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Wells Fargo Says Hundreds of Customers Lost Homes After Computer Glitch (cnn.com)

Hundreds of people had their homes foreclosed on after software used by Wells Fargo incorrectly denied them mortgage modifications. From a report: The embattled bank revealed the issue in a regulatory filing this week and said it has set aside $8 million to compensate customers affected by the glitch. [...] Wells Fargo said the computer error affected "certain accounts" that were undergoing the foreclosure process between April 2010 and October 2015, when the issue was corrected. About 625 customers were incorrectly denied a loan modification or were not offered one even though they were qualified, according to the filing. In about 400 cases, the customers were ultimately foreclosed upon.

32 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Can Wells Fargo do anything _right_? by technosaurus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but damn. We never should have bailed them out.

    1. Re: Can Wells Fargo do anything _right_? by pem · · Score: 2

      Cross-selling was ongoing and implicated the highest levels of management. TCPA violations have been ongoing for some time, and Wells Fargo keeps petitioning the FCC to allow more robocalls. Deposit/check reordering to cause more NSF check bounces wasn't anything but home-grown, either. IOW, nice trolling, WF turd.

    2. Re: Can Wells Fargo do anything _right_? by JackieBrown · · Score: 2

      What does that have to do with Wells Fargo needing or not needing a bailout? Did you respond to the wrong post?

  2. Re:Would Rust have prevented this? by cb88 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nothing can prevent the fall of Wells-Fargo...

  3. So odd that the "glitch" always favors the bank by jeff4747 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Almost like it's intentional.....

    1. Re:So odd that the "glitch" always favors the bank by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wasn't with Wells Fargo, but did try to use the modification program. We did everything right, stayed current on payments. Qualified financially. The bank threw every road block they could at us. "Lost" paperwork multiple times. Denied receiving paperwork, then tried to deny receiving the second attempt. I actually recorded the conversation with the rep confirming it. That piece was magically found, but they continued to stall. Registered mail would some how takes weeks to be acknowledged. In the end, we decided to declare bankruptcy. When the bank received THAT notification all of a sudden we were priority #1. Constant calls to "work something out". Too late. We were done.Turned out to be the best decision we ever made. Had we capitulated, we'd still be digging out of that whole. Every interaction we had with our bank was either antagonistic or blatantly (purposely) incompetent. My only regret is waiting as long as we did, assuming the bank actually wanted to help us. They did not.

    2. Re:So odd that the "glitch" always favors the bank by Highdude702 · · Score: 2

      Mine happened through a debit card purchase on a Wells Fargo account that wasn't supposed to even be able to overdraw. I feel their execs should be shot in public, but in the knees and left to bleed out in the street.

  4. 8 million? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "hundreds" of affected home owners, assume minimum 200. That's just $40k each.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    1. Re:8 million? by tquasar · · Score: 2

      That amount is loose change found in Wells Fargo's sofa.

  5. $8 mil / 400 people = $20,000 per forclosure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not enough. Add a zero. The emotional toll of foreclosure on a family is much worse than the financial toll.

    1. Re:$8 mil / 400 people = $20,000 per forclosure by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2

      Not enough. Add a zero.
      That depends on the situation:

      Was this a bank policy, based on a business decision such as "we're ahead for our stockholders by taking less interest and avoiding foreclosure on these loans", "keeping our loan customers in their houses is good for business or other company goals (even "being nice") or the like? Was this error in implementation inadvertent and non-discirminatory on "suspect categories" like race, religion, national origin, or neighborhood WITHIN THE SET OF PEOPLE TO WHOM IT APPLIED, i.e. were blacks or hispanics facing foreclosure more likely to be victims of the error than whites facing foreclosure with otherwise identical situations? If so, they don't really owe anything and it's just nice (or good-for-business-by-heading-off-some-suits) to give them anything at all (except maybe for the IT head's head...)

      Was the "elegibility" for loan modification statutory, agreed to as a settlement for a regulatory action or suit, or part of a regulatory filing? They owe enough to "make the vicitms whole" and one, or even two, zeros isn't going to cut it.

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  6. Nope, not a buffer overflow by raymorris · · Score: 2

    Nope, rhis isn't a buffer overflow, which doesn't happen in Rust, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, C++, or most other languages.

    Rust fanbois touting that is like if Ford touted having a spare tire like it's a big deal. Few languages have bugger overflows. Like most languages, Rust doesn't - just like most cars come with a spare tire.

  7. Wells Fargo is full of shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Wells Fargo is full of shit. It was assuredly not a "computer glitch" which made those people lose their homes; it was the fact that Wells Fargo didn't want to deal with people who hit economic hard times and could not pay their mortgages every month. It's well known that, during the foreclosure crisis of the early 2010s, banks made it as difficult as they could for people to change the terms of their mortgages, because the banks could make more money foreclosing and selling the houses.

    1. Re:Wells Fargo is full of shit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    2. Re: Wells Fargo is full of shit by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's shocking.

      There were stories at the time of people who contested a foreclosure, pointing out that the bank didn't have the right to foreclose, but judges could not believe that the banks would engage in such corrupt acts, so ruled in favour of the banks.

      I wonder if those judges have ever had second thoughts about their decisions, which resulted in taking away people's houses, based on possibly fraudulent statements by banks?

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    3. Re: Wells Fargo is full of shit by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder if those judges have ever had second thoughts about their decisions, which resulted in taking away people's houses, based on possibly fraudulent statements by banks?

      I'm not an attorney, but I have quite a few good friends who are attorneys. I can answer that for you. For most if not all - nope. They don't care if their decision screwed people over. One of the really bad things about attorneys in the USA is that there is a belief that goes with the job that the system is always right, even when the outcomes are wrong. Some crazy guy sues you unjustly and you have to wipe out your money to defend yourself from it? Lawyers would tell you that the system works. They don't care if it's abused as long as they get paid. And the number one dirty secret of the legal profession is that lawyers always get paid no matter what. In fact, cops will go out of their way to do all kinds of things to help lawyers get paid. If you owe a lawyer money and it goes unpaid long enough, cops are happy to show up at your door and start taking your stuff to sell to get money or to start seizing your paychecks. If someone owes you a big amount of money and won't pay it, good luck trying to get someone (judge, police) to care enough to do anything about it. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But they always make sure that lawyers get paid. I have a friend whose wife went a little crazy and she divorced him. She quit her job to make sure she had no income coming in and hired one of her city's highest priced bulldog female divorce lawyers to represent her. Didn't pay a dime to the lawyer but ran up over $30,000 in legal fees. Her lawyer sued the husband for the entire cost and a sympathetic judge made him pay it. This is why I say that lawyers always get paid. Think about it - a lawyer took a case knowing her client wouldn't pay her because she also knew the system would let her collect from the estranged husband. So no, I can assure you that the vast majority of the judges, if not every single one of them, don't care at all.

    4. Re: Wells Fargo is full of shit by jezwel · · Score: 2

      I wish mod points had "disappointing" as an option. :( that's horrible.

  8. One-way street by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's funny how these large-scale "computer glitches" seem to favor the bank and not the consumer.

    They lost homes, and now Wells Fargo is required to pay them each $20,000. If Wells Fargo accidentally put money into my account, do you think they'd settle for me returning dimes on the dollar?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re: One-way street by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

      If they hadn't take a loan they couldn't afford in the first place

      That's not what happened. I can't believe we're barely a decade past the financial cataclysm of 2007-08 and even after stacks of books have been written, a dozen ore more documentaries and a couple of blockbuster hollywood films (one that won an oscar), we still have people who don't understand what happened with the housing crash, and why the blame is not on the borrowers any more than you would blame the victim of a violent mugging.

      The amount of document fraud perpetrated by Wells Fargo and their secondary-mortgage customers and servicers was just unbelievable. I recommend some of the investigative journalism of an economist and former bank executive named "Yves Smith", who writes the Naked Capitalism blog. Without her work, even these meager attempts at holding the banks accountable would not have been possible. Her book, ECONNED is taught in schools now.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re: One-way street by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

      You don't really understand how life works apparently. Did it ever occur to you that they and the bank both agreed they could afford it when the loan was taken, but that circumstances change? People get ill. The economy takes a serious downturn. A great job goes away and one can't find another that pays as well. Seriously, are you a teenager or a troll?

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    3. Re: One-way street by datavirtue · · Score: 2

      Banks never rot from the bottom up. Everything in a bank is policy and procedure...every last fucking detail. Policy is always tweaked before approval at the top. Everything that happens in bank is on purpose. Regulators know this and treat every glitch as something that was done on purpose. If the bank cooperates with regulators all they face is a moderate fine. Wonder what regulators are going to do in this case. The $8MM is only the restitution determined by the bank...there could and should be more.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    4. Re: One-way street by Geekbot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even worse than that. It wasn't purely a "change in circumstances". Real estate brokers and banks were intentionally colluding to drive up real estate prices to non-sustainable prices (housing bubble) and often times selling people on variable rate mortgages. The banks jacked the rates, the housing bubble crashed. No one could move for a job because they couldn't sell their house. Because they couldn't move they had no way to get a new job if they lost their old one. Then when they forclosed on the homes that they cheated people out of, they wouldn't resell them, instead sitting on them waiting for the market to go up, destroying the value of all the other homes in the neighborhood with a glut of vacant homes. Then the government made us bail them out, so they gave themselves bonuses. All they did is destroy the middle class and the upperwardly moving lower class.
      You can find the wreckage still in many cities in America. You drive through a city like Flint Michigan, you can see homes all collapsing. Someone who didn't know better might wonder why people wouldn't take care of your house. But how are you going to replace a roof when the new roof costs more than the entire house. Maybe more than all the houses on your block.
      At the time people wanted those senior bank managers lynched. A decade later their ravages of the middle class are still around, but there are those that were protected, neighborhoods that weren't affected, adults that were too young to remember. But it's sad. These people destroyed many more lives than 400. Let me tell you, it's hard to move. It's hard to move when it's not your choice. But when you watch your children losing their home, that's something you could never forgive.
      Personally I'd consider bankrupting America as something akin to treason.The idea that they give someone 20k for stealing their home, that's an incredible insult not just from the bank but also by America.

  9. Re:Foreclosed *on* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    >Whatâ(TM)s with the extraneous âoeonâ? Donâ(TM)t you know basic grammar or what âoeforecloseâ means?

    And I feel like I'm reading Indonesian...

  10. Re: They were already being foreclosed on. by datavirtue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You do not qualify for modification if you are behind. I suspect this was part of the way that banks were using to skip out on modifications. Banks would usually ignore the application for as long as they could hoping you would get behind and therefore not qualified...and then there was the tried and true insurance method where they would wait a long time and then demand that you resubmit the whole application again because some of the documentation was incomplete or whatever. Getting a modification was next to impossible because of the stalling techniques and zero oversight.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  11. Oh, for Pete's sakee. by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't doubt that there was a "computer glitch", but doing what a (do I have to say this?) potentially buggy piece of software tells you to do without question was a business decision.'

    Sure, some programmer made a mistake, because programmers like all humans are fallible. But bank management had a totally wrong-headed approach to doing their jobs.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  12. Incompetence, not conspiracy by aberglas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Banks hate foreclosures.

    It costs them money to administer, creates lots of bad will, and they rarely get all their money back anyway.

    Much better if the customer pulls through, pays lots of interest, and eventually takes out a second mortgage.

    But how is the computer overriding people? A foreclosure is a big event, handled by moderately senior people, not bank tellers. These people would have reviewed the situation. And yet, Computer Says NO.

    How did they become so bureaucratic that a crappy computer program written by some enterprise IT department can automatically override the judgement of human experts dealing with individual cases.

    That is the real story here.

    1. Re: Incompetence, not conspiracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Banker insiders fucking love foreclosures. It might take a pittance of bank time to administer a foreclosure up front, but they stand to make magnitudes more on the back end, when schlomo buys the distressed property for 75 cents in the dollar, finances improvements, and flips it for 50% profit.

    2. Re:Incompetence, not conspiracy by WindowsStar · · Score: 2

      @aberglas, Banks love forecloses. Most of the property loans are money borrowed from somewhere, so it is not their money. They buy extremely cheap insurance on the loan and the government (eh hem, you and me) pays for the loan. Many times they make a lot of money.

  13. No Justice by nehumanuscrede · · Score: 2

    Anytime a company gets caught doing something unethical, they always seem to have their scapegoat ready to go.
    This scapegoat is more powerful than an entire ARMY of lawyers can ever hope to be.
    It's effectively their " Get out of Jail " free card.

    Ever notice how:
    It's always a " glitch ", " computer error ", " junior programmer " or " hackers ".
    It's never, EVER the fault of the company. It's always something else.

    No one goes to jail. The penalty is basically a slap on the wrist, the upper level executives are allowed to leave with
    their golden parachutes and the whole thing quietly fades away to a memory mostly forgotten a few years later.

    It's a sad, sad state of affairs really.

    1. Re:No Justice by Spamalope · · Score: 2

      Yep. They committed fraud. So much fraud that they automated the fraud with the computer. But bless their little cotton socks, it seems no actual person was involved in the crime! It was the computer that's guilty dontcha know.

  14. Re:Would Rust have prevented this? by LifesABeach · · Score: 4, Informative

    There was a time when bank robbers went to jail.

  15. Re: Would Rust have prevented this? by senatorpjt · · Score: 5, Funny

    In Soviet America. bank rob you.