When I worked the graveyard shift I made all of my deposits in the night depository at Wells Fargo Bank. I had had an account there since 1992, when it used to be Norwest Bank. I had never had any problems with the bank or the night depository until December when Wells Fargo "lost" my deposit of $100.00. This caused my account to be overdrawn later that day by about $27.00.
It was bad enough that one of their employees had apparently stolen my $100.00, but then it was like a feeding frenzy for them, the way they started piling on all of the fees. I might have tolerated ONE check overdraft fee of $30.00 for the check that cleared that day, but that wasn't good enough for them. I was shocked to later discover my account overdrawn for nearly $160.00.
It seems that this bank adds up all of the debits and credits for each account at the end of the day. They add the credits to the account first, then subtract the largest debit first, then the next largest and so on, in reverse dollar amount order, not the chronological order in which the bank received them. This method results in as many as possible individual overdrafts that they can charge fees for.
Their excuse for this rip-off is to ensure that large payments like house and car payments get paid. (But they pay everything presented to them anyway, so they can charge overdraft fees.) And I'm supposed to be so very grateful that they're looking out for me in this manner.
I had one check for $46.00 clear that day, that I should have been charged ONE check overdraft fee of $30.00 for.By their method, I had FOUR debit card overdrafts totaling $27.00 that they charged me $33.00 EACH for, a total of $132.00 in rip-off fees on top of the $100.00 they "lost." These four purchases were ALL made before the bank opened at 9AM. I argued endlessly with several bankers about this, but they refused to budge.
By their reasoning: If I had $100.00 in my account, and made 10 ATM withdrawals of $10.00 each immediately after midnight, and then someone cashed a check drawn on my account for $100.00 right before the bank closed at 6PM, they would charge me $330.00 (TEN $33.00 debit card overdrafts.) Not one check overdraft fee of $30.00 even though the check came 18 hours later.
I didn't have the money to cover all of these rip-off fees, then more checks cleared, more fees. I refused to give them any more money until they found the deposit they "lost" or reversed some of these fees. This account wound up overdrawn for over $400.00, mostly due to their fees and the theft of my deposit.
Don't EVER do business with this bank, they're the rudest bunch of crooks I've ever had the misfortune to do business with.
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