Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Escrow Shortage Fiasco! Des Moines, Iowa

Every year since we've had Wells Fargo they send us Escrow overage/shortage papers. We usually have a shortage and end up paying it in full or stretching it out over 12 months and our payments only increase a small amount. Well, back in April we were ecstatic when we actually got a letter stating we had an OVERAGE in our Escrow, our mortgage was going down, and there was a check for $417. I know that's not much but we were preparing to move at the time and it was a lot for us. Now, the house in on the market, we have moved (my husband is Military and had orders), we live in base housing now...don't get any BAH (housing allowance) anymore so our mortgage going down was a blessing to us because I knew we could make the payments still while we tried to sell the home.

Well, now, we just received a letter from them stating we have a SHORTAGE in our Escrow for $1012! Keep in mind APRIL we got an OVERAGE letter and this new letter is dated JULY! So, we look it over and see that they had only allowed $58 for our Windstorm policy...which is actually $1070. So, we called our insurance to see if it was a mistake on their part. It was not, our policy has not changed at all since we've had them. So, they give me some pointers and we call Wells Fargo.

My husband gets on the phone with them first since the mortgage is in his name. They talk to him and explain that they only estimated the low amount for our Windstorm as a mistake since our insurance had requested 2 separate payments last year. This year when they did the analysis they only accounted for the smaller of the 2 payments and that's why we got money back. Well, we raised our deductible with our insurance so we're getting $304 back. Wells Fargo then precedes to tell my husband our shortage is now $994 after lowering our insurance policy...that's only a $18 difference?!? There is definitely a problem there I believe. So, they then tell him to mail them the $304 check when we get it to lower that even more. He says okay and just agrees with what they tell him. So, then I ask to get on the phone to confirm everything. I get on the phone and they cannot explain why our shortage is only changing by $18. They cannot explain why they estimated wrong on the analysis and their only fix is for us to mail them the $304 and then they will stretch the $690 left out over the maximum of 60 months to help us out. (Yes, that's was nice I guess)

They refused to take the blame for telling us in April we had overage and giving us money back and then turning around and wanting to take more money from us. Whatever employee did our analysis and estimated a YEAR LONG insurance policy to only be $58 needs to be fired. That's a HUGE mistake and now it's costing us an arm and a leg and we don't have it.

So, words of wisdom, if you can avoid using them for your mortgage please do! They will screw you every chance they get. Please pray for us our house sells soon so we never have to deal with them again! Thank you!