My most pertinent personal experience with corporate greed and arrogance came to pass compliments of Wells Fargo. Mind you, I never even negotiated my 30 year fixed rate mortgage with Wells Fargo in the first place. Rather, it was sold to them without my knowledge, or consent. When I lost my professional income within the second year of owning my Las Vegas home, I inquired about renegotiating the INTEREST (not the principle), because those rates had dropped as the bank manipulated housing bubble burst. But because I could still make my mortgage payment out of a partial military pension, I was not eligible for a restructuring, even though Wells Fargo had been given a government bail out to do just that.
I felt they had simply blown me off, and there was nothing I could or can do about it. Wells Fargo is counting on my personal code of ethics: I won’t walk away and stick them with this still sinking ‘underwater’ mortgage.
Yet they are not holding themselves to anywhere near the same ethical standards. Case in point: my annually calculated escrow statement arrived recently, announcing that my monthly mortgage payment would be increasing, in order to make up for a deficit being held to pay my property taxes and home owner’s insurance. As a retiree, I have the gift of time to check out what I am being told: I shouldn’t HAVE to do so, but under the circumstances, this IS Wells Fargo I’m dealing with!
So I went to my local Fargo branch to speak with someone face to face: my insurance and taxes figures didn’t correspond to what they were reporting to me. When I told the receptionist I wanted to discuss my mortgage with someone, he said I needed to speak with their ‘mortgage specialist,’ who wasn’t there: I’d have to make an appointment. Then, realizing that mine was an existing mortgage, he informed me I wouldn’t be able to see her anyway: I’d have to call an 800 number. Annoyed, I was also relieved: the last time I had a scheduled appointment with their mortgage specialist, she showed up twenty minutes late, having stopped to do errands on her way to work.
The first 800 number I called was my home insurance policy company, confirming the lower rate I had recalculated with them 4 months earlier. The agent then put me on hold and called the Wells Fargo 800 number, to confirm the actual insurance premium to be paid out of my escrow account. When she tried to switch me over to the Wells Fargo rep so I could be assured that the account was corrected, the rep refused to talk with me: THAT call was over; I’d have to make my own 800 number call.
But the next number I called wasn’t to Wells Fargo, it was to the tax office, requesting a duplicate bill of what was being paid out to Wells Fargo quarterly. When I received it, I could clearly confirm that what Wells Fargo was claiming was MORE than what the taxes actually were.
THEN I called the 800 number and spoke with a gracious and helpful Wells Fargo agent who recalculated my escrow account using MY figures, and assured that my new monthly mortgage payments would be slightly LESS rather than more….
This appeased me a bit. Then. But now, writing about it makes me angry. I want to lash out. Maybe even hit someone. Then I remember that I have an M.A. in Peace Studies (Antioch) and served on the board and as a volunteer with the National Peace Academy Campaign that helped move a bill through congress that established the U.S. Institute of Peace (1985). I remind myself that I am a follower of the non-violent methods of Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. But then I remember that all three went to jail for their civil disobedience against the oppressive conditions of their separate eras. DANG!
Maybe Michael Moore is right: it is time to get up off the couch and get involved in the mounting ‘Occupy’ movement!
Stay tuned…..
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