weird experience on REO purchase-need advice

[Donald Douglas]

Early this month, I made an offer to a house that is bank-owned. They countered asking to close on March 3 with penalty if delayed. Up to now, both listing and my agent never heard of anything from the lender. We have been waiting and waiting. We did not open escrow, lock rate, nothing for the whole month. I am not sure how long does the bank usually process REO sales. The property was held by Wellsfargo. Once again, I have no information about their REO department because the listing agent does not allow me to contact with them. My question is how long do they usually take to do the paperwork? Second, is wellsfargo having huge amount of properties and they do not have enough people to handle that causes the backlog? In addition to all those counter offer and addendum, will they send us anything if we accepted and signed all the addendum? Thanks.

Other info:
1. the listing agent clearly mentioned that I am the bidder with the best and highest offer so that I think they started to work on the closing step
2. when I pretend to be other bidder and asked the listing agent if they still accept other offers, the agent said they are working on escrow so that I presume I am the buyer.