Complaint Review: Wells Fargo Bank

There is a limit to how much any consumer should be expected to take from a greedy corporation. Regardless of the situation, no legislator or DA has ever created or enforced the laws governing financial institutions in order to give those companies the ability to rake hardworking, middle-class people who make a good-faith effort to manage their finances (i.e. balancing a checkbook, tracking purchases) over the coals and wind up with over 1/4 of their usable income.

Here's our situation (I'll try to be brief):

Last year, in January, I fell ill due to an extremely bad reaction to poorly-prescribed medication. Unfortunately, this took me out of action for six (count them, SIX) months. I was unable to track the finances, and my wife hesitantly took them over.

Mistakes were made over that six-month period - overdraft fees in excess of $1000 were charged to our accounts in this time. What could I do? There were some that seemed awfully fishy, an almost uncanny coincidence of many, many days worth of debit card transactions being posted to our account within hours before a direct deposit came through (keep in mind that Wells Fargo has 24-hour notice of any wire-type transfer, and therefore has the information, as well as the motive, to alter their posting practices to suit their own ends).

Basically, I wrote them off as a loss, not because I thought they were right, but because we didn't have our own act together enough to prove otherwise. Our problem was what I call "balance banking." A decidedly inefficient and inaccurate method. For this six-month period, I was receiving only 1/2-pay.

Fast-forward to July:
With my condition improving, I gradually became able again to be in charge of the checkbook. By this time, some of our debts were approaching unmanageability, and I knew that it would take some time, and diligent tracking, to get back to a point where we again could have a "buffer". I predicted that I would be basically "caught up" in September. I was wrong; it took until October.

Unfortunately, Wells Fargo wasn't ready for us to be caught up! Their methods of assessing charges and purchases to our account were absolutely dizzying! I delved deeper into it, and started to track purchases TO THE PENNY!

So, now it is November. We are caught up, postings are occuring as expected (though still seem to be "off" in order, as well as still managing to wait until JUST before those direct deposits to post about a week's worth of check-card transactions). By this time, though, we have a buffer. No OD fees, etc. Enter November 29th.

Our direct deposit is set up to post TO MY ACCOUNT (e.g. money sends on second-to-last day of the month, and available to me by...) at 12:00 am on the last working day of the month. So I know that my check will be posted by 12:01, without fail. Christmas is coming up, and I find an item that I really want to buy for someone. It costs about $180.

By this time, I'm more comfortable dealing with cash than with my check card, to say nothing of writing an actual check. So, I decide that, if all the items I have outstanding are already covered, and this much is available, I will go ahead and take it out now, knowing full well that my buffer will be back within a couple hours (It is 7:30 p.m. on November 29th). I check the account, and the balance reflects basically what I expected to be there (I never know when to expect the monthly charges, since there is no rhyme or reason to when they are posted) within a couple bucks.

To be safe, I decided to check some of the withdrawals/debits that had been posted. All of them are accounted for. For a series of 5 purchases, the voice tells me "your account balance reflects the following activity that will be posted on the next business day." OK, my calculations already account for this. These purchases total about $55. I withdraw $180. The machine prompts me to ask if I want a printed receipt, to which I respond "YES, PLEASE." One is not given, which I figure must just be a situation where the machine is out of paper. Now, I'm not so sure.

As far as I know, all is fine. We remain in control of our finances, and I continue to leave a $100 buffer in place until, two weeks later, my wife goes to deposit her check for about $850. She calls from the ATM..."honey, this is strange. It says our balance is only $350!"

What, what what!!!!!!11????????????? I called and spoke to several "customer service representatives" (the biggest freaking misnomer I've heard for a job title...more appropriate would be "wagon circlers"). None of them would help me. I ask them how they explain this, getting only the same "it's not my job to track your purchases, sir."

My answer: "Maybe not, but it IS your job to explain the discrepancy between what is real and what shows up now." After all, I've been tracking them very deliberately and religiously. It seems that, somehow, we were charged $165 for overdraft fees on 11/29! This can't be!

I have worked this out on paper every which way I know how...and I cannot figure out what could possibly have happened. Then, a friend of mine who used to be a bank teller proposed that the following scenario is very possible given how he was expected to perform his job: The purchases that were deducted from my balance, to be posted the next business day, are actually for a short period of time double-charged. The "hold" counts against my balance, then a separate charge is applied.

After the charge is posted to my account, the "hold" funds are released. Despite my direct-deposit automatically being posted to my account at 12:01 a.m., these charges are counted FIRST! So, it was the second charge that sends my balance into overdraft, and then the fee is applied. Then, they back out the original "held" funds, which doesn't exactly balance out at this point. So my $50 in purchases, for which I had already accounted, became momentarily $100, and after all the fees are applied, turns into $265. Then, they remove the original $50, with no record of the double-charge anywhere! And no indication of this on my phone call or my ATM query!

So, at this point, my account is $165 short of what I think it is! Can you see the problem already? My planned "buffer" is only $100. So, when I think I have about $65 to play with, I'm actually at zero. And we know which purchases are going to come out of that $65/$0 account. All those nickel-and-dime purchases. By this time, it's too late.

There is a whole slew of $33 charges, adding up to $198, again on less than 1/3 this amount-worth of purchases and, once again, due to charges that shouldn't have happened in the first place! I called, got the run-around, steamed about it, and focused on other matters. In order to meet our immediate obligations (mainly, checks that had already been mailed), we did a direct deposit cash advance.

Again, I'm getting nowhere with them undoing the damage they did to the accounts. This keeps going on and on basically adding up to nearly $1000 in fees between November 29 and January 21. By this point, I'm furious with WF, and rightly so! Every time I call, I'm told some different policy that explains how they do things...often blatantly contradicting what the last person had said.

The last straw was when I got the same ol' runaround from a supervisor, and then heard other voices in the room (I must have been on speaker phone) as well as lots of chuckling in the background! So much for confidential information!!!!! I asked the supervisor to have the others in the room keep their chuckles and comments to themselves. The guy didn't even wait until he, himself, had finished laughing before saying (through a laugh, mind you) in a very condescending voice "ok, sir, i'll tell the others not to laugh so much."

He then informs me that he should have been off of work 10 minutes ago, so he's doing me some HUGE favor. I told him to transfer me to another supervisor and go on, then. I was not surprised when, rather than another voice picking up, I got a dial-tone. I called again, spoke to another supervisor, just as condescending, though not as blatant as the first, who is just as much of a brick wall. No interest whatsoever in righting this wrong or providing any type of service to a customer of 8 years! I asked to speak with this person's superior to which she said she was the highest one there. "No problem," says I, "their voicemail will be fine."

"I'm the supervisor. I don't have a superior"

"Really? I find that to be odd. You mean you do not report to anyone?"

"That's right."

"Let me ask you this: if you want to take a vacation, who do you inform?"

"I'm the supervisor, sir. I do not report to anyone."

"Well, this explains a lot. I have no desire to deal with a company whose flow-chart ends at 'supervisor'!"

And I meant it! At this point, there is something on the order of -$850 in my account. This doesn't even account for the erroneous, malicious, fraudulent fees that were stuck to my account. I have decided I will not replace that money. I'm going to take my money to a credit union...i've cancelled direct-deposit, as has my wife. I am drafting a letter to Mr. Kovacevic (sp?), which I plan on copying to the California State Comptroller, the Federal Reserve, and anyone else who may listen. If they want to come after me for the money, I have my records which prove that I, at no time, withdrew more money than was available, and that ONLY a process of "creative accounting" could have taken my balance below $0.

I am writing my congressional representatives, seeking legislative action. But, until such action is taken that will rein-in these institutions that have been allowed to do what they wish for way too long, these practices will not change. It's the golden rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules. We may be a little light on "gold," but I don't plan on letting Wells Fargo steal any more of it without a fight!

I take my lickings when I feel like I wasn't as vigilant as I should be, but this time I KNOW I was wronged (as opposed to my previous MERE suspicions), and I KNOW I'm right. By the way, did I mention I manage a $1.8 Million budget in my job?...quite well, too. So, I do have some smidgen of a clue as to what I'm doing!

Brian
Escondido, California
U.S.A.

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