I am a former employee of Wells Fargo Financial - I was a very successful employee and quickly making my way up the corporate ladder at a very young age and deceived many times by upper management. I decided to abondon my career there due to terrible business being booked 70% of the time (In my opinion). I am an honest person and would disclose everything with my clients, although I know that wasn't the case for most employees. It was the sales techniques we were trained on that would persuade customers into doing high rate / very high risk loans. Some loans were very good loans for customers, but for the most part they were ridiculous.
When I began my career, we would receive our sales leads 1 of 3 ways. One way being our home office would send out $1,000 checks in the mail at 19.99% to surrounding residents. If someone were to cash the check, WFF would pull that customer's credit. We would call them to verify it was them who cashed the check and not a fraudulent act. Then we would go over their account and bring up different credit cards on their bureau. The main objective here was to creat a credit application to either consolidate all their bills into one with WFF by refinancing their mortage at as much as 125% loan to value against their house and interest rates ranging from 8-18% at times. Not only that we would charge anywere from 2% - 4% of the entire amount of the loan. Do the math ($200,000 loan could equal $8,000 in closing costs) I've seen deals with $20,000 in closing costs!!! Again, some people had very high balances on credit cards and there was no other choice but filing bankruptcy. For the most part this wasn't the case.
Applications for mortgages were the bread and butter... Did I mention most of the appraisals may have been jacked up??? We were also attempting to get other products to max out a monthly bonus on top of our salary. We would also attempt to close unsecured personal loans up to 39%... Yes, I said 39%!!! On top of that we would sign people up on variable rate credit cards, home equity lines of credit, and still on top of that we would finance a wide array of insurance products into the loan in which the customer would also be paying these high rates on.
What really got me was the auto loans we would finance. We would finance up to 160% loan to value on most peoples depreciating assets - their auto. Did I mention the interest rates would be up in the 20% range at times depending on the customer. Why would anyone do this, because we would pay off a minimal amount of credit cards and at the same time keep your monthly payments the same... Please, what a waste of time on your freakn car loan!!! Remember me mentioning we had to hit products to max our bonuses, well we would literally call existing auto customers to get more additional business. "Hey Mr. Customer you need a couple hundred for the holidays - swing by the office and I'll see what we can do." Next thing you know you are refinancing your car again and getting $200 cash out at a high rate and high loan to value on your auto. We would even do this with existing mortgage customers or even 39% unsecured loan customers - THIS IS WHAT WE WERE TRAINED TO DO AND IF WE DIDN'T HIT OUR NUMBERS WE WOULD HAVE TO ANSWER TO THE BOSS!!! The reason I am confessing this is because you as a consumer need to be aware of our options. Make sure you always read between the lines and get a complete explanation of what you are getting into.
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