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

Posted by msmash on from the software-glitches dept.

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.

7 of 168 comments (clear)

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

    Almost like it's intentional.....

  2. $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.

  3. 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

      The reason they are doing it now is because they are raked through the coals for this kind of abuse:

    2. 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. 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.

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

    In Soviet America. bank rob you.