I had been paying our bills online through Wells Fargo Online bill pay. Then I made the mistake of putting everything on a monthly automatic payment process. After receiving overdraft charges that were more than my husbands paycheck 2 pay periods in a row, I went online and one by one deleted all of the payees out of my online bill paying account. I then closed my online bill pay account with Wells Fargo. My husband personaly went in to the bank on 8/9/02 and asked that our entire bank account be closed out as of that time.
He was told that it could not be closed because we had a negative balance of $97.49 and an additional $25.50 funds on hold for an automatic payment that was pending for a total amount of $ 122.99. He deposited that amount for which I have the transaction record to prove this. A person by the name of Keenan assured my husband that as of midnight of that same day that our account would be closed. This was at the Wells Fargo branch on Piedmont Ave in Oakland Ca.
We still continued to receive overdraft notices from Wells Fargo every day after that so on 9/14/02 my husband wrote a letter to the main branch in Portland Or. Explaining everything just as I have, We received a letter of response back dated 9/25/02 advising us that they were in receipt of his letter and had inquired into the charges and that they were valid and as of that date we owed $463.95 in over draft charges and that they were forwarding a copy of his letter to the branch in San Leandro Ca. Where we had originaly opened the account 12 years earlier. We then received a collection notice from LLC in the amount of $ 551.90. We had 30 days to dispute the debt. I wrote them back and explained why we did not owe the debt in pretty much the same as I did above.
On 1/22/03 I received a response back from LLC stating that the records of our creditor show that this is a valid claim immediately due.
At this point my husband and I realize that there is nothing that we can possibly do to rectify this debt except pay it and we decided that we were not going to pay for something that we did not feel we owed, as we did everything in our power to stop the situation from escalating.
On 11/11/03
we received a letter from NATIONAL REVENUE CORPORATIONand that the debt had been reported to CHEXSYSTEMS and SCAN Nationwide credit reporting agencies used by financial institutions and retailers.
As of the day of 8/9/02 we have not been able to have a checking account, we have to buy money orders to pay all of our bills. My husband made over $104k in 2006. Can you imagine how much they take from his payroll checks every 2 weeks when he has to go to the neighborhood check cashing center just to be able to cash his paychecks? Sometimes its well over $300 just to cash his check.
Before filing this report I decided to pick up the phone and try one more time to settle this with the bank.
I talked to Samantha at the 888-901-9589 Wells Fargo call center which she said was just out side of Portland Oregon.
Her words to me and I Quote " Even if you closed your account out with us, if we get a demand for an automatic payment from a merchant that you went into agreement with, then we have to automaticaly open your account back up and charge it, hence the overdraft fees that incurred"
She told me that that was their agreement with merchants with their automatic bill pay. I asked what about your agreement to close our account when we asked that it be closed and the fact that we were your customers for over 12 years?
She said that it did not matter and would I like to go ahead and pay the amount due at this time. I told her no that I would not and that I never would. I told her that I would rather spend 5k to 10 k on a lawyer than pay them the trumped up charges. She said " Fine I will make a note of that on your permanet record. I thanked her for her time and informed her that I was going to file this report as soon as I hung up the phone. She just laughed and said " Do what ever you want to do
Cynthia
oakland, California
U.S.A.
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