My report is concerning Wells Fargo, their innacurate on-line banking information, and how one small mistake cost me over $600 worth of overdraft fees in two days!!!
Wells Fargo makes it a point to advertise that they have a wonderful on-line service that we can use to keep better track of our money/accounts. What they don't advertise is that this information is innacurate and cannot be used by the consumer to determine bank balances or verify any account activity.
My account apparently was slightly overdrawn on a Friday - a fact that I was not aware of, since I had been on-line checking my account on Friday evening, and I still had quite a positive balance. Knowing I had written a check that would probably clear, I went on-line early Saturday morning and transferred funds from my savings to my checking to cover that amount. I then went online again and transferred $100 more just to be on the safe side and to have some extra cash for the weekend.
Over the weekend, I used my ATM card to get gas, we went on a short trip and purchased $2.00 here and $4.00 there worth of snacks, etc. We ate out several times... You get the picture. At no point, during this weekend, did my ATM card ever deny a transaction - nor should it have (or so I thought)
I have direct deposit for my paycheck, which went in to our account the following Monday evening. On Tuesday, when checking our account to be sure our deposits went through, I was HORRIFIED to find that my account had been assessed OVER 20 $31.00 overdraft fees, totalling over $600 in FEES that had accumulated in two days!!! I am a single mother of two - I can't describe to you how used and robbed and cheated and ANGRY I felt!!!
I called customer service immediately and calmly proceeded to explain the situation to a very rude young man (have his name for future reference) who began talking down to me once he saw that this had happened to be previously (yes, this is not the first time the time difference has screwed me)- his basic help was to tell me that I need to keep better track of my money and not write bad checks. He said there was a note in the computer to not allow any more courtesy fee reversals on my account, and he would not change it.
I let my boyfriend call back and do his best to talk to these people, but still did not matter. Their argument was that we had funds in our account on Friday, my deposits, while showing up as available to me and allowing me to access them all weekend, did not post until Monday - at which time fees had already accumulated from Friday (I guess they posted a check on Monday that effected my Friday balance?) so I became overdrawn on Monday, at which time all the transactions I had made over the weekend had been assessed a $31.00 fee each. At which point, depleted my account on Monday and caused it to be overdrawn again (more fees) until my direct deposit went through Monday night at Midnight.
My argument was, if I had made a mistake and missed recording a check in my ledger, and somehow managed to have it post on Friday and cause my funds to be overdrawn - why not just return the check, charge me for it, and not allow any activity to occur in my account until it was positive again? I am not arguing that paying a fee for a bounced check is a problem - I will do that. It will make me more careful in the future.
But $600.00 is horribly EXCESSIVE - it's a red flag to me that this company deliberately sets it's systems up in a way to gauge and rob it's consumers blind - AND THEY GET AWAY WITH IT!!! If I didn't have sufficient funds to post a check, why was I allowed to used my ATM card all weekend - does that money not come out of the very same account??? If I make a transfer/deposit on Saturday - and I have access to that money ON SATURDAY - why doesn't the bank?
How can they say they post it on Monday??? If that's true, then don't allow ME access to it either - that might just clue me in that all is not right with my account, that I need to check it and make some more financial arrangements, and FIX IT??!!! But if I had been alerted of this a day earlier, it would have cost them about $300.00- so I guess I can see why they set it up that way.
And as far as any rebuttals from employees saying "if you didn't write bad checks, this wouldn't happen" - sorry. That's not good enough. You know, I know, and everyone else that this has happened to knows that this is excessive, unethical, and hopefully down the line, illegal. I get online constantly to monitor my account so this very thing DOESN'T happen - and the information I got from the last rude CSR I spoke with was that I shouldn't rely on their online services for my account information. That it's my fault I depended on that information to help manage my account - my question now is... THEN WHY IS IT THERE???
My goal is to get my money back - I have to pay my rent and my kid's chilcare this month. I don't know how the people that are in control (or is it the computers that are in control?) can sleep at night in their expensive beds knowing that they are making their living robbing families out of money they work hard to get and depend on to be in their account when they put it in there.
Corry
Chandler, Arizona
U.S.A.
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