Like a lot of people, back in 2003 we refinanced our home to get a super-low interest rate. E*Trade sold the loan to Wells Fargo, who immediately claimed we were missing payments. Here's CJ's letter to Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc.
PO Box 14543
Des Moines IA 50306-3543
Fax: (612)312-3905
Date: 14 August 2003
Courtney J Holmes
Barbara M. Moore
Acct# 0xxxxxxxxx
To whom it may concern:
This is a followup to our letter on 12 August 2003, regarding the apparent non-receipt of our mortgage payments for the months of June and July.
Our bank statement for the month of July arrived yesterday, and we have discovered that you did in fact receive the payments. However, you rejected the checks because of an invalid account number. The first of these checks was returned on the 14th of July, a turnaround time of 26 days. The second check was returned on the 29th day of July, which represents a more acceptable turnaround time of only 8 days. As the statement wasn't mailed until three days ago, I think you will understand why we didn't know sooner that our checks were being rejected.
Date Ref# Amount Return Date 20 June 2003 xxxx-xxxx $1287.89 14 July 2003 21 July 2003 xxxx-xxxx $1287.89 29 July 2003 The "invalid account number" that we used was, in fact, the correct account number but without a leading zero.
Account number we used: xxxxxxxxx "Correct" account number: 0xxxxxxxxx Equivalent representation of the same number: 0000000000xxxxxxxxx As most grade school graduates know, a leading zero in front of a number does not change its numerical value. If the missing zero had been at the end of the number, then the confusion would have been understandable. As it is, I am deeply concerned about your information systems. Perhaps your computer programmers did not attend the same kind of grade school that I did. Or perhaps your database administrators are uncommonly young and have not finished their primary education. Or maybe the people who receive checks into your system simply don't care much for basic arithmetic. Whatever the cause, it is distressing that a respected multi-billion-dollar company such as Wells Fargo, with over $1.5 billion in revenue last quarter alone, could be so numerically challenged as to think that two numbers are different just because one has a leading zero while the other does not. (As a side note, I didn't notice any leading zeroes anywhere in the quarterly statement.)
What is also strange is that you held the first of these checks for a full 20 days or more, and was unable to match it to our account. This is in spite of the fact that my name and address appear at the top of these checks in the usual place, and that this address matches both my mailing address and the address of the property in question. So not only was the account number not recognized, but it appears nobody even attempted to find the correct account through other means.
Once I realized what had happened I set out at once to investigate where the leading zero got lost. Our loan was originated by E*Trade Mortgage Corporation, and it was they who sold the loan to Wells Fargo. When they sold the loan they sent us a nice letter, no doubt required by law, informing us of the fact complete with payment information. In this letter the account number has no leading zero. Being the responsible person that I am, I immediately set up a recurrent payment with my internet bill payment system, carefully copying the account number I was given.
I have not taken the time to research further, as it would require hours on the phone with people at E*Trade who would not understand why a customer would want to trace the origins of account numbers. But I have two theories:
(1) E*Trade received my account number already shorn of it's leading zero, perhaps from one of your better-educated employees.
(2) E*Trade received my account number with the leading zero intact, but dropped it somewhere along the way. This might have happened as a result of either human or machine intervention, as either might have believed the little bugger to be insignificant.
Regardless of where the fault may lie, we still owe you this money and I am sending both payments today. To avoid confusing your staff, I have prepended a zero to the account number. However, we still want you to provide a written statement indicating that our account is not now, nor has it ever been, delinquent or overdue. Finally, if you have reported our account as delinquent or overdue to any credit-reporting agency, please have them correct the mistake immediately and notify us when this action is complete.
Sincerely,
Courtney J Holmes
