want to be able to speak with ANY banker who can access my account and work with me when my designated person is unavailable for more than 24 hours. I just think that's good business sense myself.

They don't value your time or your business as a customer, and I will never attempt to bank there again.

As a side note, when we sent the earnest money to the realtor for the house, we had no local bank to get the required cashier's check, so we went to a local Wells Fargo branch, thinking that they would help us since our home loan was going to be through them. They wasted 45 minutes of our limited time (we had to overnight a cashier's check that day) trying to talk us into signing up for a bank account that we didn't want, claiming that no one at any bank would give us a cashier's check without first having an account with that bank and we would just waste more time if we didn't sign on the dotted line at that moment.

We didn't want another checking/savings account, so we left. Well, next door, the military bank gave us a cashier's check for a $10 fee! Funny how Wells Fargo claimed "no one" would do it when "someone" was just fifty feet away!

It all got to the point where I didn't trust them, and they had made enough errors that I really couldn't rely on anything that they told me. It was a headache, and I was so worried that they wouldn't get their rears in gear to close on time, so I left for another bank.

When I informed my realtor of this change, he said that it was no problem, BUT told me that, in his experience, Wells Fargo and Bank of America are both terrible in their mortgage department. He said that 75% of their home loans don't close for one reason or another, and if you search for either bank's names and reviews, you can see lots of people that agree with that sentiment.


Customer service
Rated 3 out of 5

The two bankers that I spoke with were very polite. But, no one could get anything accomplished. Every little thing needed a different banker to handle it, and the banker you needed always managed to be out of their office. On top of that, it seemed that no one was cross-communicated, which wasted a lot of my time. I don't mind to repeat myself when need be, but these situations were slowing our loan process down by days per issue.


Types/options
Rated 1 out of 5

They don't know their mortgage products, and they wasted a month of our time trying to get us into a mortgage that we don't qualify for. I researched online and found that, if you have a VA loan and pay x% down, you get a lower VA Funding Fee. Well, the bankers knew nothing about that, and claimed it was a false claim on my part, and that the fee was the exact same percentage rate, no matter the total of the loan (WRONG!). They also made claims that credit scores, debt, and down payments don't affect your interest rate when I know that is not true.