Complaint Review: Wells Fargo Bank

All banks are the same - bottom line. They all have the same posting practices and they all function in much the same way. This is a case of mismanagement on your part - and not the bank. Until you decide to better manage your own money, this problem will follow you to the next bank - and the next one. It is that simple.

All banks are the same - bottom line. They all have the same posting practices and they all function in much the same way. This is a case of mismanagement on your part - and not the bank. Until you decide to better manage your own money, this problem will follow you to the next bank - and the next one. It is that simple.

All banks are the same - bottom line. They all have the same posting practices and they all function in much the same way. This is a case of mismanagement on your part - and not the bank. Until you decide to better manage your own money, this problem will follow you to the next bank - and the next one. It is that simple.

All banks are the same - bottom line. They all have the same posting practices and they all function in much the same way. This is a case of mismanagement on your part - and not the bank. Until you decide to better manage your own money, this problem will follow you to the next bank - and the next one. It is that simple.

I'm glad to see that you haven't had to pay overdraft fees to Wells Fargo but I'm afraid that you are tempting fate here. Online banking was not intended to replace your ledger or check register. If you continue to use online banking to learn your account balance, odds are that you will overdraft your account at some point. It's not an accurate system because the bank only knows what charges the merchants have submitted.

For example, if I buy $30 worth of gasoline at my preferred station and pay at the pump, they will only put a $1 hold against my account. The bank has no idea how much money I spent there and so they only post the $1 hold. If I log into my online banking, I would think that I had $29 more than I actually had in my account. Sometimes merchants take a few days to submit the charge and so that $29 discrepancy would stay there until the bank receives the charge.

I strongly suggest that you keep a check register. You can even go to Google and search for "free check register" to find several printable documents that you can use.

Best of luck to you.

I have been a customer of Wells Fargo for about a year. I haven't had any major problems but I noticed I have to keep a real close eye on my online banking. I guess I'm naive but I thought I could depend on my bank to keep my online banking up to date.
I haven't had a NSF problems, but there have been a few times where my balance is so different.
Twice in a month I have been $150+ difference wrong. I always check my balance every day.

For example:
This past weekend my ending balance was $977.11 and the available balance was $609.26.
I still had one $207 bill coming through. So I would have around $400 left.

Well, I checked this morning and it said my ending balance was $320.89 and my available balance was $187 ( my $207 bill had posted) So I'm around $180 different. Ugh.

One time I spent $65 somewhere and when I came home, I checked online and it had already shown up on the 'pending' BUT it had not been subtracted from the available balance! So that's where it can get ya!

So I need to be more careful.

The problem with overdrafting an account does not come from any mistakes that Wells Fargo may or may not have made. It comes simply from the negligence of the consumer. While online banking is a great tool for monitoring your account balances it WILL NOT do the math for you. Thus, as a consumer you must actually take the time to pay attention to detail and record all expenditures from your account. As for the posting of debits/credits, please look at your statements for your account and notice that even when you weren't overdrawn, the debits were always posted first from highest balance to lowest balance, then any credits in similar fashion. Since that has been that way before any problems may have arisen I have a hard time seeing how this would be anyone's problem but the overdraftee's.

Overdraft fees are also not applied until the following business day making it ever so important to deposit what you need before you try and spend it. Seeing that the account has gone negative and trying to hurry in and deposit sufficient funds before overdraft fees have posted simply does not suffice. Since the account had posted the negative balance it will still be penalized with the fees.

Debit cards are wonderful instruments of banking both for the consumer and for the financial institution. They allow consumers to make quick purchases at local retailers and businesses and allow the financial institution to instill better relations with their customers. The downside to them is that by being negligent and just allowing the card to be swiped without any physical evidence of the account balance, consumers are setting themselves up for overdrafting. It is a new age of bouncing checks, except in this case they are still being paid.

Great products you can find through your financial institution are check registers (some can be obtained by the consumer for no extra charge) overdraft protection (although monitoring this still takes priority) and cashier's checks or money orders (depending on your relation to the financial instituition, can also be obtained free of charge or for a few dollars). Overdraft protection is a great way to prevent any unwanted overdraft fees. A credit card and sometimes a line of credit through the same bank can be linked to the checking account to pay on any over balances you might have missed in your calculations (although writing your transactions down at the end of each day always helps). The easiest way to get overdraft protection is usually with a savings account since credit is not affecting the outcome. The key to all of these is that you must have funds available in all of those products to pay the overdrafts and keep the account out of the negative.

While swiping a debit card for a soda at the gas station or buying lunch for the kids seems like an everyday action with no consequences, the fact of the matter is that over spending what we don't have may lead to over paying. We can all go back to spending cash only and when we are out we are out. But perhaps there is an atm around the corner, and perhaps we'll be able withdraw what we don't have.

Oh well... guess I should have checked before I did... what's another 35.00 dollars anyway...

Not once in this report did I see any responsibility on your behalf that you spent more in your account than you had. While you didn't specifically say it, it appears you suffer from the same problem as many other people. You are relying on your on-line banking instead of your check register and floating transactions.

"An example of this , is posting debits on a holiday ( A Non Banking Business Day ) and not posting the credits that were pending also , until the next day to maximize overdraft fees ( A total of 8 @ $35 each , with other debits to be processed"
- Your transaction may "appear" on line on a non-banking day, however transactions are only POSTED on banking days. So yes if you do a transaction on a Sunday it may appear on-line. However, if Monday is a holiday, it won't officially get posted until Tuesday night with ALL of the other transactions that were submited since the last time transactions were posted(Friday Night).

"..another example is the shuffling of transactions from the order in which they occur in a way that Wells Fargo sees fit as to maximize overdraft fees , they do this by paying the largest debit first and charge overdraft fees for all of the little transactions that accumulate..."
- It does not matter how they post transactions if you don't go negative. If you have $100 available in your account an you have 5 transactions for a total of $80 it does not matter how they post them your balance won't go negative.

"..another example is the way their computers post account data ( not accurate and up to date ) designed to confuse the customer.."
- I figure you are talking about On-Line banking. On line banking does not know what you have spent until they receive the check, or the merchant submits the ACUTAL transaction. Even here remember it won't get posted until the next banking day. Until that point on-line banking can't show it because it doesn't know you used your debit card or wrote a check. This is where a Check Register comes in. That is the only thing that knows what you have spent, because of course you write down each transaction as they occur.

"..waiting to pilfer the customer at their earliest convenience.."
- Oh..like when you spent more than you had in your account.

"here are some other customer complaints from the many disgruntled customers ( too many to list ) whom have left your institution ... "
- While you didn't list them here. I bet that probably 99% of those people left because of the same account mis-management that THEY did, and expect the next bank to be better. However, Wells Fargo is no different in how they process items than any other major bank. So I can't wait to see your next RoR against your new bank the first time you OD your account.