Wells Fargo Auto Loans

About a week later I received a letter from Wells Fargo Dealer Services saying they denied the original "loan" application and were changing the terms and now had approved a "loan" for the vehicle and to start making payments to them. Without thinking any further about this at the time I made the payments. In July 2016 I received a recall notice from Ford about the Takata Airbag Recall. My vehicle has both the driver and passenger side airbags that are under the recall. To date they still have not been fixed. I contacted Wells starting in December 2017 and informed them about the recalls and issues. They asked for all of the documentation I had and said they would review it with their "legal" department and do everything they could to help.

Several months later they responded saying in a letter that although it is a manufacturer defect they were and are not willing to help in any way. I had previously asked for a refi about 6 months after making payments and they refused with no explanation. I have literally sent over 20 complaints to Wells Fargo Dealer, Atty General, NHTSA, Office of Comp Controller, Consumer Finance, anyone I could possibly think of and to date no resolution. Wells Fargo has denied every single request I have asked for, including help with the "loan" and even if they could get the dealer to simply disable the airbags.

I am still fighting for some resolution. The last response from Wells Fargo was on May 7, 2018 finally responding to the refi request saying they apologized for the delay, mind you the refi request was made in 2016, and that I should apply for a Hardship Refi since I wasn't making the payments. They still know the car is part of a major recall, is defective, is on non-op status and all they want is money, and have sent a repossession letter and want to repo car. I have asked for the so called "loan" documents and have not received them. Wells Fargo simply purchased the retail sales installment contract and is trying to enforce the contract even though they know the car is defective.

Their customer service is no help, every time I call the Office of the President I get a different titled rep rep saying they've opened a case and will respond within 10 business days. I've have received letters from numerous different people from the collections department and the office of the president yet I have never been able to speak with even heard from anyone with some type of legal authority to make a decision about this problem. I have since closed my accounts I've had with them in the past and will not pay for a defective vehicle or on a "loan" when there is no loan. My complaints are all on file with Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which are public, and they Atty General's Office.

I had the PLEASURE of speaking to Rueben in customer service (who was a complete idiot) - who advised me that my account was blocked because the payment was reversed from the bank - blah, blah, blah. He advised me that I could NEVER use that bank account information again to make a payment. When asking him how I'd make a payment then - he advised me that in the future I would have to get certified monies from my back, write a check etc. I chuckled & asked him how I could write a check since the funds would be withdrawn from that account. He had no answer - just went on with his speech in the nastiest way possible. I finally put my husband on the phone who spoke with his supervisor Emily - she asked him to call back Tuesday to settle the discrepancy. He called back this morning & we STILL can't make this payment. It's so ridiculous & if this affects my daughter's credit - I will take legal action. Never, ever use this bank!

WFDS has also repossessed more than 860 cars belonging to members of the US military (read: Illegal). (Wells Fargo illegally repossessed another 450 service members' cars, CNN, November 14, 2017). A substantial level of fraudulent activity, ongoing without detection for relatively extended periods of time, across multiple lines of business in the same company, certainly provides a host of reasons to avoid doing business with Wells Fargo.

My Experience. I may have other reasons, especially if you are elderly and/or cannot absolutely guarantee your financial status for the life of a WFDS car loan: They may be operating a phantom Hardship Loan Refinance Program and they more or less hate their customers. Wells Fargo Dealer Services financed my purchase of a 2011 Buick several years ago. In 2015, at the age of 64, I was RIFd by my company. As you can imagine, that led to a dramatic decline in monthly income and I eventually began missing payments on a variety of things, including my auto loan. One of their Customer Service Representatives (CSR) eventually - months later - suggested that I apply to their Hardship Loan Refinance program.

At $377 a month, my car loan was the largest bill I had remaining. Taking the balance and spreading it out over a three or four-year period would have reduced my monthly exposure and ensured that the loan was repaid to WFDS. That should have been a win-win. I happily filled out the paperwork and waited. After a few weeks, I received a notice telling me that my participation in the hardship loan refinance program had been declined. Due to my low credit score! Now...my credit was near perfect prior to my being laid off. I had never missed nor been as much as one day late in paying my WFDS auto loan. There was no question that my financial problems were all a result of being RIFd. My friends in the finance industry were mystified: the low credit score (along with my history) should have been evidence that I was a viable candidate for a Hardship Loan refinance. Not that my application should be rejected.

When I called them back and asked if there was an appeal..the answer was no. When I asked what the approval rate for the program was, I was told that was (admittedly) none of my business. They told me I needed to sell the car immediately or get it refinanced somewhere else. I told them that I would try that (I did, with no success) but also continue to default on payments until they had to give me the statutorily required notice to repossess—about three months in arrears - at which point I would pay the balance and start the clock again. After I did this twice, they invoked the acceleration clause in the agreement, demanded that I pay the entire $7,000 immediately or face repossession.

Now...if I was having trouble paying $400 a month... Where the hell did they think I was going to get $7,000. Given the history of Wells Fargo staff manipulating customer accounts, it seems clear to me that a case can be made that an awful lot of bad people work for Wells Fargo. People who will willingly commit fraud; people who have no problem damaging the financial life of their customers; people who see the law as an unnecessary inconvenience and an impediment to making more money.

What astounded me though, as I went through all this with WFDS, is that they are also bad just really bad businesspeople. There were a number of times when they had a choice to make, one in which they could increase the probability of recovering their investment from me or stick a corporate finger in my eye and increase the probability of their recovering nothing. The business case choice would have been the one that maximized the probability of getting what I owed them. Without fail, every single time, they chose to stick their finger in my eye.

I'm counting their so-called Hardship Loan Refinance program as the first example. Why even say you have such a program for people with financial problems if you use the evidence of those problems to reject the application for assistance? Why wait for months to tell me that the program existed to begin with? Given my perfect payment record prior to the layoff, would it have hurt WFDS to try? It's not like they were increasing the amount of risk they were carrying. Agreeing to refinance would have actually lowered that risk. What did they get in rejecting me...except for the satisfaction of sticking their finger in my eye?

As already noted, I had begun to pay the account every three months--when I would get the Commonwealth of Massachusetts mandated notice from them that I had to pay $**.00 or they would begin the repossession process. I didn't mind paying this way...it gave me time to stage my payments, robbing Peter from time to time to pay Paul. They apparently had a problem with it though, because I did it twice and they called the loan, accelerated the payment and demanded it all in a lump sum. They knew the story. They knew my income had mostly vanished. They knew about my prior spotless payment history. Their choice was to continue to accept late, but ultimately complete payment (including late fees!) or demand everything now and push me closer to Chapter 7...in which they would get nothing but the satisfaction of sticking their finger in my eye.

After more discussions, I was told that WFDS would accept a payment of $5,000 in a settlement, instead of the $7,000 they had been demanding. (It would have been really helpful to have known that earlier.) The settlement could be paid in four monthly payments of about $1,200. I figured out that, with a little borrowed money, not paying some other bills, taking into account the timing of my Social Security check and driving for Uber (not advised...I have a spinal condition that limits the amount of sitting I can do at any given time). I could come up with the $1,200...but in two monthly payments of $600 each. I called the CSR back...and was told that this was impossible. It had to be in a lump sum.

No other option was possible; no further discussion was allowed. Why? What difference does it make if they get one check for $1,200 every month or two checks for $600 every month? Again, I don't get the business sense here. All I get is some driving corporate need to be complete ** and there's that finger in my eye again. In the last conversation I had with WFDS, I agreed to voluntarily return the car. I was hoping to avoid a formal repossession notice on my already damaged credit report. The CSR I spoke with, Ms. Kenya**, accepted that and told me that they would be in touch with a time and date for the turnover. She seemed sincere...even somewhat ruefully understanding of the situation.

A few days later, around 11 PM, I get a phone call from my neighbor wanting to know if I was aware that someone was towing my car. I was given no notice; no chance to get my personal property out of the car; no paperwork telling me who had it or where it was going; no information about how to get it back; no details on how to recover my personal property. All they left me was an empty space on the street in front of my house. The last I saw of the car was my handicapped sticker on the windshield disappearing down the street. I'm not even sure what I had in the trunk or back seat, although I do remember an LTC One cell phone in the console between the seats, sets of charger cables and a 20000mAh power pack charger for my cell.

WFDS had agreed to let me voluntarily turn my car in and I relied on that--or these things would never have been there. I'm certain I will never see any of them again...but this was WFDS' doing. Evil. Evil to the very end. So now I have a formal notice that WFDS has sold the car...and that I still owe them $3,000. Its called a deficiency balance. I will be filing for Chapter 7, so they will never see a dime of this and I have been telling them that from day 1 so that they would have a context for their decision making. They basically had several opportunities to avoid this...to recover their investment...and they decided, every single time, that the better decision was to stick their corporate finger in my eye rather than to be decent businesspeople.

The primary impact of this is that I am now effectively homebound. With my neurological disorder, I cant walk in snow and icy conditions which, in Massachusetts, can be more or less all the time in winter. Regardless of snow and ice, I can walk more than 100 or so feet anyway without falling over. I could at least get past this if I had another car...but it was hard enough trying to get financing for one of those even before WFDS had REPOSSESSED stamped on my credit report. Can't wait to get back to looking at that after the holidays.

All in all, Wells Fargo’s primary interest in its customers seems to be less focused on providing banking services to them and more on determining how to best exploit or damage them. If you have read this, I'm sure you can reach your own conclusion. Mine is simply this: If you want to avoid the possibility of being financially exploited or forced to do things that are no way in your best interests—even though there are win-win alternatives available—then there is no question in my mind that you should avoid doing business with Wells Fargo. At. All. Costs.

After I spent 2 days and about 200 miles of driving to a CarMax dealer and back, I called Wells Fargo and notified them of my intent. I spoke with a very rude and unsympathetic rep who told me that I was wrong and that they did not offer those services. She stated that I would have to pay the remainder of the loan difference (Which was $5,000) before I could sell the vehicle to Carmax and they wouldn't consider rolling the amount by into another loan. If I could afford to pay the $5,000, then why in the hell would I not just pay the amount of the late payments?!

So I told her I would just surrender the vehicle then and she very arrogantly stated it didn't work like that and I had to just wait for the repo agents to take the vehicle and either way it would show up as a repo on my credit and a voluntary surrender would not help me. Once I asked her for her name and employee number so I could speak with a credit attorney and see what they advise and also if what they are telling me is accurate.

At that point her entire tone changed and she told me that Wells Fargo is not in the business to take vehicles and that she is willing to try to help me any way she can. She then told me that they could do a hardship refinance for me and it would take a few days to review and approve it first. I asked her about the letter they sent me about the possible repo and that it would expire while they were reviewing the refinance and whether the vehicle would be repossessed in the meantime. That was when she told me to wait while she pulled up my account to look at it first!

I was in awe that I had been talking about this with them and they hadn't even looked at my account first! She then asked if I put be put on hold while they look into the account and review it to see if a hardship refinance would even be a possibility, she said the wait will be about 40 minutes! I told her I didnt have 40 minutes at this time and she told me that maybe I could call back when it was more convenient and important for me in a very snotty attitude! Horrible bank for options for a family that falls under temporary hard times. Very rude and unprofessional customer service.

Next, I find out that they bought auto insurance on my behalf because they were lacking proof of insurance according to them. I faxed this to them at least 5 times. My insurance company was the same one as when I bought the truck. The insurance was 3 times the cost of my insurance which I have the highest level of coverage on my own auto policies. I kept calling and faxing and could never remove this insurance. When I sold the truck I asked for my insurance money back...THOUSANDS of dollars. We disagreed on the figure but I settled to recover some of the money. Well I sold the truck over a year ago and today another refund check comes from them saying they owed me more money. I have to even wonder if the payoff figures were correct. Do not deal with this bank.

I have never had this problem before and I'm 51 years old and purchased multiple vehicles over my life. Wells Fargo Dealer Services is the worst finance company I have ever dealt with by a long shot. I never write reviews but I had to warn people and maybe save someone else from financing with this company. I personally will never do business with Wells Fargo Dealer Services again. Total scam from the beginning with rude and bullying employees.

Now, I got some damages done to my vehicle by Hurricane Irma, I got a check from the insurance company in both my name and the lean holder. I would assume I would send it to them, they would endorse it, and send me back a check in my name so I can pay for the damages. But no, they want me to send them the check but won't send me one back... I was given the runaround, passed around like a hot potatoes. This people are con artist, I think it's a requirement in order to work for them, must be saddy characters.

Yesterday at 9:30 pm a repo company showed up at our door to take possession of our car. No notice was given that the car was to be repossessed. No callbacks from Wells Fargo. No assistance whatsoever. Will probably end up on the phone all day trying to sort this out and hopefully, will not have my car taken. We paid $17000 for this car brand new and after paying for almost 4 years, we still owe $11000. I haven't figured that one out yet! Avoid using this fraudulent company at all costs!!!

When talking to agent and told him this was unacceptable and that this doesn't speak well of them and told them my son was a police officer he said he would take it back to his supervisor and call back by 4:00 that day. Crickets... We emailed asking for supervisors contact info. Nothing. I am appalled at their lack of first responder support, customer loyalty and plain ol' common courtesy. We went to Chase, got it done in literally 20 minutes with a much lower interest rate! We will more than likely be moving ALL of our accounts out of Wells Fargo.

On July 25, 2016, we contacted WFDS and informed them of the mistake and asked that the loan be reversed to correct their mistake. They asked for a letter to be sent to them explaining the situation and when we asked if a case number could be assigned to our situatio4n, they declined. At that time, we asked if they were going to return everything to the original loan number, dates, etc. They assured us that it would be returned to its original designation. We asked if we could still submit payments during the "correction phase" so the account would remain current, but they stated that the account was still officially "closed" and payment could not be applied to our loan until the account was reopened.

They also declined to remove the total amount due on the account from the refund check prior to releasing the refund but no explanation was given. We also asked if late charges would be charged or if they would report it to the credit agency since it might appear that the account would be in arrears. We were told that no late charges would be applied and they would not, under any means, report the account as being late or in arrears to the credit agencies. We made regular inquiries to WFDS, was very concerned that it was taking so long to correct the error, with no valid explanation. We were told by Katie, that it was taking a long time because the title processing through the State of Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles was taking longer than usual.

Months later the error was corrected and we received the refund check. We did not receive any type of payment due bill with the refund check. The next day we received two notices from WFDS in the mail asking for the "late" payments and when we got home from checking the mail, we received a phone call from the WFDS collections department asking where their money was and how did we intend on paying the amount in arrears. We spoke with Eli and asked him to review our file and see if he could tell us anything from what he was looking at. We asked if there was any annotations on our file explaining why payments hadn't been made, new loan origination date, etc.

Eli stated that there was nothing definitive in my file, no late notices, phone calls, previous collection letters - for three months. Eli stated that if there had been issues, there would certainly be some type of information in our file stating that. Since there was nothing, there was enough evidence to have this account directed to a supervisor to handle as it didn't fall under the usual collection procedures. He agreed that it should have been handled differently. During this phone call, we made the entire payment due electronically and gave Eli the bank confirmation number. We asked Eli if they had reported our account as being late to the credit bureaus. He didn't know so we asked that he check into it and have his supervisor get back to us.

Kip, the supervisor of the collections department called us back and let us know that yes, WFDS had reported our account to be in arrears to TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. We asked why this was done when we were told by two different employees that they would in no terms report us as being late as we have never been late and the account wouldn't be late at that time. Kip was not able to answer our question. We instructed Kip to send out a correction letter immediately and asked that the information be totally eradicated from our file. No trace, as they had promised to not send out a report and the correction takes weeks to process and that it can have an effect not only on our financial records but our hireability as well. We do not want any ramifications on our credit file or credit score to reflect their mistake.

We asked that a follow-up letter be sent to us in reference to this situation and Kip refused. Kip said, "'Just call me if you have any problems in the future and I will take care of it". We asked him if he could tell if there was anything in the system that showed why it took so long to process the correction and fix our account and he said from what he could see "It looks like it was something to do with the title'".

On October 21, 2016, we received a letter in the mail from WFDS. The letter stated that they had sent all of our personal information/original title, etc., to an individual we do not know. We assume he is a customer of WFDS and another mistake was made. The letter asks Mr. ** to return all the documents to WFDS. WFDS did not inform us of this until after the entire transaction was complete. Had we known about it, we would not have stayed in business with them, would not have signed the check or deposit it in our account. Every time we have tried to discuss this situation with WFDS, they refuse to talk about it. They refuse to give me any copies or information in order for us to protect ourselves against identity theft, etc. We asked that WFDS provide identity theft protection for my husband and myself. They refused. We asked for follow-up documentation for the complaint we filed, their "investigation" findings, etc., they also refused.

At that point in time, we were done. We contacted WFDS and asked to file a formal complaint. We spoke with Marna and asked that she record the entire conversation as she was taking a formal statement and it would avoid wasting time explaining the long story to someone new every time we have contact in reference to this situation. We have already wasted so much time supervising WFDS and making sure that we followed up on all their actions. A case number was finally assigned to the complaint, although it has not helped in any way whatsoever.

Marna promised to contact us in one week to update us on what she could find and she never called us back. We subsequently called the WFDS president's office to inquire to the disposition of the complaint. Months transpired with every excuse under the sun. We filed complaints with other agencies within the government to ensure our personal information, credit information identities, etc., were and are being protected as well as can be expected.

On March 29, 2017, we contacted WFDS and was told that a case manager had been assigned to our case. We called every week to check in and inquire as to the complaint's status, to no avail. WFDS said that Travis was my case manager. We left three voicemails on Travis' phone but received no call back from him. We called back again and was told that our case was closed, so we filed a second complaint in reference to the first complaint. Not only had no one contacted us to tell us that a case manager had been assigned to our complaint. They also did not contact us for any information or details about the complaint, but closed it and refused to give follow-up documentation to their internal investigation.

On April 6, 2017, Shaniqua called us and told us that, oops they made a mistake, no they will not pay to have our identities protected, no they will not do anything else to ensure that this doesn't happen again and they feel that sending the correction letter the credit bureau is all they are responsible to do. Again, we asked for documentation from them in reference to the investigation and they refused to give us anything.

The copy of the letter from WFDS that we did receive as a response to a complaint we filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, case number **, is false. It reads as though they sent out the letter to us immediately telling us of their error sending our paperwork and personal info to a stranger. We did not receive the letter until after everything was reversed and the check deposited. Also, they did not send out a request for correction to the credit agencies until we told them to do so. We called the phone number at the end of the letter and asked to speak with Laura ** and was given her voice mail and left several messages to which none were returned.

We received a letter from Cederic **, WFDSPO, he declined to inform his bosses that when he approached them with a resolution that he misinformed them and told them we were asking for identity theft protection, negation of the loan and $10k. We knew at the end of the conversation he would get it wrong, again. We asked that they either negate the loan ($3k) or provide identity theft protection for five years for my self and my husband with a company of our choosing. That was all. He closed the complaint and told us to start from scratch. We filed the third complaint with Elena. They have surpassed all of their suspense dates and times and when we asked to have a hearing that they informed us we could have in reference to voluntary surrender of our vehicle (NOT a financial surrender). They refuse to do that and told us if we want the hearing to do it ourselves.

They did threaten to put negative information on our credit file and seek court proceedings to repay them what would be left on the loan after the vehicle is auctioned. We asked how they knew what would happen as a result of the hearing when they stated they have no history of anyone requesting a voluntary surrender under our circumstances they refuse to answer any questions and threaten us with closing the third complaint.

We spoke with Kip **. WFDS Collections Manager and informed him that we are considering the voluntary surrender of our vehicle because of the horrendous treatment we have suffered by their hands and that we do not have any desire to stay in business with them. Kip directed us back to the WFDSPO to file the voluntary surrender. WFDSPO directed us back to Kip and he stated that we are not allowed a hearing for voluntary surrender, only repossession for default on the loan. We discussed the prerequisites necessary in order for WFDS to start the process of repossession and he stated that he could change their rules and guidelines to whatever he thought best and he stated he has no intention whatsoever of repossessing our vehicle.

He will not afford us the right to a hearing prior to the repossession (even though their documentation states that we are allowed, by law, a hearing to understand what our rights are; WFDS/Mr. ** provided this document to us), he will only send information to the credit bureaus that we are late and refused to send follow-up documentation that outlined his statements. We continue to ask what WFDS has done for us as a customer, no response. We ask every employee that we have dealt with and receive the same response silence.

We have their correspondence, logs of all phone calls, dates, times, etc. They are giving false information to government agencies, accusing other government agencies for being at fault, mail fraud, wire fraud, truth in lending, false credit reporting, private information leak, strong arm delay tactics, threats to manipulate our decision making, adding extortion information into our account files, refuse to provide copies of documents that have been requested more than once and months ago; the list goes on and on.

Since my due date is already close to the end of the month, that would put the new due date to occur near the BEGINNING of the month - I explained to them how that would not help me, since I have my house payment and beginning of the month bills due at that time. I also asked if I switched my current due date, could I call sometime down the line to switch it again, hoping for some flexibility, but no... that too, apparently doesn't exist in the WFDS universe, because once you switch your due date, THAT'S IT, there's no going back, and no switching it to a different date ever again!

Not really understanding how ANY of this is supposed to help a customer out if they have a monetary emergency. Legal expenses aren't something that can be budgeted for, if you don't know how much you're going to need up front! Sure, you could put aside some cash in an emergency fund, but really - in today's economy, who has a nest-egg already saved up with tens of thousands of dollars just sitting there for something like that? Not your average consumer. It's pretty sad, too - because this is the SECOND time I've had WFDS as my auto loan servicer. So I've been with them for awhile. The only positive thing I can say about any of this is at least I have the option to go into a WF bank to make my auto loan payment and they can do it right then and there - albeit with a bit of hassle.

I have stayed in touch with them to let them know what was going on. They are always rude! They ask you to verify your personal information over and over. All of which I keep updated on the WFDS website. I would not recommend doing any business with a company such as Wells Fargo Dealer Services or Wells Fargo in general. I never will again. Can't wait til I can refinance with a reputable company.

The customer service representative on the other end gave me attitude and hung up on me. This got me so mad. Why is it the bank is never at fault. Oh and the funny thing is everything call and conversation is recorded so I'm not sure why they said we never contacted them back about the loan when we did. Now collections wants 1637.00 today and 2000+ tomorrow if we can't pay today. And in August it will be sold in an auction. I hope they close them down, they have no business doing business.

Dear Wells Fargo Dealer services, thank you for being the biggest pain in our arse that we have committed to so far. I put my faith in this company to take care of me and my family. Due to your negligence, me and my 11 month old were left without a vehicle, we were penalized and that should never have happened, and would have not happened if it had not been for your negligence. I will not be dealing with the customer service for this company for any further inquiries, as it seems that they have hired some half-wit robot monkeys to work in place of knowledgeable and trust-able employees. Seems rather ridiculous to be such a large bank and care so little of the people who support them.

And the office of the President calls me and still tells me they can't help me. Well don't bother calling me wasting my time and pissing me off more then! And I made it clear to put in their records to not be calling me on a daily basis saying my payment is late when I called these idiots asking for a deferred payment for ONE month when my account has been in good standing for well over a year since I got the loan. Thanks for nothing Wells Fargo. I hope none of you idiots ever have a hardship!