I had a different mortgage company at first and my mortgage was a guaranteed insured FHA mortgage. I never even had a late payment in all the time with my previous mortgage holder & never had increases.
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage later bought my note. Within the first few months of accqustion I received a letter saying my escrow was short $800! (I paid a year in advance at closing & continued to pay the entire time I made a mortgage payment a percentage, I closed at the beginning of a year so I had almost 2 years by the end of my first year of payments in escrow). They said if I didn't pay it in full my payment would go up $60/mo and even if I did pay it it would still rise by $35.
I didn't have a spare $800 at the time, so my payment went up. Not even 6 months later I get another escrow shortage letter saying it was again, short. I had been paying money in with my house payment plus the increase of $60. I called & got the run around. It was raising again, another $45. So $105 over my original payment.
I went to the tax office, my taxes had not raised at this point and I was being taxed on a low amount because I homesteaded my home. It showed I was being taxed on 28k less than the actual value of my home for all the exemptions.
I then called my insurance company and my insurance raised only by $200 for the whole year, so that should not have warranted a $105 increase in my payment PER MONTH.
I contacted wells fargo back after my extensive research, and they said to cancel my current insurance pay the first quarter and then have them bill wells fargo for the differance. That would reduce my payment to the original amount. I did. THen wells fargo didn't pay the rest when it was time, so my insurance cancelled. They got their own insurance without my knowledge, and charged me double what my insurance normally costs out of my escrow. I fought it.
So they said get another quote & they would work it out.in the mean time they received a refund from the insurance that originally was paid that I cancelled to bring my payments down. They still say my escrow is short. They refused to pay for the new insurance and then charged me back for the expensive crap insurance of their choice. It covers them, not me or my belongings.
I just deal with it, but it caused my payment to go up yet again, for "more escrow shortages" I have emailed, and have emails, I have called, I have requested copies of my accounting and guess what no one can figure it out. My payment has now gone over $200/month that it was when I closed only 3 years ago. Wells fargo has had it for 1 & half years of that 3 years. It never went up until they bought it.
Because this is a huge amount, and becuase my ac unit went out and we had a water leak I fell behind. I started paying one payment plus and extra 130 with the payment for the back payment to get it wiped out. All the money i paid extra went to the escrow shortage (eventhough my payments never went down) Because wells fargo will only take a full payment at once and then the balance goes to escrow.
A lady shows up at my door, I don't know her from anyone, and she says she is inspecting my property. I never let her in, and she never left the front step, and her husband was with her. She asked me a bunch of questions & said call your mortgage company you are late.
I was like ok, so I call them. Her little "inspection" charged me $30. They kept sending her or another rep out once every 2 weeks while I was behind. Charging me $30 each time. Half the time I wasn't home & she left paper in the door saying to call the mortgage company. I did call them everytime too.
Later a payment plan was worked out. I paid as they told me on time, and then christmas came and my check was short so the check I wrote them didn't clear the bank. I have online banking and I called wells fargo. They said it hasn't returned but it if did they WOULD NOT rerun the check but if I took cash up there right away, it would be fine. I went to the bank, pulled out the cash, and took it up there that day. 2 weeks later the check was put back thru. Of course it is not going to clear. I took the cash & paid them!
I just assumed everything was ok, even though I got hit with a return check fee on the second run thru when they said it wouldn't run thru again.
I then get a letter saying I defaulted due to the NSF on the payment plan and they were going to forclose.
I called them and they said even though I fixed it before it actually retuned, I defaulted. I called hud, my congress person, fha, everyone and I get the run around, although now HUD is talking to me a lot about this and getting a full report. SO I feel a little better.
After reviewing more bills that keep coming in from them, I see I was charged $20 for each time I talked to a rep (I spoke to someone so many times, so you can imagine it is a tremoundous amount of money), I also was charged everytime I took a payment to the wells fargo branch of $25, and I was charged $15 for paying by phone. I also was charged $25 for paying with a rep by phone when the phone system was down. All these fees plus bogus inspection fees, and this "escrow" scam lead me to belive they are trying to take our house.
We bought it cheap, have done thousands of dollars in upgrades and repairs, and have done an addition prior to their taking our mortgage and we only have 16 years to go on our note!
I am not the only one. My friend at work is having the same problem. They are also drilling for gas in this area, so people are wanting property left and right.
I think they are doing this to people who are on prime property so they can make tons of money on the property. It is not right. The stress alone is making us sick, on one occasion, our family was over and the inspector told my cousin that they were taking our house because we don't pay our bills! What is that. Disclosing personal information is illegal!
They are scamming money & doing stuff to force people out. If you have wells fargo refinance now. We can't because they have ruined our credit!
MCleburne, Texas
U.S.A.
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