Having just finished an extremely frustrating conversation with Matt from the Wells Fargo Auto Collections division. I wish to file a complaint against Wells Fargo
Auto Collections and against the individual who would only identify himself as "Matt". On Saturday, April 3, 2010 I received four calls from the number 888-775-6157. For each call I picked up the phone and said "Hello". The response from the line was silence. The silence continued until there was a click on the line, and then the phone system played a recording stating, "If you wish to make a call, please hang up and try again". This sequence was repeated three more times with exactly the same results, no information, no person, no message, just dead silence on the line. This same thing happened four more times on Sunday the 4th for a total of 8 calls from the same number in two days without ever actually speaking to a live human, or even an intelligent machine for that matter.

I fully admit that we have been behind on our car loan payments. On Thursday, April 8th, after receiving a paycheck from my wife's employment I sent off a payment to Wells Fargo Auto in the amount of $366.53 through my bank's bill pay service.

I had been called multiple times by Wells Fargo about this loan, and had responded to each and every call. I always answer my phone, since it is my obligation to respond to people from whom I have borrowed money. Wells Fargo Auto clearly had my number, which is the same number that all three of the other accounts that I have at Wells Fargo also call me at. On Thursday however, a girl named Ana from the Auto Collections division decided that she would call people who I put down as references on the original loan papers. Why? Wells Fargo, and therefore she, already had the number, a number which she had not even tried. Clearly this was simply harassment. I learned of this a day later and was understandably upset since I do not particularly want the fact that I am behind in my payments spread around as general information.

On Thursday mid morning or early afternoon, I received a call from this "Ana" from the Wells Fargo Auto Collections division asking about making a payment. I told her that the payment had been made that morning and that it would arrive in a couple of days. I told her the amount and the bank through which it had been made. A also gave her the routing number and the account number. There can be no question that she, and by inference, Wells Fargo Auto Collections was in possession of the information.
On Thursday afternoon I received another call from Wells Fargo Auto Collections from a young woman. I told her the payment had been made and gave her the amount and the date that the payment had been made.

On Friday, I received yet another call from Wells Fargo Auto Collections Division asking about the car payment. I told the person, a male whose name I did not ask for that I had already made the payment and that I had already talked to Ana. The person looked up the file, saw that the payment had been made and apologized and hung up.

On Friday afternoon, at approximately 3:00 I received another call from Wells Fargo Auto Collections asking about the auto loan and payment. At this point I had had it. I stated that I had talked to multiple people about the payment, that it had already been made and that I was not going to discuss it again and hung up. The person calling me, named Matt, called me back. In fact, I told him that I did not want to discuss this again, since I had already talked to three people from Wells Fargo about it and that talking about it any more would neither speed up the payment, nor generate more money with which to make another payment. I hung up again, and he called back again. In fact this happened about 3 more times. He would simply not stop calling even after I had told him that I did not want to talk to him and that if he made another call, I would be calling the FTC to file a complaint against him and Wells Fargo.
Why we are in this situation.
I have been unemployed since November of 2008. At that time I lost my job, and the $250, 000 that I had invested in the business of which I was a founding partner. It was all the money we had. Shortly after losing my job, my wife became ill and ultimately had to have a total hysterectomy, in March of 2009. Bank of America foreclosed on our house in August and we were forced to move into a rental property at that time. In Mar. of 2009, I began to have health problems which have continued to this day. I have in-operable colon cancer which has been treated with chemotherapy. This has made coping with our financial problems extremely difficult since doing any type of activity during the chemotherapy was essentially impossible. Not only was physical activity very difficult, mental tasks were also increasingly difficult.
Why I resisted going over yet again for the millionth time, our situation.
I tell you this only because I had explained to countless people from every department at Wells Fargo, over and over and over again, exactly why I was late in my payments and why it was not the case that I was simply lazy or did not want to make a payment on that particular day. In fact, our bills are mountainous, and for every dollar that we get in, we should be sending 3 dollars out.
So, on this day, I had had it with explaining yet again, to people who had full access to the file, why I was behind on my payments.. After hanging up on Matt several times, and having him call back again and again, I decided to listen to what he had to say, since he was professing that he was attempting to help me. However, I asked what his name was and what his supervisors name was and he refused to answer. He said that he would tell me that at the end of the call. I asked him that same question multiple times throughout the call and each time he stated that he would tell me a the end of the call. I believed that this was a ploy on his part to avoid answering the question, but since I had explicitly told him not to call again, and he had refused to honor this request, not once but multiple times, I thought that my only recourse was to attempt to get his contact information and then act on that.

As it turned out, I learned that Wells Fargo had taken out an insurance policy on our car and that one of the reasons that I was behind in my payments was that part of every payment that I sent them was used to pay this insurance policy. To be clear, the car had been fully insured through my policy with Farmer's Insurance since the first day I had the car and there had been no lapses in coverage. The policy taken out by Wells Fargo was completely un-necessary and was costing more than $50.00 per month.
After spending at least a half hour straightening that out, Matt asked how much I had paid on Thurs. April 8, on the loan. At this point I had had it with the process. Matt had the information directly in front of him on the computer screen and was staring at it as he asked me the question. He admitted this directly. I replied that I had answered that question too many times already and that he already had the information. He admitted that he had the information but that he wanted me to repeat it. I refused and he hung up. He never did tell me his last name or the name of his supervisor.

This is harassment. Wells Fargo calls on these accounts about every three days.
They claim that they only call every five to seven days, but that is absolutely not true. Their system auto dials the numbers every three days as I have learned repeatedly. Perhaps they really believe that I am withholding some secret stash of funds and if they just call me enough, I will capitulate and send them the funds. To point out the obvious, if I am called on Monday, the thought that I could find a job, start working, and be paid a paycheck by Wed or Thursday is absurd. If I don't have the funds on Monday, and I am not secretly hiding some hoard of gold, there is no chance that I will have any more money by Wed. Their constant calling is simple harassment since there is no logical reason to believe that calling every three days will change anything except to put useless pressure on me to pay money that I do not have.

For forty years I took out loans, paid them back on time and had an exemplary credit record. In almost 20 years of making mortgage payments on multiple home loans, I never missed a payment or was even late with a payment. I did not go out and buy a house that I could not afford, in fact buying the least expensive house I could find in a not all that desirable location, simply to keep the payments low. In other words, I have been a responsible borrower and did not abuse the credit system. I also did not use other people's money to make bets at the taxpayer's expense to make gross amounts of money that the CEOs of most banks seem to think is their birthright. I am simply trying to cope with what for us has been an almost impossible situation. My wife urged me at the beginning of this ordeal nearly one and a half years ago to declare bankruptcy, but I resisted because we had borrowed the money that we owed and we were morally and ethically responsible to attempt to repay it.
We have been able to keep up payments on most of our loans, primarily due to the disability payments that I receive from the state, but the money flows in slower than the bills and we are always behind. Our medical bills, even with insurance, are daunting. My point is that we are doing the best that we can trying to cope with a situation that we did not cause. My problem with Wells Fargo is that the people that I talk to, particularly Matt, seems to think that because I did not personally talk to him, that he must have the whole story, each and every detail, of all of my personal life. He refused to believe the information that is staring him in the face from his computer screen. He refused to take the trouble to check with Ana. Ana refused to call me prior to calling my friends to "verify" my phone number, a number which Wells Fargo has had for almost a year and which I answer whenever it rings. Matt refused to divulge his name or the name of his supervisor and in the end hung up on me.

I was angry during the call and I admit it. Matt seems to believe that he is an entity onto himself and that unless I tell him something personally, he has no obligation to believe it or to lift a finger to see if he already has the information. He was also unwilling to believe the information which Ana had collected less than 24 hours earlier. I pointed out to him that as far as I was concerned, when I talk to someone from Wells Fargo Auto Collections, I am talking to Wells Fargo Auto Collections and that whatever I say should be available to the other employees of that division. I have spent countless hours explaining my situation to countless other people, many, many of whom work for Wells Fargo, and specifically to Wells Fargo Auto Loans. The task of repeating the same story over and over and over again becomes after a time, very wearing and particularly when that story is painful and emotionally represents a personal failure.

I therefore wish to file the strongest complaint possible against the Wells Fargo Auto Collections division of Wells Fargo Bank. I do not have any more contact information than the phone number, since Matt refused to give me any information at all after multiple requests. And in hanging up without giving me the information that he stated that he would give me, he lied. Perhaps not a crime, but it should be.
The only contact information that I have are the names Ana and Matt. They can be reached at this number: (888) 775 - 6157 ext. 42101 or 24338. I know that they are in fact at this number because I attempted to call Ana to ask why she had contacted my references and was told that she was there but not available.